What happens in Vegas…

Keith and I were so very lucky to get a 4 day vacation, by ourselves, to Las Vegas!  Neither of us had been before and we both LOVED it!  You cannot describe it unless you have been there, so if you haven’t been there, go there.  Anyway, here is how our vacation started. (not so good, if you can’t tell my tone)

So I have this awesome client who works for Southwest and so she trades me non-rev plane tickets for free hair.  Great deal.  Anyway, how these non-rev ticks work is that as long as there are left over seats on any plane, we can walk right on them.  If the plane is full, we are out of luck.  I have used these tickets several times and never had a problem (oh, except that one time I got stuck in Tulsa over night and cried in hopes that the guy behind the counter would give me someone elses seat.  He didn’t.  That’s another story for another time).  So I check the flight that we wanted a couple days prior to departure and there were like 50 empty seats.

We arrive at the airport at 5:30 am, plane leaves at 6:40 am.  You all know how Southwest works, so the plan was to fly to El Paso, change flights and then fly to Vegas.  We send our baggage through, make it through security and head to the counter to get our boarding passes.  This is when all things went to hell.

So the lady behind the counter not so nicely informs us that 79, yes I said 79, non-revs have shown up for this flight to Vegas.  What the crap?  Where did all these people come from and how did they all get these free plane tickets?  Plus, it is the butt crack of dawn and these people should be hitting snooze right now.  Anyway, the not-so-nice lady was kind enough to tell us that if we did get on this flight, it would be a race to see who got on the next flight in El Paso.  Game on.  Keith tells me to forget about sitting next to him and just get the closest seats.  Got it.  We get on and I get stuck between a bitchy business woman that is put out that she has a job (hello, recession?), and a smelly old guy that all but laid his head on my shoulder and drooled.  All while Keith gets next to this cool guy and they talk and laugh and paint each others nails the whole way there.  I just tried to concentrate on my sudoku.

Plane lands, we run as fast as we can to the counter right next to the one we just got off by, and were the first in line.  Yes, we are so in!  Not so much.  Welcome the second bitchy airline employee.

Rude airline lady: “Oh, you must be our non-revs.  We are just going to send you to Phoenix since you are not an actual employee, and you can try to catch a flight out of there.  You should never try and catch a connecting flight at a small airport.  Good luck.”

Great.  So we get back on the same plane we were just on to head to Phoenix.  We go with the same strategy that we had the first go around since it worked so well.  This time I sit next to a cute girl headed to San Jose who works in the same town I do in the same industry.  Small world.  On the other side of me (yes, I got stuck in the middle again) was a nice dude that had to show me 101 pictures of his 4 kids and talk about all the funny things his 4 year old says.  Awesome.  I’m on vacation, dude, I don’t want to talk about your bratty 4 year old, or any child for that matter.

Arrive in Phoenix, get off the plane, wait for like 3 minutes for Keith and he is nowhere to be found.  Turn on my phone, it’s Keith calling and he is halfway across the airport trying to catch the next flight out to Vegas that leaves in 15 minutes.  Thanks babe for waiting on me.  Now you can picture me running across the busiest airport I have ever been in, wearing a maxi dress.  This is my worst nightmare…running, and running in a long dress.  Finally get to the counter and meet bitchy airline employee #3.  She informs us that there are only 8 open seats on the next flight and that there are still people that have not checked in.  We wait, we wait, people start boarding, we wait, we wait, more people board.  Bitchy #3 finally comes over the speaker and announces our name.  Alleluia!

At this point the plane is so full that we have no choice but to sit separately so I squeeze between a nice looking business lady (who snores the whole time) and a nice looking casual guy who is already drinking at 9 am.  He asks me some random question and I notice that he has a thick accent.  I ask him where he is from and he says Baghdad.  Then there was a long awkward pause while I gathered my thoughts and remembered to love everyone like Jesus loves us and that just because of 9/11 I shouldn’t always assume the worst, and that he was definitely not going to take over the plane and kill us all.  I reply, “Oh, how long have you lived in the States?”  He then tells me that he has been here for 21 years, he owns a liquor store, is married to the most beautiful lady, has a teenage daughter, he flies to Vegas at least once a week to gamble and then tells me all the stuff that we had to do while we were there.  Nice guy.

So we finally get there, check in to our AMAZING hotel, and hit the streets walking.  I have never walked so much in my life.  There is just so much to see there and so much shopping to do that we never stopped.  We made the mistake of eating at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill the first night. It was so incredible that none of the other restaurants even came close to being as good.  When we go back in October, we will eat there every night.

So not to bore you with all the details of our trip I will drop some celebrity names that I saw.

Mario Lopez, Audrina Partridge, Jeana (from The Real Housewives of OC), Pete Rose, Ken Stabler, some guy from Heroes and the spiky haired famous chef on food network.

We made it back in one piece, the girls were happy to see us and were not completely bratty from their weekend with Honey and we cannot wait to go back!  We did not take as many pictures as we would have liked b/c it was too big of a pain to lug around our professional camera but here are a few that we got…

This is the long dress I had to run in.

Our hotel

One of the 7 pools at our hotel

Our room

Us at Mesa Grill

Calamari appetizer at Mesa

Keith's Pork Tenderloin (Cilantro/Pesto Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Corn in the background

Holly's Halibut

Dessert

Peace out.