Today we woke up to more clouds and puddles of water on the street; evidence of rain during the night. While very unlucky for a trip to Vegas, at least 35 degrees and clouds is better than the miserable forecast for London! As a result we headed straight out to see some hotels, in case it brightened up by the afternoon.

Our main stop was the New York hotel so we drove down and parked in the car park there. The hotel is one of the biggest here, and is designed to look like the New York skyline (something which seems like a distant memory now). It also has a roller-coaster running right around the outside, but at one ride for $14, I decided to give it a miss. Next, we walked across the road to Excalibur, which has the theme of an old English castle, complete with ‘The Sword In The Stone’ bar. The outside of the hotel was more impressive than the inside, which seemed like an average hotel/casino. Crossing the road again brought us to the Tropicana, which neither of us had heard of before but seemed to be quite nice. It has a tropical theme like its name suggests, but overall it was only worth a short in-out visit.

The last major stop was the second largest hotel in the world (apparently the Venetian is now larger): MGM Grand. Inside, we saw two of the hotel’s famous lions. Apparently they have around 20 which they take back and forth from a sanctuary in the desert. They weren’t doing very much so we didn’t stop for long. We did however stop for a bit in the casino, where we both lost $2. I managed to double mine on slots but then lost it all on one roulette bet.

Tonight we were going to go to the Hard Rock Cafe but decided to leave it until we are staying at the Venetian since it is very close to there. This was probably a good idea since a short drive out to the Strip showed the traffic to be much worse than normal, due to it being a Friday night. It seems most visitors to Vegas just come for the weekend, with the casino in our hotel being far busier than we have seen it before – this didn’t stop me from winning $10 this evening though!

Photo of the day: the New York ‘City Within A City’ Hotel, complete with roller-coaster.