We arrived in Vegas on Sunday the 30th after being dropped off at the Greyhound station which was way out of town, so after trekking with our bags on the bus onto the strip, we checked in at the Imperial Swan Hotel courteous of daddy Emanuel. It was in the perfect location, middle of the strip opposite Caesar's Palace and right in the heart of Vegas and thanks to the nice check in lady we had a room with a pool view and the best thing was that we had two double beds, for 5 whole nights, Thank you Mr Emanuel. After changing and having dinner we hit the casinos, we signed up for the reward card so we could get free slot play for our hotel.We bought some drinks and sat on some slots to get used to it as neither of us had really gambled before and our hotel was definitely less intimidating than the big casinos. After a lot of Dutch courage and losing all our slot play we crossed the road to Caesars Palace, as we thought we were ready to play and drink in the world famous casino, Cher was even playing here. Even though I was told about it before the best thing was that if you sit on any machines cocktail waitresses will come round and serve you free drinks, so of course Jess and I took advantage of this by sitting on 1c machines, we didn't want to break the bank on our 1st night. Our 1st big game was the semi - electronic roulette table, I lost straight away, Jess was on there for a while but that's because she couldn't work out the rules on minimum bet until the dealer told her and then she made a swift exit. We then were given 'free' entry to Pure nightclub, but when I tried to enter they tried to charge me, but Jess managed to change their mind and we got in from free. The club was quite fancy, but a lot of fun as we did a lot of dancing even though there was a lot of ugly people in there, we did order two drinks that cost $20 as we were pretty merry from all our free drinks so the one did us fine. We stumbled home around alcohol fuelled about 2.30am and collapsed in our big double beds.

Monday morning we awoke with very sore heads and sore feet from far too much dancing, so we headed to Harrah's Casino to KGB for some fancy burgers and huge JARS of coke to soothe our weary selves. We then spent the afternoon bargain shopping, looking for some fancy clothes to wear in Vegas as we felt a little plain and Jess wanted some heels. After an afternoon in the Fashion Mall we jumped on the 'Deuce' strip bus to check out the prices of the Cirque du Soleil show 'O' at the Bellagio, we were informed that they were $165, so that wasn't going to happen, but we did get to have a walk around the Bellagio which was very elegant and we pretended we were in Oceans 11, you can also see why this was one of the most expensive hotels on the strip. Of course on our travels we were taking lots photos of all the other hotels, I loved the exterior of Paris with the Eiffel tower. We headed back to our hotel for an afternoon nap as we were not feeling our hottest. For dinner we went to 'New York, New York' which was themed surprisingly like New York, it had a huge the statue of liberty on its facade. We had a really nice Italian meal and some wine in the casino and then went to the duelling piano bar, but we did not stay long here as it cost us far too much for two drinks and we were the youngest people in the bar. So we signed up for the rewards card, played on a few slots and the crossed the road to gamble in the enormous MGM grand. We received some free drinks on the slots in here and the buzz was making me feel lucky so I had a go on the roulette and won a bit, Jess wasn't feeling so lucky and we grabbed a drink and went for an explore around the Casino. The place was absolutely huge and it was so easy to get lost in, but as Jess was wearing heels we didn't walk too far and we were both so tired so we headed back at about 1am.

On Tuesday (1st February) we tried to find the internet as we were both having money issues, yes two days in and we were already broke, Vegas does that to you. After a bit of a freak out, I plied Jess with some cash and we went and indulged in the all you can eat, all day buffet. The 1st restaurant we chose to enjoy our buffet was the Flamingo, this was the hotel where the Osmond's were playing and had the iconic pink Vegas lights on its exterior. We filled our faces with an assortment of foods, like oysters, prawns, sushi, salad, chicken, pork and vegetables, I also indulged in the freshly made crepes bar that they had, which was delicious. So we waddled out of the hotel to the bus stop, our plan was to start at the Las Vegas sign and work our way down the strip, checking out all the hotels and taking photos of them all. The bus dropped us off at the last hotel and told us the sign was a 1/2 mile walk, I think this bus driver lied, it was a lot farther than that and it was very windy so that made it worse. There was a man there that you could tip to take photos of you, so of course we did. We then started our mission down the strip. We walked past the Mandalay Bay; we went into the Luxor hotel as it was shaped like a pyramid. This place was a lot quieter than other casinos but we played one slot so say we can say we gambled in Egypt. Next stop was the Excalibur Casino, this was slightly tacky as it was medieval themed and was trying to get families to stay there, but we stopped for a beer and I was quiet lucky again on the roulette. We then braved the wind and took photos of NY, NY, Monte Carlo, MGM and we ducked into the Planet Hollywood hotel to warm up and use the restroom. Holly Madison from 'girls of the playboy mansion' was performing in 'Peep Show' there so everything had her face on, I wanted to go but she wasn't on the week we were there…gutted. So we carried on our photo session and snapped the Bellagio, Paris and then Caesars before going back to our room for our afternoon nap, but I got far to sucked into an episode of Law and Order so I was very tired that evening. After having our standard pre night out frozen cocktail from Fat Tuesdays, we headed to Paris for our evening buffet and wine, this buffet restaurant was amazing, the restaurant was like as if it was in a Parisian square as the ceiling, like the rest of the casino was painted like the sky and the décor was like we were sitting at an outdoor café. Yet again we filled our faces with French style food and lots of wine, to prepare for our evening's entertainment. We had booked the show 'Jubilee' at Bally's casino, which was a traditional Las Vegas Burlesque show with topless women wearing lots of feathers and scantily clad men prancing around. It was a great show and the best thing was that we were upgraded to sit right at the front on the cocktail tables with a waitress. Some could say we were a little too close as we could see everything, but it was great fun and it reminded me of the movie Showgirls. After the show, we went into the Casino, bought some drinks and tried out luck on our 1st table game; 'Spin it, to Win It.' we lost all our money but we were proud to have tried one of the tables as we had been too worried before.

