Day 330, 30 May 2013, Las Vegas, Nevada - Big trip to the Tix4Tonight booth this morning... Managed to get (just) tickets to Cirque du Soleil ("Love") - it's important to specify which Cirque, because in Vegas there are 6-8 running at different venues at any one time. Also tickets to David Copperfield afterwards. Many dreams of my childhood are coming true on this trip - and seeing David Copperfield is definitely one of them. I say we "just" got tickets because in the 10 minutes it took to get to the front of the queue, 10 booths city wide were selling same day tickets, faaaaast! We actually had to accept single tickets on the same row to both shows - but we were OK with that (it's easy... we simply think of the overdraft required to see any of these things back in Sydney). Tickets safely zippered away, like gold dust only half price, we bought 24 hour passes for The Deuce. The public transport option for cruising up and down the Strip without dropping from exhaustion in 40 degree heat (112 F). And it's only $8 - a steal. Yesterday's casinos were blah - today we decided to go European and visit the Venetian... As our favourite city in Italy we were fascinated to see how they could possibly have a Grand Canal (face it... any canal would have been impressive). With gondolas. I mean - really? No waaayyy.... Well actually, yes way! And on the second floor too. And the sky is blue with fluffy white clouds and it's smoke free and air-conditioned and the gondoliers sing and everything. The magic of Vegas in action - Nature all fixed up and presented for consumption by a nation of people who seriously never leave home. If in fact you meet an American whilst travelling the world, we've noticed they stick in our minds (mostly wonderfully... sometimes not so much and we suspect they've been deported). We say this because we've met so many Americans who have never left the country. (Historically - Columbus got here. And that was it). By the by, we stayed within the Grand Canal area and enjoyed the Carnevale opera singers (any free show is a good show) - and this was better than good, they could really sing! We eventually left San Marco's Square (barely like the real thing... but who's to know if you've never been) and wended out way back out past the clear calm waters of magical Venice. You'll never guess what happened next... We are turning into Vegas folks - or vampires. One or the other, because it was time for our daytime sleep. Absolutely a case of having to - even at half price, Vegas shows are too expensive to nap through. Well rested, it was back out into the scorching early evening and onto The Deuce, which got us down to The Mirage (home of the volcano) for the evening's first show. Cirque du Soleil was something I had to convince James on. I too was once a bit ho hum about a few acrobats doing flips - right up until I was given tickets to Quidam years ago in Sydney under the Bigtop. But I kept on convincing and the fact that "Love" is set to the music of the Beatles helped - he figured he could enjoy the sound track at least. Thankfully for my show picking record it was BRILLIANT! MAGICAL! AMAZING! clever, funky, costumed to the max, awesome, astounding and outstanding - Everything Cirque should be AND told the story of the Beatles. (Due to the no photos on pain of death policy, there is very little to gather even on the internet - today's photo is from the song Octopus's Garden). We left the theatre on such a high, and since we hadn't sat together had so much to catch up on on the ride back to the MGM Grand for David Copperfield. Again, a sold out show with a long, snaking line through the casino just to get into Hollywood Theatre. Actually quite surreal just being in the presence of the man himself - who knows, he might have made us all disappear (he actually did teleport some members of the audience at the end of the show... still trying to figure that out). It was mind boggling and annoying and brilliant all at once - how the heck did he get that car on the stage??? But what was even more fun were the the tricks he would do out amongst the audience. And even those, we still can't figure out. Probably enjoyed Penn & Teller more... but so incredibly lucky to be able to compare. After midnight by the time we we returned to our room - passing the hordes of young(er) people just heading out to the clubs - 24 hours in a day just not enough!