Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Back to Normal

With Lloyd heading back north today our ten day 40th anniversary honeymoon is official over.  We had a lovely time though, and he'll be coming back home on the weekend.

Here's a quick re-cap.

We checked into the Luxor and explored it.

Luxor at night
Sphinx in front of the hotel
We saw The Lion King at Mandalay Bay - from row Q - nowhere near the front - but I enjoyed the music, costumes and pageantry anyway...Lloyd not so much.  It probably would have helped if he had seen the Disney movie first and knew the basic story.

Simba - from the Lion King website

The Circle of Light - from the Website 
To make up for his disappointment with Lion King, on another night we went to see the Beatles Tribute Show at Planet Hollywood and of course while there we shopped part of the Miracle Mile of shops. It was a great show.  The 'Beatles' had us all up dancing and singing and clapping.  There was even a visit by Austin Powers.

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

and Austin Powers
We also went to the Titanic artifact display at the Luxor.  It was extremely well done and moving.  We weren't allowed to take pictures at it so had our picture taken at the entrance and it was superimposed on parts of the display and printed out for us to buy.

The back of the boarding pass contains actual passenger data for one of the passengers on the Titanic

Behind us is a reconstructed replica of the actual grand staircase on the Titanic,
with the captains ghost standing on the steps behind us.
The highlight of our trip, because we had been to Las Vegas several times before and wanted to see something different, was our day trip to the Skywalk at Grand Canyon West, which I've already posted about.

Lloyd and me on the Skywalk
And we had to visit the Hoover Dam to see the new by-pass bridge.  It's amazing how much easier it is to cross from Nevada into Arizona at that site now - saves miles of travel.  Of course you can't drive across the dam any more, but we were lucky enough to do that on an earlier trip.


Me, with the bridge in the background

Lloyd with the Hoover Dam in the background
And of course, there were the buffets, the casinos, and the people watching.  It's amazing the sights you see there that you wouldn't see anywhere else...people walking the streets at any time of the day or night with large (yard long in some cases) glasses of drinks.  There were gaggles of giggling girls dressed in low cut short tight dresses looking to hook up with groups of guys...whose motto was 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas'.  I felt compelled to send up a silent prayer on behalf of their parents for their safe return.  We had a couple of interesting encounters with some of the spring break kids...not bad, just interesting.

Then last Thursday we had a wake-up call at 4am, were on our way to return the rental car at 4:30 and at the airport by 5:00 for our 7:00 flight.  We landed at Great Falls, Montana, just after 11:00 and drove three hours to Lethbridge, where we crashed at our house there and slept for a couple hours before continuing our 5 hr. drive to Edmonton so Lloyd could go to a meeting on Friday morning.  It was a long, long day.  He didn't have to go back to High Level until today so we've spent the past few days organizing our new home which we moved into a couple days before leaving for Las Vegas, and just hanging out together and enjoying quiet time. 

All in all, a great way to celebrate 40 years of happiness together.  Thanks again kids for sending us on this trip.  You're the best!

2 comments:

Mickey said...

You've had an exciting jet setting month of fun! Now to enjoy our weather trying to bring on Spring!
Loved all your photos and hearing about highlights of Las Vegas!

Haf Dozen Reasons....... said...

What a fun way to celebrate 40 years together!!
Congratulations!!

I realized when I read your anniversary post that you had your last baby the year I had my first. Both girls!