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21-25th Dec 2007
Another city to be explored in US. This time its Las Vegas, the city of
Casino's & Lights. Our Manager planned this tour & I accepted
it on
the terms of visiting grand Canyon during the tour. I was not sure of
any adventure activities to be executed during the planning phase of
our short tour, still as an adventure lover my mind was in search of
some or other activity in Grand Canyon. We planned and booked
travel/hotel reservation accordingly.
Thursday
20th Dec 2007:
After office most of us did our 5 day tour bag packing and reached
O'Hare airport on time. The plane schedule too was on time. We took
9:50pm plane to Las Vegas by American Airline. The time diff between
Chicago and LAs Vegas is of 2 Hr. We reached Las Vegas around 12night.
Then to the Hotel at 1:00am. Our Hotel was at one end of the strip
road. From the Airport to Hotel we could able to guess the Casino craze
over here. Our team of 4 including Siddharth, Jaideep, Manish &
myself, except Manish all were 1st time visitor. We took rest in the
hotel for next 6 hrs since everyone was in the sleeping mood due to 4
hr travel.
Friday 21st Dec 2007:
Next day we started our exploration starting from the our hotel it
self. It was crowded the basement was dedicated to Casino's & Rest
of the area for fun activities. The first activity what we did is
searching for the food court to get charged for the day exploration. We
took monorail from Hilton station to Harrah's St. The one way travel
per person cost 2$. We then visited Venetian Hotel & Grand Canal
shop then visited Treasure Island. All these hotels are entrance is
well decorated in terms of architecture& light effects. Each hotel
has its own theme and the interior built accordingly.
During our planning phase as suggested by Manish we already reserved
our tickets for the David Coperfield Show. Its one of the great
personality in US related to entertainment. I was not in the favor in
the planning phase to visit such shows but to keep going with the group
I thought of lets attend it. So the show was at around 7:30pm at MGM
hotel. The hall was well decorated with all rich interior. To add more
enjoyment we had special drink before the start of the show. In no time
the entire hall approximately 300 people occupied the place and the
show started on time. After my school days I attended such show. It was
different feeling at some point of time like in case if opted to make
me/us vanish for some time then what! As expected the entry of Mr.
David Coperfield was unimaginative. One has to be there to get the real
feel of the activity. He had made the show so much interactive like
everyone started feeling like he/she might be the part his magic
tricks. There were some items like getting him into the box and making
it shrink, then taking the ring from a lady and suddenly appearing it
at from some other place. Then throwing items in the crowd randomly and
ask them to speak some numbers & making the number appear on metal
plate locked inside the metal box. The last one was awesome making 15
random people suddenly vanished from the desk and appear in few seconds
from the backside rows in the middle of the crowd. Nobody realise what
has happened. That was great. I felt like it was a very short
performance but I realise when I saw my watch. I liked the show very
much and conveyed my thanks to Manish for this proposal.
Later we
visited Planet hollywood and some other places & return to Hotel
Circus Circus at late night.
Saturday
22nd Dec 2007: We moved on the main strip road for photography &
purchasing all the day.
Sunday
23rd Dec 2007:
Grand Canyon Tour: This was the most awaiting day for me in the entire
trip. We drove from Las Vegas airport to Tusayan airport, one hr drive
from Williams to the left. On the way we passed through the Lake Mid
& then Hoover Dam. It was Manish driving skills due to which we
could manage to reach the airport on time. It took 6 hrs to reach the
airport from where we were supposed to take the Helicopter ride of the
Grand Canyon. Myself & Siddharth finalist out of we four to take
the ride. For me the ride was unique since first time flying with
Helicopter & second but most important is the aerial view of the
Grand Canyon which one of the wonders of the world in terms of geography.
Indeed it was a worth experience for me. Siddharth did video recording
while I was capturing the photo from my digicam. the ride was of 30
min. After returning back from the ride we had lunch break and then
drove towards the Grand Canyon village area from where we can view
those breath taking scenes. As the sunset was nearing the cold wave
becoming unbearable. We had early dinner in the hotel and all set to go
for the return journey. The return journey, Jaideep decided to drive,
this enable Manish to take rest due to morning drive. We reached late
night in the vegas, while returning our hotel visited the downtown
area. So for it was a short but memorable trip to Grand canyon.
Monday 24th Dec 2007:
Once again visited all places where we missed in last 3 days. We 1st
visited Circus Circus hotel itself. Attended aa small circus show &
some of the rides. Later we visited Wynn hotel which was the best of
that day, altogether different class of people, I was worried in the
sense how to capture these objects either by camera or eyes. The
interior was Luminated by lights with all mild colours. Later we kept
on moving towards Balley's hotel to attend the Jiblee Dance Performance
Show at 10:30p till 00:15am. It was one of the adults dance performance
show with group of 50 young women & men. One of the dance has a
story of Laila (the queen) with huge background set of palace etc. All
performers were moving around the entire theatre. This enable the
entire crowd to have a close look around. Overall this was
refreshing/rejuvenating experience.
Tuesday
25th Dec 2007:
Check Out the Hotel at 11:00am and went to McCarran Airport for further
journey to Chicago.
It requires more days just to explore Las Vegas only. We didn't visited
many such special shows as well the places. Also one should spent
atleast one complete day or more at Grand Canyon. For me I would rather
love to spent more time in Grand Canyon than Las Vegas and do some
trekking, climbing activity. I consoled my self like there is always
next time. So hoping for the best.
Indeed it
was good trip in terms of change in the regular workload.
Rajan Rikame
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