Hooray, finally the big day was here… After ages counting down to it, there were no more sleeps! Jackson was very excited to have had Santa come visit & Kylie and I were excited that we were on holidays!
The plan for the day was to travel from Brisbane to Los Angeles (depart 12pm) and then have a short stop in Los Angeles before flying to Las Vegas. Once in Las Vegas we’d transfer to the hotel and kick off the holidays. I’m glad to report things went pretty much to plan…..
Best change of the day was the upgrade V Australia (web www.vaustralia.com twitter @vaustralia) gave us for the flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. We were booked in Premium Economy, but to get upgraded to Business Class was aewsome. The seats lay all the way down to beds….. freaking awesome!
This is the view of the roof, when you’ve got the bed kicked right out and you’re stretched out… ah, nice! (Is that the Southern Cross?)
Our transfer through Los Angeles was fairly uneventful, the flight was delayed about an hour and we ended up sitting around in LAX for about 4 hours…. seriously, could they make that airport any more boring? People were pretty stressed about being at the airport, one lady who was in front of us was evidently going to miss her flight home on Christmas Day and was pretty upset. The whole check-in, then clear security thing in the states is pretty stressful, you have to unpack electronics from your carry-on, undress yourself (of belts, shoes, jackets, hats and anything else metallic), clear security and then grap all your crap on the secured side and get out of the way of everyone going through security as quickly as possible… Even with all the security you hear stories about Nigerians trying to blow up planes on the day you’re travelling… -> link to the story. The TSA do a great job, I’m sure but it’s still disconcerting to see those type of stories.
Probably the most interesting stat / piece of info about our stay in Los Angeles was that we had to line up for nearly as long to clear security as our flight was from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Seriously….. this photo doesnt do it justice, but the line up to clear security goes for a long way outside the terminal. This isnt the line to check in, this is the line AFTER checking in, to clear security…
So, we’re now in Las Vegas and we’re staying at the Palazzo (www.palazzolasvegas.com & @PALAZZOLASVEGAS. This is a very nice hotel, good choice – thanks tripadvisor! We stay here until the 30th of December and then switch over to the Signature MGM. We arrived at the hotel but our room wasnt quite ready when we arrived, but we were told we had a great room with a great view of the strip, up nice and high (41st floor) and was just what we’d requested. So, we said we’d wait and went for a bit of a walk and had lunch. Around 3pm we checked back at reception if our room was ready and we’d been swapped to a different room on a lower floor, but after some “discussion” we were moved up to a great room on the 31st floor… It’s great!
We didnt do too much after lunch and checking in….. unpacked and rested. Fell asleep pretty early, though I woke up after a couple of hours sleep thinking it was morning, so have uploaded some piccies and types up this quick update. It’s now approaching 1am on the 26th, so I am going back to bed now & that ends the 29 hour Christmas day, which included travelling nearly 12,000 kilometre’s, a lot of time spent in planes / airports and two christmas breakfasts & lunches….
This slideshow http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157622946959017/show/ has a few pics in it:
From the plane… Jackson in the cockpit and us up the front….
A traditional US Christmas turkey lunch & Jackson’s traditional pizza lunch
Some photos from our walkaround the Palazzo this arvo
over n out…
. Instead, I’ll say it’ll be our last trip there for 2009 / 2010….
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