After a few days in LA we were ready to move on. The Americans seem to drive like they think, which is never ferther than their noses. They also have some silly driving rules. Vegas was Gemma's 30th birthday treat, I booked a 4x hotel the Mirage for 2 nts with tickets to see the show Love by Cirque de soliel which is a grammy award winner and real tribute to everything Beatles. The drive took a couple of days and was pretty non eventful. We arrived at the Mirage about 2pm got checked in and went to find our room, which was quite a hike on it's own. The room was sheer luxury and we probably had our best nights sleep our whole trip here. Couple this with flatscreen tv and bathrobes we were well looked after. The show was in the Mirage so we could take it easy and explore our surroundings before a meal and then the show. There was plenty to see and do in Vegas and we understood why some people stay here for 2 weeks at a time, but at a price of course. The show was awesome, the performers were very talented and the transition between songs and moods and change of props was seemless. It was money well spent. The Love album is very moving on it's own never mind adding a story to it. Gemma and I really enjoyed it! The following day we went to explore Vegas and visited the Venetian, New York New York, MGM grand and Paris hotels. We liked the Venetian, they had really gone to town trying to recreate the real thing. Gemma has been to Venice before and she said it was quite good, but still not as good as the real thing. All the hotels are huge and you could spend your whole day and night in one place. There is gambling going on everywhere with the option of having a bet anytime of day and there was plenty of takers at 9am. We also had some discounts for a meal at the Mirage, so we gave the all you can eat buffet breakfast a blast. It was quite a beast, with every possible breakfast combination imaginable. They had a full ham shank going on, I had some it was beautiful. Even if you just tried alittle bit of everything you would still be stuffed and washed down with about a gallon of coffee and your set for entire day. I don't think we ate again until around 8pm. Vegas is a place we had to visit on this trip and we are so glad we did, it's an adults playground. The following day we checked out and decided to spend another night, so we went and stayed at a small motel not to far out, alot different to the Mirage but it was clean which is the same for all the hotels we have stayed in. Because we were on the other side of the strip we went into the MGM grand and watched some footie which made for a change even though it was Liverpool flucking a win against City, Gems was happy at least. The height of luxury in our view was the Bellagio. It's got that sophistication not really seen on the rest of the strip with it's theme hotels and casinos, and our trip to Vegas would not have been complete without seeing the fountains of the Bellagio choreographed to music. It was an awesome sight and along with the Beatles show was a main highlight. I have videoed the fountains, but the file was to big for the website sorry! Overall we stayed at the best hotel, saw the best show ever and had our best Pizza in Vegas!

As we were in Vegas we had to make the drive to The Grand Canyon, and lets say it is grand, the biggest natural site we have seen all trip. It was an amazing site however the amount of people there did impact on our experience slightly. We drove around half of the canyon to try and escape the people where we did come across quieter view poins, unfortunately for us we couldn't really get close enough to the canyon as we could in Australia without going on a guided walk due to the vast size, so we just had to settle for the view points which gave a good insight into the size and the differing colours of the Grand Canyon. It was deffinately worth the drive but we prefer the quiter national parks.