Brisbane to Barcelona: Viva Las Vegas

We were planning on spending our last 3 days in the States in San Diego and going to the zoo but the accommodation was really expensive so we decided to go to Las Vegas instead. The casinos operate the hotel rooms as loss-leaders for the gaming floor so you can get a pretty good deal for not too much money. We stayed at the Signature at MGM Grand and our room had a king bed, kitchen and spa bath so we were pretty pleased.

The drive from San Francisco is about 550 miles (880 km) and it took us 10 hours to get there. We checked out some of the strip on our way to get some dinner and went back to our room to recover from the drive. About 10:00 we went back down to the casino and tried our luck at the pokies. It's really easy to lose track of time in those places and it was 3am before we got back to our room.

Snow topped mountians

Wind turbines EVERYWHERE!

Our first view of Nevada

We took part in an audience feedback session for a new tv show the next day and generally took it easy. That night we went out for dinner at Nobhill Tavern, which was really good and then to a Cirque du Soleil show at New York after we rode the rollercoaster on top of the building - awesome! It was a great night.

Heading to Cirque

The lights in Vegas are really impressive

On Wednesday we got up relatively early and went to Hoover Dam, which is about 34 miles from Las Vegas. Before we got to the dam itself we stopped and walked up to the new dam bypass bridge (some of you may have seen the email showing its construction). It runs 900ft above the floor of the canyon and makes the dam look tiny. We had a really good look at the exhibits at the visitor centre and walked over the dam before heading on a tour to the powerplant and inside the dam, which was really cool. We had a quiet night in preparation for 30hrs of travelling from Vegas to LA to Santiago de Chile the next day.