Five Countries Four Marlboroughs: LAS VEGAS!!

OMG - WE ARE DRIVING TO VEGAS!!! This is the first thing i thought when I woke up. The only way i can describe how excited i felt is this: it was the night before Xmas and i was 8 years old and I was going to meet Santa and be given a reindeer - to keep. I don't think i have been this excited - EVER!!

Terry skillfully (you'll see why in the pics) packed the car and we were on the way. Good old google showed the drive as being 3h 45mins.

This was the first time I have been a passenger in a car driving on the wrong side of the road - it was really weird sitting in the front seat where normally a steering wheel would be - i felt like braking the whole way. We were really looking forward to getting through all the freeways - and we made it through to the road to Vegas without a wrong turn! Relief!

Now you know how i have been saying we have had not one drop of rain on our whole trip - it began to rain - only light but in the desert? The Marlboroughs had brought rain! Apparently it never rains at this time of year - strange. James thought it might have been a mirage.

We arrived in Vegas in no time at all - the roads were just fantastic. Trucks have to stay in one lane and it was a dual road the whole way. We turned onto the Vegas Strip! I was beside myself at this point. It took SO LONG to drive up to our hotel - there were so many cars it was a crawl, but I couldn't have cared less - I was in Vegas - it also gave me time to take photos and check out the strip.

We arrived at out hotel, the Four Seasons at the South end of the strip, for the glamorous last part of our trip. We went up to our suite on the 35th floor - it was nearly bigger than our house - and we have an amazing view over the strip.

We quickly headed down to the wave pool for a quick swim and cocktail before it closed - the Four Seasons Hotel is part of the Mandalay Bay complex - you have the seclusion of the Four Season's hotel and pool but access to Mandalay Bay with it's wave pool, lazy river, aquarium, restaurants and of course the Casino! The reason I had chosen this hotel was because it was non-smoking, more family friendly and has direct access to the Casino which is out of sight to the kids. Still waiting to see someone famous on our trip - Bree, Sam in particular would love this hotel, there are lots of basketballers staying here but i don't know who they are!

After dinner, Terry said he would stay and mind the kids and I should go to the Casino, after all I'm the lucky one! Now I won't disclose how much i had saved to gamble - my Mum is reading this, aren't you Mum (I can see you raising an eyebrow right about now) but I had a set amount to play with and last over the 3 days and I didn't want to blow it all on the first night!

I didn't know where to look when I first entered the Casino - I thought I'd do a loop, check out the scene and plan my attack. First of all I thought I'd give the pokies a go. I looked out for the ones that had jackpots or cars as the big prize. I lost $100 in the first 15 minutes. Oh no, this wasn't in the plan! I then played another machine, and on my last push recovered most of it there. My theory is: if you get a decent win, move! I then gave a machine a go called, 'Wheel of Fortune' and before I knew it i had spun up the feature 3 times. It was crazy exciting. After a couple more pokies, I was up, so I decided to play my favourite game - roulette.

I've got my favourite numbers and ended up playing roulette for about 2 hours. I called it a day and ended up on my first day of play $50 up. (Thanks Gilmour 11 came up a couple of times!) In the lift on the way back to my room a man asked me how i went - I said that I was $50 up after 3.5 hour - he told me I was a genious.

What i didn't know was while i was in the casino, Vegas was hit with a horrendous electrical storm with gale force winds and hail - I hadn't heard it at all. Terry said he has never seen anything like it - aren't we in the desert? I ended up reading that our hotel was hit by lightning - apparently over a period of 3 hours more than 740 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes hit Vegas causing power outages for 33,000 people. But not for the Marlboroughs!

Hey Mum, any chance you can swing by Vegas on your way back to Oz and pick up the kids?