Saturday 1 June - Monday 3 June

Las Vegas Baby

So we decided to drive through the Nevada desert toVegas (as if we haven't seen enough desert in our time!?) We left at the crack of dawn to avoid all the LA traffic and we managed to get there 4 hours later along with all the other weekend revellers just in time to hand our hire car in. Phew. You know how the first night is always the biggest night - well we proceeded to check into the cheesiest hotel in Vegas (The Excalibur - cringe) and start drinking at 12:30pm - then, schoolboy error - we didnt eat anything, and started gambling and continued drinking...needless to say, we stumbled into our hotel room at who knows when (word on the floor says between 8 and 9pm) sans chips. Hangovers won the next day, sadly no tigers,Tyson's or Mr Chen's involved. We did miss the big pool party we'd planned to go to. Doh.

Vegas, otherwise, is an adult playground and you need to go there with cash to splash. Our highlight was the Grand Canyon - although I will suggest not taking a bus tour - hire a car and drive yourself and stay overnight there. We did an 11 hour bus tour to the South Rim - which was gorgeous and measured 18km across to the North Rim (incredible to see), but we only spent about 2 hours of that at the Canyon, the rest was in the bus, boooo. We visited the Kolb Brothers Studio - they were amongst the first explorers to come to the Canyon in 1901 to film and take photos - often perched in precarious positions on the edge of the canyon, on homemade ladders down the steep cliff faces or hanging from ropes between a gorge, incredible.