The Grand Canyon and our last day in Vegas

Waaaaaaaay too early in the morning, the phone rang. I shot up in a panic, thinking that we had overslept and missed our pickup. As Cesca blindly grabbed for the phone, I checked my phone for the time- 4:50 am. Phew. They were just calling to confirm that they were picking us up. Ugh. Too early.

The bus ended up being like 15 minutes late and getting us at like 6:10, but we were off. After registering and chancing buses, we headed out on the road. We made a quick stop at the Hoover Dam then headed out into the desert.

View from the bus on the way to the Hoover Dam

There it is

Pretty cool

LOL Buffal Bills

the road here wasn't paved- SO BUMPY AND DUSTY

just a Hualapai, no big deal

The Skywalk- we went on but you can't take pics on it

On the skywalk you can't take any personal items and you have to wear little booty things over your sneakers so you don't scratch the glass- it's crazy scary but awesome! The workers have cameras and we bought a picture, but Veronica has it so I'll have to post it later

so crazy beautiful. Can't believe I was there

Enjoying the view

You can see the storm clouds in the back. It actually rained when we were there. What are the chances that in a place where it rains 7.5% of the year that it rains in the middle of summer on the ONE day that we were there? It didn't make too much of a difference, but it was still kind of unbelievable.

A hualapai tent?

The Hualapai are the natives that live on the land near the canyon. They have tons of acres near the canyon and the name means "People of the Pines."

It was incredible 

oh you know, just relaxing

we got caught being too awesome

it was too much to handle for Cesca

This goat tried to get on that bus. Cute!

A joshua tree- named by Mormans

I called this our anti dehydration collection

On our last day, we decided to hit up the last minute things we missed, like:

The Pawn Stars shop! 

Browsing

The stars weren't there, but we found their cardboard cutouts

Afterwards, we headed to the strip to see Caesar's Palace

I've seen the real one too!

Sadly the talking statues were under renovation so we missed them

such a cool hotel

Then we hit up the inside of the Mirage

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And then the Venetian for the Gondola rides

the canal is much cleaner than in Venice.

The gondolier was super nice and was asking us the standard questions, like was it our first time, what are we doing here, blah blah blah. If I was writing an autobiography or something, this is how I would have narrated this interaction.

The friendly gondolier smiles and tells us that he's amazed we traveled so far. "So what made you come all the way out here?" he asks. I guess 21 year olds from across the country aren't that common here. I tell him that we really wanted to see Phantom Las Vegas before it closed so we decided to do a whole trip, and he said that it was an amazing show. He then asked if I had seen the Broadway show. I enthusiastically nodded and said "oh, of course!" He laughed and said he could tell that I must really like the show. I almost exclaimed that I had seen it in London as well, but I resist. This was a perfect stranger and you don't blurt out your crazy obsession with Phantom of the Opera to a gondolier at a hotel. 

The ride was quite fun though, as they actually sing here, unlike in real Venice. Afterwards, we decided to get to the airport and get ready to head home on our red eye.

our awesome purple cab to the airport

Cesca celebrating the end of our trip, as well as the fact
that they had their own escalator

It was a wonderful trip, even though the red eye flight caused much exhaustion and stress (we had half an hour to get across Newark, including 2 buses, to get from C to A and catch our flight). I had a ton of fun and fulfilled a big life goal. It was a kind of trip I had always wanted to do and thought I would eventually, so it is still kind of incredible that I'm sitting at home having just unpacked from doing it. I guess study abroad has really instilled a fire in me, and I never want to stop traveling and seeing amazing things.

Now that this excitement is over, it's time to get ready to first move Cesca into Bonaventure Wednesday and then head back to IC on Saturday! Aaaaaaaaaah!

What Happens in Vegas...

You may remember that the primary motivation for this trip was (of course) to see Phantom the Las Vegas Spectacular, but we did plenty of other stuff while we were there. I'll probably write up something about Phantom in a separate post so Andrea can skip it ;), but here is a recap of the things we did day 1 and 2.

Day 1 began waaaaaaaaay too early at about 5 in the morning, since we had to be at the airport early. We got to Vegas around 3:40 thanks to the time difference and got all settled around 5. We decided to do dinner in our hotel (circus circus) and then check out some stuff around the strip.

Having never been west, it looked like
a new planet!

slots in the airport. Trying to get ya out of the gate

mmmmm. Margaritas

Where did we end up going the first night? Yep. The Chippendales show. Money well spent ladies, money well spent. If you have seen Magic Mike, it's kind of that in real life.  It wasn't a super cheap show but it wasn't expensive, so we decided that we should add that to our Vegas list. So we headed over to the Rio to check it out.

worth it.

