What Happens in Las Vegas | Road Trip Diary Day 23

Kenin and I booked an extra night in Las Vegas so that we could stay and play all day. There’s just something about the outrageous brashness that makes the city relaxing to us. We had an early start, which was surprising since we had such a late night. We took the poochies for an extra long walk , had breakfast at the hotel, then set off to explore more of the city. Here’s what our day in Vegas looked like. You know what they say: What Happens in Las Vegas, Doesn’t Always Stay in Las Vegas :-).

We started off the day at the old strip. We had a pretty simple mission of seeing how much stuff we could get for free, while also making back our losses from the day before. We parked at the Golden Nugget (free parking) and decided to stroll through the hotel before we got started. When you enter the Golden Nugget, you can see the swimming pool from inside the hotel. In the middle of the pool is an awesome shark tank surrounded by waterfalls. It looked absolutely amazing! It is a must-see for any visitor. We decided we’d hit the strip from there and then play some slots at the Nugget last, since we parked there.
When I got out on the street, the first thing I told Kenin was that I really wanted to play some nickel slots. You can actually put the nickels into the machines and when you win, you get paid out in nickels as well. I love this. When you play the video machines you loose the feel of seeing all that coin coming out of the machine. I like hearing the change hit the metal reservoir at the bottom.
We started at a tiny hole-in-the-wall casino and then worked our way down the street. We joined the “Players Club” for most of the casinos in order to take advantage of the free play. While it isn’t much, it’ll get you started and its always better to gamble with someone else’s money. :-) Oh, and I almost forgot the best part: Free Drinks! The cocktail waitresses come by much faster in the middle of the day at the old strip and they are happy to keep your drinks filled.

We bounced around through the different casinos and shops for a couple of hours playing on the houses money and actually ended up about $25. I love it when that happens! I know that’s not a lot of cash, but we had put $0.00 of our own money on the line. As we were heading back towards our car, we ran into one of those timeshare guys. If you’ve been to Las Vegas you know what I’m talking about. They ask you if you want free tickets to shows, buffets, and various other forms of entertainment, in trade for a “few minutes of your time”. Most of the time we breeze by these guys and move on, but every once in a while, if you get the right one, you can walk away with quite a bit of swag.

We started talking to the first guy, that then handed us off to the second guy. We’ll call him the closer. Once we started talking to the closer, we begin by feigning interest in the presentation, then quickly start to act disinterested. The key here is to be super polite and friendly, but keep saying no. The longer you do this the more swag the closer will offer you to attend a 90-minute presentation. We played the game for a while and walked away with the following: $40.00 cash, $50.00 Visa Gift Card, two free buffets at Harrah’s ($49.97), and a cab ride if we needed it. Not to shabby for agreeing to spend an hour taking a tour of a hotel and then saying no about 100 times to a sales rep.

Dangerous Dora - What Happens in Las Vegas — Beware of the Evil Dora

Once we wrapped up the timeshare and collected our swag it was time for more gambling! We worked our way in and out of the various hotels and casinos on the strip. We made sure to visit some of our Las Vegas favorites like the Venetian and Paris. While out on the strip there are a couple of things to look out for. The first is the army of guys and gals wearing headphones and trying to hand you flyers. If you take them (as Kenin always does because he thinks it’s funny) you will find yourself holding a set of calling cards for the local escorts. The second is the ramdom collection of poorly dressed actors in costume, hoping you will stop and take a picture with them. If you do stop for a pic, be aware that they work on tips.

Once we worked our way through a few casinos we were pretty hungry. We decided to take advantage of the comped buffet at Harrah’s. To me, there are two different types of buffets, quality and quantity. This buffet was definitely more on the quality side and I definitely recommend you check it out. After we had all the food and dessert we could eat, we made our way back out on the strip for some more fun.

We just had to head over to the Cosmopolitan. This casino is fairly new to us and very large. It was floor upon floor of glitz and glamour. There is an amazing chandelier that spans multiple floors, along with a ton of other cool architectural features. We definitely suggest you check it out. We also made a stop over at Planet Hollywood, where they managed to combine gaming and cabaret into an all in one experience. We played our way through a few more casinos and then decided to head back to the hotel. We were a bit overloaded on the lights, sounds, and free drinks and we had a 750 mile drive in the morning to look forward to.

Take a look at our gallery and leave your Las Vegas tips in the comments below.