Viva Las Vegas!

This weekend I made the 4 hour trek from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to visit sin city! It was my third time heading to Vegas, and it never disappoints. Vegas is another world where normal societal rules do not apply. This is made partly possible by the copious amounts of alcohol flowing freely from anywhere the eye can see, the open container laws of Paradise, Nevada, and the crazy amounts of money circulated through that city. Everytime I go to Vegas I have a different experience, but it's always a great time.

We left LA at 8:00 AM on Friday and arrived in Vegas a little after 1:00 PM. First thing you must do in Vegas? Go get yourself a Fat Tuesday! What is a Fat Tuesday? An incredible slushy-type alcohol drink that comes in various flavors. My personal fav is a mix of Pina Coloda and Strawberry.

We decided to walk the strip after we had drinks in hand. The craziest part of Vegas is how GIANT the strip is. It takes so long to walk from one end to the other. You are basically forced to go inside casino after casino. The developers did not make it easy to stay away from each and every casino. We stopped a few times along the way to gamble. I'm not a huge gambler (I'll try a penny slot!) but I like watching other people play poker. It's always fun exploring all the different hotels, casinos, and shops along the way.

[the Cosmo]

[the Venetian]

That night, we went to the MGM to Hakkasan. I'm not a huge club person, and the techno (no-words) music is not my favorite, but we found a hip hop room after a bit. It's so crazy how huge each club is, how many levels there are, and how many different rooms dedicated to different musical genres are in each club. My favorite club in Vegas was Tryst (but now it's under renovation and will re-open as something else). Chateu is also pretty awesome because it's located in the Eiffel Tower.

The PAC12 Tourney was happening at the same time

Saturday we brunched at an amazing place called the Yardbird and then we went to the pool for the majority of the day. That night we decided to try out the High Roller wheel. It was SO cool! I would recommend it to anyone who is going. We were able to score some discounted tickets from a blackjack dealer at the Linq, so we only had to pay $20 at night. The views are pretty amazing.

[sausage.egg.bacon brekkie]

Vegas is always a great time, but everytime I come home I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Good thing that's coming up next week :)

Time to conquer those Monday blues.

-A

LA Weekend Getaway - San Diego!

One thing that I was most excited about when I decided to head down to LA for law school was the fact that I was going to be able to explore not just LA but all of Southern California! Before moving here last August, I had only been to LA a handful of times. Twice to visit Disneyland (which is not LA but Anaheim), once to Long Beach before my family departed on a Mexican cruise, and once to visit UCLA Law and see one of my best friends who attended UCLA for undergrad.

Naturally being the type-A person that I am, I created a list of all the places in Southern California that I wanted to visit. First on my list...San Diego! I had actually been to San Diego once before when I was looking at undergrad colleges with my mom. We started in San Francisco drove all the way down to San Diego to visit USD. However, we only stayed in San Diego for maybe 2 nights and didn't explore much because we were exhausted.

This June, it was the boyfriend and I's 5 (!!) year anniversary. We decided to celebrate with a weekend trip to San Diego. Since June, I have actually been to San Diego 2 more times (once to visit my best friend who was visiting San Diego and then this past weekend for the Seahawks v. Chargers game). I thought I would share with you my favorite parts!

For our anniversary trip, we got a cheap last-minute hotel deal at a 4 star hotel in the heart of the Gas Lamp district, which was perfect because we were around all the bars and yummy places to eat.

Our first stop - San Diego Zoo! We did the zoo in a few hours (my advice = get there right when it opens and avoid the crowds!) We still had to wait 30 minutes to see the pandas.

Fav part = being able to walk around w/ beer 

The waterfront - walking along the waterfront downtown was so much fun. You can go onto the aircraft carrier (we didn't do it, but we both said we would do it next time), people watch, or continue south and run into a little village of shops (and ice cream) right on the water.

Our celebratory 5 year picture

Pacific Beach - when I visited my friends, we stayed in Pacific Beach. It was so much fun! The water was noticeably warmer than the beaches in Los Angeles (at least I thought so) and there was so much to do! We had yummy acai bowls for breakfast.

Qualcomm Stadium - this probably doesn't deserve mentioning because the stadium was pretttttty ugly, but B and I went this weekend for the Seahawks v. Chargers game. Tailgating was SO much fun. Honestly I'm pretty sure there were more hawks fans around than chargers fans. Once we got into the game, things went downhill. It was so hot in the stands (98 degrees), which meant it was 112+ on the field for the players, so I can only imagine what it was like playing in that heat. Therefore, I'm not too mad at them for losing.

But Seahawks loss and all, San Diego is still one of my favorite places!