Vegas

I had a work trip to Vegas this past week and had all these plans to get completely caught up on the blog. I thought that I would have some down time in the hotel, but that was not the case. Alas, blog-catch-up is starting right now, so I'll have posts all this week.

I was not very excited about heading to Vegas. To be completely honest, I was dreading it. When we get to the 'how I've been feeling' post, you'll understand why. I knew it was a good trip for my career, and I knew I would learn a lot out there. But I thought Vegas might actually kill me.

We stayed at the Luxor, which is definitely not the nicest hotel in Vegas. I had pretty low expectations based on the reviews I had read, but was pleasantly surprised when we got there. The hotel looks older, but the rooms were nice. 

We had about a mile walk (inside) from the rooms to the conference center. Thank goodness I ditched my usual heels for flats. 

Sessions were from around 7:30 am until 5/6/7 pm, and then they scheduled social / networking events for later. The first night we got to hear Sir Richard Branson speak, and that was incredible. As a huge nerd, and lover of business / economics, he has become my idol. I could do an entire post on how incredibly smart of an entrepreneur he is. And don't think that the leather jackets, crazy lifestyle, and lack of censorship is 'who is he' instead of just another part of his brilliant marketing strategy.

After that, they rented out 1Oak, a night club in Vegas. If you watch the Kardashians, you've heard Rob talking about it. I'm so cool now. 'You guys wanna head to 1Oak?' 

After 1Oak we decided to walk the Vegas strip and see the fountains at the Bellagio, which were incredible. I didn't take my camera on this trip, so I have hardly any photos.

The second night they rented out Mandalay Bay beach. The pool area at Mandalay Bay has a handful of pools, a lazy river, and a wave pool. The wave pool area has sand all around it to mimic a beach. In the middle of the wave pool is this tall stage. They had the Goo Goo Dolls performing. Around 5000 people were there all standing around in the sand, trying to get a closer spot to the band.

After a few minutes, we noticed some people walking out into the wave pool to get closer to the band. Once they got out there, we realized it was about ankle deep. So we waded out there too. Not many followed suit. So out of the 5000 people, only about 100 were in the water. 

View from where I was standing (these are awful pictures, I apologize): 

The view of all the people on the beach behind me:

To my right, in between the blue hammock looking thing, they shot off the best fireworks show that I had seen. Much better than Charlotte on the Fourth. And the building in the background is the conference center.

The last night we walked all around the Venetian and Cesar's Palace, walked through the indoor gardens at the Bellagio, and had dinner overlooking the fountains at the Bellagio. I promise we got a lot of work in. But yall don't care to hear about our IT sessions. The sight seeing was much more fun.

Overall, I am SO glad I went. I am also glad that I actually walked around and saw some of the sights instead of just crashing in the hotel. My next trip to Vegas though will be with friends, not pregnant, and hopefully involving much less work. Who's in?