Alan's writing today's blog and Sarah's waste of space will be in green. He is so rude!!!!
After eating our breakfast this morning we finished packing our bags and headed off toward the airport. We made sure to give ourselves plenty of extra time to return our car, check in and get through security. As it turns out, it's lucky we did. We drove to the rental car return and caught the bus to the terminal. After getting there we checked in easily enough, even though the automatic check in computer didn't seem to like Australians.
After that we joined the queue to go through security which wasn't very long, so we thought we'd be through in no time at all. All over the place are huge signs with warnings about bagging all your liquids in your hand luggage, no weapons and especially don't joke around with the TSA officers (transport security administration). First of all we were asked for identification at which time our drivers licenses were thoroughly scrutinized along with our boarding passes.
We were told to join the far line waiting for the baggage x-ray, to remove our laptop from it's bag and to remove our shoes so they could be x-rayed too. Typically, an American woman in front of us had failed to place her liquids into a plastic bag and the queue and x-ray machine came to a screeching halt while a supervisor had to be located. 10 minutes or so later we began moving again. I noticed one of the Americans in the line behind us being grilled for the exact same thing a bit later. Honestly, it's pretty hard not to notice the big signs all around the place.
Sarah passed through the metal detector and was instantly asked to step to one side. I was asked to join her after I stepped through as well. We were then led to a second screening area where a female officer was called to give Sarah a body search. A male officer had to be found to give me my body search. Luckily they didn't want an internal cavity search. Phew! Had it not been for Alan's silly haircut, I'm sure we would have gone through without any problems at all.
All our carry on luggage was taken apart, along with our shoes and swabbed completely as they searched for any trace whatsoever for explosive material. Luckily neither of us had mistakenly trodden in a puddle of nitro glycerine on our way to the airport.
Apparently it's not that we look like terrorists, but the fact that we were foreigners, one of us with a funny hair cut, we showed a foreign drivers license as our identification and we had one way tickets to Las Vegas instead of a return ticket. Let's just hope this isn't going to be normal for the rest of our flights this holiday. Eventually we were allowed to continue on our way after about 45 minutes.
The flight to Las Vegas was quick and uneventful. It's such a short flight that it seems we started to descend pretty much as soon as we reached our cruising altitude. As soon as we stepped into the Las Vegas terminal both of us were hit with a foul smell. Maybe that's normal here. There's also slot machines just a few steps into the terminal after you leave the plane. That's Vegas for you!
We caught our bus to the car rental area and picked up our car. It was supposed to be a little 2 door compact type thing but when we got outside to the parking lot they had none left, so they stuck us in the big 7 seat people mover monstrosity. So we left for our casino and after a slow drive up the strip, we found The Flamingo. It took us a while to find the carpark but after parking and finding our way into the hotel we checked in and headed off for our room.
The hotels in Vegas are very poorly laid out with the lifts usually miles and miles away from the carpark or check in. This one is probably even worse than most I reckon. We got to our floor and after walking about 3 miles made it to our room. The room is ok, although we would have liked a fridge and the hotel doesn't have a guest laundry at all. Sarah has some of our clothes soaking in the sink now. We have an absolutely glorious view of the carpark too. It doesn't seem to matter that you say you are getting married. Maybe the carpark view is their special wedding present for us.
We went for a brief wander down the street this afternoon to the Paris casino. We didn't stay out there long as it was extremely hot. Sarah had a lie down this evening so I went down to the casino as I could hear the roulette tables calling my name. I won a small amount - about enough to pay for 3 days of internet usage in this hotel. Better than nothing.
Trivia for the day: We checked out of our hotel in San Diego at exactly 9.11am on 9/11. Could that have been a spooky omen?
No comments:
Post a Comment