Monday, April 18, 2005

Vegas Travelouge: Day One.

This is a vacation?

Perhaps it was best that we had travelled down to Seattle the day before, because at 12:40pm, about an hour after the Shuttle Express was scheduled to pick us up for the airport, I would've lost it if I had just drove down to Seattle in the morning to wait for their stupid asses. They finally arrived and picked us up, but the driver had the nerve to argue with me that the address that I had given was wrong. Even as we were running late for the check-in. And he said he didn't know anything about the dispatcher telling us that it was going to be half-price because of his tardiness (which, incidentally was another lie, because we were charged full price). I told the man, no, the address is correct. I know this because my mother lives there, and she's been living there for years and she evidently gets mail there, and manages to have other shuttle express drivers pick her up with the same address. I left him disgruntled with no tip.

Luckily, the check-in and security lines were really quick, so we made our way into the airport, had a quickie lunch before we boarded the plane. Onboard, more plans thwarted when the stewardess told us that we had to separate the babies to both sides of the plane. There are only four oxygen masks for each side, so it wouldn't be safe for both babies to be one one side. I took Zoe, who was lacking in sleep and abundant in restlessness, and for about two hours, I had my nuts kneaded on, my headphones yanked on, and got flashed a bunch of really cute and closeup smiles from my little girl. At one point I put headphones on her little noggin, and the stewardess thought that was really cute. Did that score an extra bag of peanuts? No.

So I'm fighting extreme drowsiness from overdosing on Dramamine, because I'm a chronic motion sickness sufferer, and I doubled the recommended dosage to keep my head on right and my stomach where it belonged. On the downside, I was trying hard not to doze off while Zoe did about 53 rotations on my lap; from sitting to standing to yanking on my headphones. Of course, my wife's baby fell asleep. I was envious and perturbed. And yes, all that advice about packing toys and snacks? Garbage. We used maybe about 5% of what we brought. The rest of it was just extra weight.

We get to the airport finally, and I make my way to the car rental kiosk, which had a rather friendly guy. I couldn't get overly mad at him after he gave me an estimate, which was about $150 more than the online estimate that was given to me whilst I made my reservation, but I was worried. $400 for a car rental seemed a little much, but we had no choice in that matter. Wasn't about to walk to the Grand Canyon.

Our minivan was a Silver Dodge Caravan, a newbie with low mileage and trippy controls. We took a while to get the carseats in, and then foolishly tried to find our hotel sans map and just a tourist phamplet. We didn't get lost, but it sure was scenic. It would be Friday before we got a sense of where we were really going.

Checked into Binion's Horseshoe, and was actually quite surprised that the rooms were not bad at all. For $30 a night, it wasn't really too bad. We unpacked a little, and went downstairs to Fremont street to catch the tailend of the Fremont experience, which was just too cool. The kids, tired as they were, seemed to be overwhelmed with astonishment and a little bit of panic.

We found dinner at a buffet, which was overpriced and a little weird. The thing about buffets are that sometimes they're a good deal if you're a seafood fan, because you're getting your money's worth. But for plain old people like me, it's like paying for odd chicken and overpriced dessert. My mom was good to foot the bill (as for all our eating for the trip), but the food was just okay.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was late and the babies, who were already really off schedule, kept us up till one. Their cribs were in clear view of us, and those babies do not sleep if they can see us. So, after a few minutes of staying ridiculously still and pretending to be logs, they finally fell asleep.

End Day one.

Comments: Post a Comment