We had all day Saturday to pack. I mean ALL DAY Saturday. Our flight didn't leave until 7:30 pm. My advice? Don't give yourself so much time on the first day of vacation. You are just ITCHING to get out of Dodge and to delay it that long is almost physically painful. Mistake #1 (don't worry, there'll be plenty more!)
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| We actually didn't see the sign until we left town since we came from the airport on the interstate, but we did stop on the way out of town to take this picture. |
The nice thing is that there is no traffic on a Saturday night at the airport. Or on the road. Everyone else has ALREADY gone to the airport and taken off. Hence the Express Lot, which is where I prefer to park, was full. So we had to park in Long Term Parking. Long Term Parking is like the Siberia of parking lots. They have you out so far you need a passport to board the bus to get to the terminal. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it is WAY out there. In any event, when we got to the terminal there was NO ONE in line for Spirit. I mean no one. And yes, I did say Spirit Airlines. More on that later. We were off to security in a matter of minutes. At security there was NO ONE. It was deserted. We thought maybe it was the apocalypse and the good people had already been taken up. Only the TSA agents were left behind (tee hee--only kidding!) Anyway, we got through security (albeit this one agent was giving us lessons on how to put things in bins -- yeah, like we haven't done this before).
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| Yes, it's true. |
BUT once on the plane, there were more cuts. No drinks, soft or otherwise. Unless $$$. No pillows, no blankets, no movie, no movie screens, no peanuts, no pretzels, no in-flight magazine, no earphone jacks, no reclining of the seats. I do think there were air masks if we lost air pressure, but I can't be positive since we had no need for them to drop down. I'm thinking now that maybe there were coin operated air masks in case of depressurization. Good thing I had my change purse with me.
But the bathroom did have soap. And toilet paper. So that was nice.
I got my restless leg syndrome towards the end of the flight which I tend to do when it is a long flight or on a long car ride without any stops. It was torture. But soon enough the plane had landed and we were out the door and into the Vegas heat -- near 95 degrees. At 9:30 at night. Like a brick oven. Viva Las Vegas, baby!!
Cue the lights! The action! Ocean's Eleven! Twelve! Thirteen, even! Seven, come eleven! Let's take this town by storm! On to the rental car stand!!
Apparently the rental car agencies are all off airport property so no matter which rental car you choose (DON'T CHOOSE BUDGET!) you have to take the shuttle to an off-airport property. AGAIN, DO NOT CHOOSE BUDGET! [I got ripped off last year by Budget so I am on a campaign to put them out of business.]
Anyway, I had made reservations with Thrifty. Steve jumped off when the bus stopped to get into line. No need! There was no line! Unfortunately, there were no cars either. Apparently there was some big basketball event happening through Sunday and all of Thrifty's cars were gone. Wait a minute! Where are the cameras? I was in the middle of a Seinfeld episode! "Sure you can TAKE the reservation, you just can't HOLD the reservation." News flash -- apparently when you make a rental car reservation you are only reserving the RATE, not a car! Hmm. Did not know that.
Thrifty sent us to Payless who still had cars. Thrifty promised (in writing) to pay the difference if the car rental was more expensive than what we had been promised at Thrifty. I had gotten a pretty good rate at Thrifty. Payless was also running low on cars so we ended up with a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. Nice looking little car. The kicker? It was over $600 to rent as opposed to our $300 we had been promised by Thrifty. Oh well! So sorry, Thrifty. Looks like you just came up snake eyes!
We got to the car and loaded it up. It had a tiny trunk so we had to load one suitcase in the back seat which became Michael's riding companion for the week.
Steve had the key fob since there was no key. He pushed the "Start" button. Nothing. No engine sound. Pushed it again. Nothing. Pushed it. Nothing. Well, I could keep typing the same thing, but he pushed it about five or six times. Each time we would get little "song" when it was supposedly running but no engine noise at all. What the...wait a minute. It's a hybrid. Maybe there is no engine noise. Steve put it in gear and we were off -- like a golf cart. WEIRD! When the engine is using electric power the engine does not rev, it does not rumble, it just does not run at all. It really is like driving around in a deluxe golf cart.
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| Kitchen |
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| Living room |
Tomorrow we hit the strip!
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