New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas (December 2017)

Hey Everyone,

Josh and I woke up in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve eager to embrace what Vegas had to offer. Looking out from our window, we were dismayed to find that the view had not changed. In fact, it got worse.

It was only the cold light of day that made me realise how gold that tower was. Anyway, Josh and I headed out to see the Strip during the day. I thought it looked better during the day but that’s just me.

We hadn’t planned anything so Josh and I just whiled away the afternoon (me shopping and Josh gambling). In the evening, we headed back to the hotel and got changed into our glad rags. The great thing about Vegas is you can buy these novelty drinks and then walk around drinking your alcoholic slushy.

Watching them make the drink was interesting because they do not measure anything. And when I say they let you go everywhere with the drink, I mean everywhere. Josh and I even brought it into a really fancy Italian restaurant because the concierge said “This is Vegas, we don’t believe in wasting alcohol”. Ha! Anyway, Josh and I were really excited because we’d booked to see a show: the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show.

This show was visually stunning. I highly recommend going. They allowed non-flash photography so I got a little trigger-happy. Enjoy!

Glorious! When the show let out, Josh and I thought we would spend the rest of the night on the Strip celebrating with the rest of Las Vegas. There was rumoured to be about 300,000 people on the Strip and because of that, the roads were shut down and cordoned off. However, I think celebrations may have been a bit muted. All of you would have heard about the shooting that happened in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. Because of that security was insane. Firstly there were at least 5-6 police officers every hundred or so metres. Plus, one of the waiters we had said about 3,000 military personnel were in town. Because of the added security, all of the hotels had barricades set up and they wouldn’t let non-guests into their hotel past 7 pm. All of this led to thousands of people shuffling aimlessly up and down the strip (not much fun!)

Josh summed it up best, “It’s like after a musical festival and everyone is heading to the exits…. except there’s no exit and there wasn’t a concert”. Most of the fun seemed to be happening in these parties you had to pay $150-200 to get into. After one loop of the Strip, Josh and I bought some cheap alcohol and hung out in our room until just before midnight. At 11:30 pm, we headed back downstairs to wait for the fireworks, us and a couple hundred thousand people.

The really cool thing about the fireworks is that every hotel on the strip has fireworks that go off from the roof and they’re all synchronised. On this particular New Year’s Eve, not only were there fireworks on each roof, there was also military sniper teams.

Finally, midnight hit!

Watching the fireworks go off all along the strip was pretty cool.

All in all, it was worth going to Vegas for New Year’s. I recommend everyone doing it at least once. The next day Josh and I drove all the way back to Oakland in one hit. It took us about 10 hours and nothing interesting happened except we came across this place.

Yeah, I haven’t even tried puzzling out how to pronounce it. All up, Josh and I had an awesome time in Vegas and many great memories.

Our New Year’s Resolution is to get out and see a bit more of America. We cannot wait to take you along with us on each new amazing adventure.

Happy New Year to you all!

Sim & Josh