12 Hours in Vegas
It was a dreary, “Cat in the Hat”- type of Saturday morning.
Leftover weather from Hurricane Joaquin had moved in. Detroit became a damp, cloudy, windy, rainy, 50 degree place. I was doing my daily search on Spirit’s site for a free trip when I got a bright idea and said to Freddy, “Hey do you want to get away this weekend?”
Immediately I heard, “Sure!”
I responded with,”What’s your final price?”
“A hundred bucks,” Freddy replied.
The quest was on at 10:30 a.m.
Myrtle Beach? “Why would we go back there?”
New York City? “I was just there last weekend.”
Orlando? “What are we going to do there? We don’t like theme parks.”
Miami? “There’s no free return flight. ”
Vegas. Vegas? “Hey look the flight leaves at 7:35 p.m. returns to Detroit tomorrow at 3 p.m. and neither of us has to change our plans for today. Cost is $110 a piece and 15,000 miles. Want to do it?”
By 11:00 a.m., we were booked on a flight to Las Vegas.
$110 was not a bad price since a search on Google Flights showed that similar flights without miles were going for prices of $354 and up. Look at the flight costs in the graphic below to see for yourself.
When we got to the airport, reality set in. We’re going to get tired we are going to need a room from about 2 am to 5 am. We won’t make it all night without sleep especially with three hours added to our day from the time change. Search after search turned up hotel rooms in the neighborhood of $200. We couldn’t justify paying that for just three hours. Then it hit. Instead of paying for a taxi let’s rent a car and sleep in it. We found a compact rental at Avis for $26 with taxes it was $40 out the door. Cab fare one way to the strip would have been more than that.
When we landed, we did a search for steak houses that were open until 11:00 pm and made a reservation at the Palms. After leaving the Palms we cruised the strip where we saw the Bellagio water show and heard Keith Urban live in concert. At this time it was midnight.
We made our way north to the Venetian where we parked our car in their garage at around 12:30 am; we reclined the seats and shut eye was ours.
Freddy woke us up at 3:20 “Hey we have to get going.” We walked around the Venetian, took a lot of pictures, and bought coffee. We decided the drive the car down to Paris. In February, we are actually going to Venice and Paris so this was a fun way to do that trip in prelude.
We walked around Paris for a bit then took the car back to the airport.
The main things we learned from this trip are:
- Parking in Vegas is free and plentiful.
- If one is on a short stay it’s cheaper to rent a car than take taxis and get a hotel room.
- There is a check-in kiosk at the top of the escalator in Terminal 1 of the Vegas airport. If you’re flying with Just A Carry On, avoid the crowd and go straight to the security line. There is a check-in kiosk right along the escalator overlook.
~Bella
