On Day 5 we’re still in Las Vegas. After the late Cirque du Soleil show the night before, we slept in and wasted away the morning swallowed up in our duvet and pillows (I love cold crisp hotel bed sheets). By the time we got up showered and change, it was about midday, lunch beckons.

Las Vegas was always famous for its cheap buffets, but nowadays, those cheap buffets no longer exist. Based on the Frommers guide book I had, The Wynn took top spot for buffets, so we made our way down the strip for some lunch grub.

The Wynn is a $2.7 billion luxury resort named after its creator, casino magnate Steve Wynn. I think the most eye catching thing about the hotel is the beautiful and colourful floral mosaic tiles near the entrance of the hotel. And did you know that The Wynn does not have any floors that start with the number 4, since it is an unlucky number in Chinese culture.

When we got there, the queue had already started to build up. I reckon we were there for a good hour in line before we got a seat. Verdict? Overrated. I reckon our Singapore buffets are still better in terms of variety, presentation and taste.

After stuffing our faces, we had to walk it off. So we rolled ourselves to a couple of casino/hotels nearby. The Venetian was a bit of a disappointment. First of all, it’s so expensive to sit on a Gondola which only goes down a very small stretch of canal. Gondoliers were singing and interacting with customers, which I heard the real Gondoliers don’t do. The architectural reproduction of the sky was alright I guess.

So what was the highlight for me in Las Vegas? As sad as it sounds, I bought tickets to watch the American Idols Live in concert. Uh huh! Now stop giggling, I’m serious. I was pretty hooked this season thanks to my ICON colleagues Gwen and Sarada, who used to exchange notes on performances from the night before. This season, I had two favourites: Jason Castro and Michael Johns. Both with very different voices and style, and both charming in their own way.

Wayne likes Carly Smithson. There I’ve said it. HAHAhaha..

More walking after the show before we retired for the day.

VIVA LAS VEGAS!

The highlight of this trip for Wayne was our stay at Las Vegas!

From San Francisco, we took a one hour flight on United Airlines to Las Vegas. From the air, I snapped some fantastic shots of the Grand Canyon, and did you know some parts of the Grand Canyon is covered in snow?

Once we arrived in Las Vegas, we had to collect our rental car from Hertz, which we had pre-booked online before we arrived. Now, let me warn all you travelers, the quote that they give you online is an estimation, so be prepared to fork out a lot more when you get there. Because, things like insurance and tax isn’t included, so we got quite a shock when we saw the final figures. Plus, we ordered a Mazda 6, but they ran out of Mazda 6s, instead, we got some big ass Buick.

I didn’t like the car. It was too big, and steering seemed a bit off. But Wayne was too lazy to drive back to Hertz to change it.

Another thing Wayne had to get used to was driving on the right side of the road. There were two near misses which I won’t repeat here for his ego’s sake.

Still on rental cars, I must say, the system in place at the airport is fantastic! Because of the massive number of people renting cars, they actually have a dedicated terminal for all the rental car agencies. So it was quick, easy and systematic. Chop chop, sign, key, ignition, drive.

It was a short drive to our hotel on the strip, and thankfully, because Wayne was getting a bit nervous driving on the wrong/right side of the road. We stayed at the New York New York Casino and Hotel, which is situated at the beginning of the strip. After settling in, we had the whole afternoon to explore a few casinos.

Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM Grand.
I may have captioned this photo wrong. I can’t remember if we saw the lions at MGM or Mirage. I’ll change it once i’ve confirmed it with Wayne

After all the walking, we bought ourselves a souvenir size strawberry margarita from Cayote Ugly.

After a short nap, we had to get ready for our first Cirque Du Soleil. We bought tickets to watch “Love” by The Beatles.

It was FANTASTIC! We both loved and grew up with The Beatles music, so we were singing along to the songs and tried to take in all the sights and sounds. It was a beautiful production. I loved the music so much I bought the CD for Wayne’s dad, coz he loves The Beatles too.

The songs are remastered, and some were rearranged and edited to sound more current and upbeat for the show. It wasn’t a huge deviation from the original, so don’t worry you Beatles fans out there. I’ll put up a few tracks on my blog radio tomorrow.

