Our “transfer” from Port Canaveral to Las Vegas was a LONG day! Everyone is told they should be off the ship by 8:30am’ish – our breakfast sitting was at 645am. We had our carry-on baggage with us and trundled off to breakfast, leaving the cabin for the last time. After breakfast and expecting lengthy waits in customs and airport check-in lines, we decided to get the day started and were off the boat by 730am. We sailed through customs in about 5 minutes, found our bright lime green luggage grouped in an orderly way in about 5 minutes and were very happy to find porters who would help us haul our luggage out to the bus! Things only got better from there as there were airline check-in counters at the port terminal!! awesome! So, we checked in there and they took our luggage for us and put it on its own special luggage transfer bus out to the airport where it was checked all the way through to Las Vegas – all without us having to carry it one step! Another plus to this is they didn’t weigh our luggage, which means we sidestepped excess charges on these legs of our trip.

The downside of all this efficiency is that we were WAY ahead of our schedule and our flight was not due to leave Orlando, for Miami for a connection to Vegas until 1pm. This left us with a long wait at the Orlando Airport. meh, the price you pay I guess.

Our flights were ok. Jackson dozed off on the Orlando to Miami flight, which was only 40 minutes long and would not then sleep on the Miami to Vegas flight, so he was a bit painful on this flight – asking to go to the toilet 3 times on a 5 hour flight and being rowdy and rambunctious for a lot of the flight.

Our arrival into Vegas made it all worthwhile…

We had hired a stretch hummer to transfer us from the airport to our hotel. This was very cool and we all had a great time riding in it. We got to do a bit of a tour of the strip and stopped in front of the “welcome to vegas” sign for a couple of pics. This car was amazingly long and spacey inside, with a few lounge like chairs and led lights in the roof. Very funky and fun, though afterwards I did feel a bit dirty (environmentally wise) and as though we should look to offset the carbon emissions of the trip somehow…. lots of pics of this

The hotel we are in is awesome! The Signature at MGM is part of the MGM Casino, but set back a block from the strip and is connected to the casino by a covered walkway inclusive of travel walkways (flat escalators) to help move you to the slot machines faster. We have an apartment style room, which is great for the space and a room which overlooks the strip and we can see from the New York New York casino and hotel right the way down to Wynn at the other end – we are up on the 27th floor and basically look right out at the “Eiffel Tower” at the Paris Casino. The staff here are amazingly helpful (tips please) and we’re loving our time here.

Monday morning I woke up at about 4am or so (time zone change – I swear) and while Kylie and Jackson were sleeping I headed over to the Casino at the MGM for a look around. I found a few poker machines which didnt pay out – coxy, you will be glad to know I did the free spin dance for you (only once though). I found a great game the punters club would enjoy, which I will try to get a photo of today, it looks like it was built in the 1950′s and is a mechanical horse racing game where the horses do a lap of the circuit and your challenge is to bet on what the quinella will be. Lots of fun! The sportsbook (where you bet on sports) was massive and they had was seemed like about 50 big TV’s showing highlights of all the sports being played around the country.

I went back to the hotel by 7 and we headed off to look around the strip. We did the monorail up and down the strip, which was good.

We went into the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and did some scouting around. Kylie is by far streets ahead of me in the shoe shopping department (who needs dozens of pairs of black shoes anyway) but I think I am holding up my own in terms of general shopping capabilities. Those who know us well will know that I’ve changed a little (size wise) since Kylie and I got married. My wedding ring hasnt fit on my wedding ring finger for a while, so there was this jewellery store which we had seen in Nassau in the forum shops and they had a ring there which I liked, so I now have a wedding ring on my wedding ring finger again.

We dropped into the FAO Schwarz toy shop and they have a store inside that store called FAOSchweetz. We bought Jackson a chocolate milshake and the guy serving us warned us of how big it was – he wasnt half wrong – this thing was the biggest milkshake I have ever seen. I would have been at least a litre of milk – at least! Jackson, Kylie and I had to tackle it…. again – we have photos.

Later Monday we did our helicopter tour to the Grand Canyon. More on this to come soon, but needless to say this was amazing!

Tuesday we did a drive out through the desert, more on this to come soon too.

We’re still having mountains of fun! Hope all is well back home.

Chris, Kylie and Jackson