Wednesday we carried on our adventure down the strip, we stopped at the Venetian for a spot of lunch. This casino was my favourite as the décor was like walking through the streets of Venice; it even had a canal with gondolas on it. We were heading for the old end of the strip, via the Wynn. We went into the Savannah, where the Beatles had stayed once, it was clear this end of the strip had long since seen its heyday and was in need of some redecoration. We liked this place as it did $1 beer, shots and blackjack tables, so after signing up for yet another card we hit the tables. I was a bit worried at first as I wasn't 100% sure of the table etiquette, but I soon got that hang of that. The most embarrassing thing was that about 20minutes into sitting at the table the dealer stopped the game to ID me, so I had to faff around looking for my ID whilst everyone waited for me, it was so embarrassing. I didn't win on these tables but I certainly didn't lose everything and I left with some chips left to cash. Next stop was the huge tower at the tip of the strip, the Stratosphere, for our hotel hopping our aim was to collect as many reward cards as possible, the Stratosphere did not give us any perks, so we decided to make a swift exit and back towards our hotel. We stopped off at Circus Circus, another old hotel, to look at the circus acts they had performing. We missioned it back up to our hotel to take our standard afternoon nap before our night time adventures, which was to try and tick off all the touristy things that everyone MUST do in Vegas. First stop was the rollercoaster at New York, our frozen cocktails had made it a lot more fun than it probably should have been, but I do love a good rollercoaster, we had dinner at an Italian in the Planet Hollywood hotel. We then walked down to watch the amazing fountain display at the Bellagio, and then we went up the Eiffel Tower at Paris. We didn't stay to long up the tower as we decided to do all of this on the coldest evening, so we froze up there but we saw some amazing views. Our plan was to see the Mirage's volcano but we were informed wrongly so instead of standing in the cold we went into the Casino where we ended up in a bar/club called Revolution where you pay $20 and you could drink all you like till 1am, and of course we did. We had 5 or 6 very strong vodka and gin drinks on top of what we already had that evening so we were pretty smashed and boogied the night away whilst making friends with some randoms in the club.

Thursday morning was a horrible affair, we both were feeling extremely hungover from our crazy night before. We did not want to wallow in our hangovers so we got up, booked our tickets for Phantom for that evening and went and got lunch in a fancy but well priced restaurant in the Venetian. I had seen the previous day that the Venetian was going to put on a Dragon show for Chinese New Year so at 3pm we went to find it, unfortunately it was a massive let down, and apart from some extremely loud fire crackers the parade/show was lame. By this time we had had enough of being outside and around people, so we headed back to our room to try and make ourselves feel human again for the show. I was very excited about seeing Phantom of the Opera as I had never seen it before. I thought the show was amazing, the effects was great and the songs were beautiful, the only downside was that the sound was bit quiet so we struggled to hear it at time which took away from the magic, also there was a very large loud breathing man behind me that drove me insane. For dinner I wanted to go to the Wynn for a fancy dinner as we were dressed up, however, the Wynn fancy restaurants had very fancy prices which did not stay within our budget so we had to leave, but we found a delicious restaurant across the road called Maggianos where we dined, we even managed to have a glass of red wine. After dinner we saw the Mirage's Volcano eruption and popped into Treasure Island where we collected our next rewards cards which gave us $5 of free play, so of course we finished our night with some winnings in our pockets.

Friday was our last day as we had a flight at 11.30pm that evening. We checked out of our hotel at 12pm and went to grab some lunch up at Planet Hollywood, but before that we needed to buy our 'I <3…' t-shirts. It took a little while to find them but we got them. As the weather was finally warm we sat outside of Planet Hollywood at Mexican restaurant, this place was rammed as it was one of the only outdoor restaurants and it was packed because it was Superbowl weekend. We mooched around the shops, went to M&M world and watched the Bellagio fountains. We had some money left on vouchers to spend on the slot machines at Caesars so we headed back there to play, I left Caesars with double the money I went in there with but that was only $15, I did not bet a lot of cash as I knew I would just lose it. To kill some more time we went over to the Wynn to spend our $10 slot play and to wangle another free drink, which was my favourite thing to do in Vegas. After spending all of that we went to watch the Sirens show at Treasure Island, which was scantily dressed women and pirates dancing and singing whilst pyrotechnics and sinking ships are exploding around you; then we went to see the Volcano eruption again at the Mirage. We also went to see what Casino Royale was like, and I can tell you it's not worth going in, it's seedy and stinks of smoke and stale beer, so we just went to Starbucks to watch the world go by. We caught a shuttle to the airport around 9ish and all the way we were worried about our bags as we thought they were going to be overweight, thankfully they were JUST ok. The nice check in lady put us on seats where we could spread out as our flight was going to be a red eye flight. We grabbed some dinner and a glass of wine in the airport and used their free internet before catching our flight to Fort Lauderdale via Atlanta.

Las Vegas was definitely an experience, and it was very different to everything I had seen and done before. I can see why people say you either love it or hate it and I sure loved it because it was so tacky but with some glamour to it to. I warn you though you cannot stay too long here as you do get sucked into the lifestyle and the amount you drink starts to hurt as we learnt all too well. But it was a brilliant stop and I am sure I will be back again to enjoy the nightlife and the fun that Vegas has to offer.