Day 13: Saturday, July 14, 2012

Waking up in Vegas – what a luxury! Haha  Started off the day with breakfast at one of the hotel’s cafes and then headed back to the strip for more shopping and sightseeing. Just so you know…it’s hot out there!  That dry heat will get you.

Inside Caesar's Palace Las Vegas

Well we pushed our check our time to the limit trying to pick up souvenirs – to the point that I was running through the casino like Usain Bolt with all of our luggage to get to the check out counter in time – can’t be getting charged for an extra night because we checked out late, you know.  It was a sight to see.  If you know me, you know I don’t run but I could have qualified for the Olympics that day in the Las Vegas Hilton….and I made it with 1 minute to spare.  Whew!

Then came lunch and we thought, why not eat at the top of the tallest building in the US, The Stratosphere.  We had already been to the Tower of the Americas and we're going to the Space Needle, so we should definitely make it a trifecta, right?  The Stratosphere, is close to 1000 feet tall and where we ate was at 871 feet. It was here where I had the most delicious sandwich I can ever recall eating.  And we got some great pics from a great view of the city.

From there we had to stop by the Hertz at the LV McCarran Airport.  Our maintenance required light came on and the Corolla needed an oil change, but instead of slowing us down, they offered to give us a new car!  This time we got a silver Camry, but we lost Maggie (our GPS…it was a “Magellan”…get it??)  So in about 15 minutes, we hit the road again, this time for Los Angeles.

When we finally got to LA, we had avoided the infamous traffic, but we did the bravest thing yet on our trip – we used LA public transportation.  We took the metro from a stop super close to our hotel into downtown LA for dinner.  Not gonna lie…it was quite questionable. We survived though; we survived.  Dinner was great at Pitfire Pizza.  Our East Coast/Southern roots really showed when we asked for Ranch dressing on the side and the waiter looked at me like I was crazy, but if he had only had the experience of Pizza Villa Ranch dressing in his life, he would understand this condiment's perfect pairing with pizza anytime, anywhere.

Pitfire Pizza

After dinner we took the little ride back to our hotel and rested up for the next day’s adventures.