Here’s a trailer of the show

I hate to admit it, but I’m slightly jet lagged. I’ve been sleeping at 9:30pm every night and haven’t had time to post the updates. But I promise I’ll finish this USA travel journal asap.

And i got lazy with the photos. Putting them into poloroid templates takes too long, so i basically plonked them together side by side.

Third day in the U.S., we are still in San Francisco. Going on bus tours, you tend to be rushed from one place of attraction to another, so today we decided to explore the bay by bike!

There are several bike rentals along Fisherman’s Wharf, all you have to do is provide a credit card, fill out the indemnity form and off you go. If I’m not wrong, its about $25 for the whole day. You can choose from a village bicycle, mountain bike or a tandem.

We started off cycling along the bay, where we saw a group of Segway-ers on tour. Our initial plan was to go on a Segway tour, but it would have cost us nearly $200 each!

It started off quite chilly in the morning, so we had our hoodies on, but 15mins into the ride, we’re stripping off layer by layer. We cycled up to the Golden Gate Park through Presidio, stopping along the way to take photos or catch our breath. We stopped by the Rose garden to smell the roses, and plan our bike route for the rest of the day.

While we were sitting on a wooden log at the Rose Garden, we were so amused by a this little squirrel who had no fear of humans. He ran up to us, hopped on to Waynes knee, sniffed us out, realized we didn’t bring any food, hopped off, and scurried away. It was so cute!!

I won’t lie to you, but the cycle was quite painfully long! We took hours to reach The Legion of Honor. He California Palace of the Legion of Honor is a fine arts musuem, and i thought it would be nice to have a walk through with Wayne, and try to explain different art movements and appreciating the vast number of master pieces under one roof.

We saw works by Calude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Rodin,Seurat, Cézanne and Picasso. There was even a special showcase on Women impressionist artists which I quite enjoyed. Growing up, I took art lessons from my mum, and when you reach the Advance class, she’ll teach us to paint on canvas mimicking the strokes,style and color of that movement. And i remember enjoying that very much.

One of the paintings which got me to take a second look is the one pictured here that looks like Keanu Reeves! I took a photo of it and sent it to my sister! Hehehe…

After a somewhat neverending day, we headed to our last stop, the Golden Gate Bridge. We’ve been cycling for hours, and were seriously contemplating just going back to the hotel to veg, but it would have been such a waste not to cycle across the bridge.

Thank goodness we took some good pictures yesterday, because today, the fog rolled in heavy, and you could hardly see five metres in front of you. We cycled past a sign which read “crisis counseling”. Did you know, on average one person jumps off the bridge every 15 days? Shocking! Read the wiki entry below!

Suicides
The Golden Gate Bridge is a frequent site for suicide. The deck is approximately 260 feet (79 m) above the water. After a fall of approximately four seconds jumpers hit the water at some 88 miles per hour (142 km/h), which is nearly always fatal. Most of those who survive the impact die in the frigid water.

People have been known to travel to San Francisco specifically to jump off the bridge, and may take a bus or cab to the site; police sometimes find abandoned rental cars in the parking lot.

Currents beneath the bridge are very strong, and some jumpers have undoubtedly been washed out to sea without ever being seen. The water may be as cold as 47 °F (8 °C), and great white sharks, which tend to congregate around the Farallon Islands, are sometimes seen under the bridge.

An official suicide count was kept, sorted according to which of the bridge’s 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped. The count exceeded 1,200 when the count ended in 2005, and new suicides were averaging one every two weeks. There were 34 bridge jump suicides in 2006 whose bodies were recovered, in addition to four jumps which were witnessed but whose bodies were never recovered, and several bodies recovered suspected to be from bridge jumps.

The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge that year. Currently, it is said that a person jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge every 15 days. An additional 200 may be added to the suicide count on the bridge, due to fog, night time jumpers and other jumps which couldn’t be counted.

