Leaving las vegas.....

That was my second vacation trip inside a month...... This time to america's playgound, las vegas..... What a vacation this has been !! I was in awe with the city's grandeur and the effervescence that it shone with. No doubt las vegas is THE happening place in the US of A. Loved the ambience and the lively streets of vegas, especially the strip (Las vegas boulevard is called the strip. It has all the famous casinos of vegas and is simply the one stretch that lights up las vegas).

                      We spent the first day entirely on some of the casinos and lost some money (my friends did !! I held it back a little :-)   )  All the casinos have lodging within themselves for guests who wish to spend time and money at leisure. They consist of attractions like malls and shows apart from housing casinos which are pretty much the ubiquitous beings in the city. Every inhabitable corner of vegas has atleast a score of slot machines (read money-eaters)  which have great appetite for the green dollars. That i happened to wrest out 132 USD (i had put in $10) from one of these, is a fact that could easily feature in a Ripley's Believe it or Not !! 

                    When we returned from the las vegas blvd, we set off to the grand canyon on a rental car, at 11 pm, hoping to beat the sun rise. But by the time we got the car and left vegas, it was 1 am. This was a 4+ hr drive from vegas till the grand canyon national park. We reached the South rim at about 5:35 am, just a dozen minutes or so before the sun rise. It was pretty cold out there in a stark contrast to warmer evenings in nearby vegas. The view of the gorge of the grand canyon was breathtaking and to think that a river has carved such deep incisions into an elevated plateau made it even more amazing. After finishing with the grand canyon, we returned to las vagas in the rental car at about 5 PM, with a lunch break in between. All tired, took some rest and only woke up at about 9 PM and set off for the saturday night life in las vegas. The streets were buzzing with tourist crowd and growing more active with the night. We had our dinner at about 2 AM after coming down from a 115-storeyed tower(only the top floor is a hotel) called the Stratosphere. The view of the sleepless city was awesome from there.

To be cont.....

Ta