Travel Log: Las Vegas, Nevada

Trip Dates: 12/08/06 - 12/11/06

This Travel Log was written on: 12/18/06

Go Ahead And Travel's most recent visit to Sin City proves to be busy, exhilarating and quite an eye opening experience!

  A few weeks ago, a very good friend of ours, Walt Ranalli, informed us of his interest in taking a relatively short trip to Las Vegas. His primary goal for this trip - to celebrate his 47th birthday.  His original plan had been to come to Richmond and celebrate it here with us, but the Vegas idea had popped up and seemed like a much more interesting option. As a treat to himself for his birthday, Walt envisioned a big side trip to the Grand Canyon including helicopter flights into the canyon and a boat ride down the Colorado river. As I worked to help him put the trip together, I began thinking that if I could somehow tag along, it might prove to be very beneficial - not just to help him celebrate his birthday, but to accomplish some very productive work for the Las Vegas page on the Go Ahead And Travel website. I communicated my interest to my spouse and with her approval, I set out to secure the additional arrangements.

  After a very early departure from Richmond on Friday morning, we both arrived in Vegas around 10:30 AM. We were on different flights as I had a "banked" flight from a previous trip I was unable to take. Since my flight landed rather early,  there was no gate for the plane. This resulted in our sitting on the runway for about 15 extra minutes - (Something must be up with this as other people have told me it's been happening frequently to them too). Anyway, once off the plane, we finally made our rendezvous at the airport and then boarded our ground transportation for the trip to the hotel. For this trip, that hotel would be the Golden Nugget. This hotel, located in the orignal downtown section of Las Vegas, is situated directly on the "Fremont Street Experience" (more on this later).