It was an interesting experience. Definitely the perfect place for a Bachelorette party. We had a lot of fun; it was quite the bonding experience.

not as cool as the real one, but still cool

 Across the street, you can find dancing water at the Bellagio. The fountains are coordinated to over 30 different songs and it's pretty cool, especially at night. We ended up seeing like 3 or 4 in total while we were there, including "This Kiss," "Proud to Be an American." and I think a Pavarotti medley. It's free and fun!

Bellagio water fountain show

waiting for the next show

Then we ran into Johnny Depp characters

 The next day, we started down at the end of the strip at Mandalay Bay and worked our way up the strip towards the Venetian, where Phantom plays.

entrance to the Aquarium/Shark Reef

lol

attention whore fish is an attention whore

inside the reef

touching some rays

SAWFISH and a shark

aureole restaurant with a 3 story wine cellar. They get
it with a trapeze 

Checkin out the Excalibur 

Across is New York, New York

and then MGM

We hopped on the tram and headed up the street to Paris Las Vegas and headed up the Eiffel Tower, which is really only half the height of the real one, but it was very cool to be able to look down the Strip.

Nice view of the Bellagio from the top
of the Eiffel Tower

 It was almost time for Phantom, so we headed down to the Venetian, which is my unbiasedly favorite casino/hotel on the strip.

SO GOOD

Will write about that later. Anyway, after the show we saw a few more of the free things around the strip. As we walked to find Ronnie and Lauren, who hadn't seen Phantom, we saw the Mirage volcano erupt as we were heading over to Treasure Island to see the Siren Cove show.

Mirage volcano eruption

I take mature pics

TI

Crazy effects in the show!!

The end of the Siren Show

It was a very long first 2 days, and we had a very early day the next day as our bus pickup for the Grand Canyon was at 5:50 am. We headed back and tried to get some sleep after the first few very exciting days in Vegas.

1 week till Vegas!!! (And Ren Fest and other things)

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaah I'm so excited! I can't believe it is almost time!  In a week I'll be all packed and ready to go!

Things are going fast this summer- I can't believe it is already August! I only have 3 days left to work at Burger King, and I couldn't be happier. Things have started to go really downhill there, and this summer has been endlessly frustrating. Transitioning back to America is really difficult when all you see are rude, horrible customers that treat you like dirt. Some days I just feel like shouting that I've done more in the last 2 years than most of these people hope to accomplish. That's probably a bit rude, but when you're treated like a servant and less of a human day in and day out, it is hard to keep your head up. But I have good friends there, and we employees band together and try to laugh it off. Sometimes that is all you can do.

Ren Fest has come and gone, and that's usually a sign that summer is ending. This year, in the spirit of new experiences and my love of Scotland, we attended the Highland Fling Weekend, with all of it's bagpip-ey goodness. It was such fun, as it always is, despite the tremendous downpour we endured. We're in the middle of a horrible draught and this is an amazingly dry summer, but the ONE DAY we choose to venture 3 hours away in the name of Renaissance adventure, it chooses to storm and pour. Thankfully we waited the weather out and took advantage of the thinned out crowd. Ren Fest year 4 did not disappoint.

Katrina is the corset master- we take it very seriously
and tighten them up well. Breathing isn't that important,
right?

Rockin our Renaissance shades haha

This was very exciting

Cesca bought a lovely new corset and
then decided to chow down on a turkey leg

Caber tossing!

Archery

Getting my Katniss/Merida on

Fierce

We LOVE Ren Fest

Drinking at Ren Fest for the first time- mead, wine and
beer! Huzzah!

Livin it up!

Despite the rain, we decided to give the axe
throw a go- note- it's as hard as it would seem

Katrina and I bought hats- ignore my 'drowned rat' look-
it rained quite a lot

Enjoying some highland dancing

and some bagpiping 

I'm such a creeper but this kid was adorable

But, hands down, the best picture of the day was definitely this one:

Could I have managed to get a more awkward pic?

Ren Fest is so much fun that we are already planning to go next year. I think it will be something I always try to do, even if I don't go to Sterling every year, I'll find one wherever I'm living!


Other things.

My fun story of the day comes from my parents. We arrived home around 10:25 and my mom was in the kitchen. She told us they had spent 2.5 hours at the animal hospital with Nymeria. Extremely concerned, we asked what was wrong. Apparently, Nymeria is older than we thought and is actually in heat. HAHAHAHAHA. In retrospect, my parents thought it was funny (and are thoroughly embarrassed, despite the fact that the vet said it happened all the time) and it is understandable, since we have all boy cats and have never dealt with a female cat before. She's getting spayed soon so hopefully that fixes it, but I thought it was quite amusing.


In my last piece of news, I finally watched and finished Downton Abbey. I'm so late on the bandwagon, since it's 2 seasons old, but if you like British accents and period pieces, definitely check this one out. The costumes alone are worth the watch! Aaand that's my recommendation for you.

Back to IC 2.5 weeks for Senior year. YIKES.