A Very Different Kind of Turkey Day

Now that I have been back in Ohio for a week now, I think it’s time to pause for a few seconds and reconsider my Thanksgiving Break. I have been meaning to write this post of a while, but school just has been, too, busy. But now with the quarter over (except for two exams next week), I have a few brief moments to share my experience.

So as most of my readers (like all three of you at this point :P) know, my parents decided to fly me out to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving (and also my 21^st) with them as they met with some friends. So what is it like to spend an extended weekend out in Vegas? It is amazing!

So I flew out on Wednesday late afternoon. As I was leaving, Columbus had started its first snow/sleet/hail/ice or wintry mix. Flying out, I took American Airlines, despite my strong feelings against this airline (side story: All three times that I have flown with them, I have experienced a delay because the crew was not present). Of course, it wouldn’t be an American flight without some kind of problem. Trying to get out of Columbus took an hour and a half longer than it was suppose to since the crew failed to show up timely (apparently taking the taxi for 5 minutes would have cost them $40 was the rumor). This caused me to miss my Vegas connection in Dallas/Ft. Worth, which meant that I had to wait an extra hour and thirty minutes at DFW. In the end I managed to get into Vegas at 11:30pm Wednseday night, missing Thursday by just 30 minutes. Flying into Vegas at night was definitely an experience. While I will probably not love any city like New York (or at least my perception of New York), Las Vegas is an amazing place at night. All the lights from the casinos on The Strip showing people enjoying themselves and having a good time. As soon as I landed and got to the hotel, however, I fell asleep (in my defense it would have been equivalent to 3:30am EST).

Thursday morning, I woke up to the very busy city of Las Vegas. Even though it was Thanksgiving, so many people were out walking around the casinos. After parking our rental car at Aria, we took a nice stroll through the casinos. Since I had finally turned 21, I was free to roam around! As I walked around all the different casinos looking at all of the interior designs and living vicarious by watching other people gamble (being a psychology major is so fun/sucks sometimes). We finally got to The Venetian in the late afternoon after walking through The Strip (look at the pictures below!). The atmosphere of The Venetian was just completely different. While you were inside, it’s so easy to totally forget about the concept of time. After spending what felt like only a few minutes, but really a few hours inside, my family and I headed back to our hotel to have Thanksgiving dinner with some family friends. Being my birthday, I got my first official drink (Hieneken, someone else bought it for me, or else I totally would have picked a much better wine to go with dinner).

The following Friday was a very frigid, windy day. Despite a late start, we got on the road for a 5 hour drive to the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon. The view there was unlike any I had ever seen. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story of that day.

Sadly, I had to leave Las Vegas that Saturday morning. This trip came to an end too fast. There was still so much that I wanted to do, but now at least I have a really good reason for going back! Lastly, no, I luckily did not have to take American to get back to Columbus (United is so much better).

Edit: Web Album Click here to more of the pictures from the trip.