As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive strike the water feet-first, usually suffering broken bones and internal injuries. Even when a jumper is promptly rescued from the water and rushed to the hospital, most die of internal bleeding from ruptured spleens. Only one person has ever been recorded as having made the jump without serious injury: in 1985 a 16-year-old wrestler landed on his buttocks and swam ashore; his first words reportedly were, “I can’t do anything right.” Another young man survived a jump in 2000, although the impact broke his back and shattered multiple vertebrae.
Credit: Wikipedia

We returned the bike and headed back to our hotel where we completely knocked out.

I forgot to add something to the Day 2 entry. We came across the famous bushmen on Fisherman’s Wharf. He’s a busker who makes money by scaring people from behind a handmade bush! And he’s been doing that since 1980 earning $60,000 on a good year… for doing just that.

And a bakery you must visit is the Boudin Bakery. They serve lovely Clam chowders in a sourdough bread bowl and a pretty decent cup of coffee. Hmmm….

Hokay, here goes. The whirlwind US holiday. So after settling in at our hotel, the next day’s itinerary was jam-packed with activities.

We set off pretty early to take a walk down Fisherman’s Wharf, but nothing much was open. Walked pass the USS Pampanito, a World War II submarine. Had a glimpse of the Alcatraz from Pier 39 and spent some time checking out the sun bathing sea lions. It’s so bizarre, these sea lions just swim into the marina and plonk themselves on to the wooden berths.

The Pier 31 was a nice stroll, lots of little tourist shops, street performers and restaurants. A bit early for lunch, so we watched a magic show, and tried on some crazy hats at Krazy Kaps.

Walking further down the street, we spotted the all famous In-n-Out Burger joint. I can’t begin to tell you how many friends have ranted and raved about this fast food outlet. They keep telling me its a must try and it’s only available in the West Coast. I think out of 10 people I spoke to about our holiday, 8 of them said we HAVE to try this burger. So we did.

With so much hype and expectations, the burger and fries DID live up to its reputation. There’s not much to choose from, it’s either a Double-double, hamburger or cheeseburger. But seriously, it’s so good, that’s all they need to serve.

By the way IN-N-OUT Burger is California’s first drive-thru hamburger stand.

After lunch we decided to take the City Sightseeing tour bus around the bay and across the Golden Gate Bridge. We went through the Marina district, a brief stop at the Palace of Fine Arts, continue on to Pesidio which is the area for the rich FILTHY rich, then it was a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge.

A bit about the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s not red by the way, it’s actually International Orange! Here are a few ‘did you knows’.

After the bus ride, there was still time to fit in another very San Francisco experience, riding on the cable cars!

The San Francisco cable car system is the world’s last permanently operational manually-operated cable car system, and is an icon of San Francisco, California. The San Francisco cable cars are one of two moving National Historic Landmarks. While the cable cars are used to a certain extent by commuters, their small service area and premium fares for single rides make them more of a tourist attraction.
credit: Wikipedia

It was a cool experience, and definately a very touristy one. Wayne looked like he was having fun hanging out of the sides of the cable car.

To finish off the day, we walked back to the Fisherman’s Wharf to have dinner. Apparently, you can’t go to Fisherman’s Wharf and not try their clam chowder and boiled crab, so we had both. After such a long exhausting day, we retired happily and snuggly under the cold sheets of our hotel room bed.

So I’m finally back from our holiday, and no I didn’t get engaged, nor did I get married at a Vegas drive-thru chapel.

Have been diligently photoshop-ing and uploading my photos in the gallery, so the next thing to do is to blog about it. I’m actually quite excited to pen it all down, because it’s also memories I’d like to record for archives sake.

But photoshop-ing them for the blog is a real pain in the ass at the moment, all the resizing and rearranging. So please forgive me if it comes out in spurts.

Aiming for USA Day 2 tomorrow.

Everytime i fly, I’d love to sit by the window, because sometimes I really get some amazing photos of the geography below.

So on the 1st July, I set foot in the USA for the first time. Hello San Francisco!

It was quite a long flight, but loved it. Watched 3 movies, had 3 meals, a nap, and I was ready for my West Coast whirlwind holiday.

Wayne laughed at my pyjama looking get up… but hey… you’ll really appreciate it when you’re flying for so long.

Will update again when i have the time, and when i have the internet connection.

Meanwhile, i updated photos in my galllery HERE