Vegas - New Years Eve

We've been planning our Las Vegas trip since September. And there were plans to cancel the trip after our FIL had a heart attack so this trip has been much anticipated. Finally, we left Vancouver on Dec. 31st afternoon. The statue below is from the YVR airport.


We arrived into Vegas at 5:30pm and picked up our rental car by 6pm. Made our way to our hotel for 2 nights at South Point Casino and then 3 nights at Monte Carlo. Check in was easy and the room was quite large with a separate sitting area and nice size washroom. We literally threw our luggage against the wall, changed really quickly and then drove to Tacos and Tequilas restaurant at Luxor. It is new years eve tonight and we've been told that Las Vegas Boulevard on the strip will be closed down, for pedestrians only. We needed to get to Luxor for dinner.

As it turned out, the strip was already closed off for cars and only hotel guests are allowed into the hotels. We had dinner reservations for 7:45pm so the guard for the parking lot allowed us in. Lucky. Or else, I'm not sure how we would have found parking that night.

Dinner was fine. We ordered 3 dishes: taco combo, appetizer platter and sea bass. The atmosphere was awesome as everyone there had hats and sparkly stuff on, getting ready for new years. And at 9pm, everyone received a free shot of tequila to celebrate the count down on the East Coast (3 hours ahead). That was cool.


After dinner, we had a couple of hours before the count down so we explored the casino. Richard played poker and I watched the craps table. Richard was very lucky that night, as he managed to win the highest hand of the hour - a $450 win! In addition, he also won $ on the table so we were up a good $900. Thank you Luxor.

Just before midnight, we ran outside onto the strip to watch the fireworks (4 hotels had fireworks). The street was completely packed and you could barely walk through. It was awesome. Everyone was friendly and smiling. What a terrific start to the new year.