18th May 2025

Today we collect the car and then drive to Salt Lake City to overnight before arriving tomorrow at our favourite place, the Grand Tetons! 👏

But, before then, let’s finish off the post from yesterday and our flight to Las Vegas.

Our flight was due to take off at 4.35 pm and were called to board at 3.35. Normally, we all sit around before boarding but not this time. We had only sat down for about five minutes before they called us forward. I don’t think the flight can have been full as everyone was on and ready to go at 4.20. Needless to say we didn’t take off straight away and Air Traffic Control (ATC) said there would be a 15 minute delay. That turned into an hour and we finally left at 5.20. ✈️

Why is it that a flight very rarely leaves on time? Answers on a postcard please to ………..😂

Regardless we had a great trip over on ‘Mystery Girl’. Did you know that all Virgin Atlantic planes all have ladies names? I bet you didn’t! 😂

The crew were a delight and looked after us very well. We had our three course meal and later they came round at various times with tubs of ice cream, vegetable samosas and finally Love Hearts. Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned Love Heart? Then, just before we landed we had afternoon tea. Strange eating tea at 2.00 am UK time!! Very nice though. 😋 For the food watchers, here’s our onboard meals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve been flying into Las Vegas since 1988 and usually there are long queues to get through Homeland Security but not yesterday. We were through in five minutes. Our flight was scheduled later than usual and that meant we were one of the two flights expected at that time. The other one was a British Airways flight, reportedly carrying Janet Jackson.

We did have one incident on board …… well of course we did! When Si went to put his laptop in the overhead it fell out of his backpack scratched his new glasses and hit him on the nose and fell to the floor!! Pleased to report there’s no problem with the laptop and Si seems to be okay too!!! 😂 Luckily, I always carry spare glasses in my carry-on luggage for just such an event. Looks as thought the new glasses are goners though. 😔

Our driver from Las Vegas airport told us about the Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas music festival is taking place here until tomorrow (Sunday) and that 300,000 people had descended upon Vegas! That would account for the fact that the casino here was heaving last night.

We did manage a little gambling before we ‘hit the hay’. We had a couple of good runs but not as good as the one in 2023! 💵 Fingers crossed that happens when we end our holiday here in three weeks.🤞

For those who don’t know (and I’m sure there aren’t many who don’t know, it’s a story we repeat often!) 😂 on the last day of our holiday here in 2023 we managed to win a Grand Jackpot of, just over $13,000 (£10,000),

Yesterday was the last day of the Bellagio’s Spring display in the Atrium before they started taking it down ready for the Summer display so we thought a few photos were in order. We are lucky that on this trip we will see two different displays as we’ll be back at the end of our trip. For those who are not aware of the famous Bellagio Atrium displays, everything is made up of fresh flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, on to today’s adventure!

The Atrium is looking rather sad this morning with everything being ripped out.

We had breakfast at Sadelle’s in the Bellagio and were delighted to see that Susan, one of the servers, who we have known for some years is still working there. We had a lovely catch up and hope to see her again when we return in three weeks.

Si had an American omelette and I had the Yoghurt Parfait with a Bee’s Knees cocktail. The food was delicious but the cocktail not so. Just a little too much lemon for my taste.. The Bee’s Knees made up of gin, lemon juice and honey with a cinnamon sugar rim round the glass dates back to the Prohibition-era and is an extension of the classic Gin Sour but has honey instead of sugar that creates a much richer drink. It is credited to Frank Meier, an Austrian-born bartender who worked at the Hotel Ritz Paris during the 1920s.

It was then time to go and collect the car! Well, after last year’s fiasco we did say we would give them one more try but I’m sorry to say they did not exactly shine this morning! 😔

Being Gold Members the idea is that there’s no queuing to collect the car.  We should just be able to walk in look at the board and it tells us the bay number our car is in and we jump in and off we go. Well, not today! Our name wasn’t on the board and no car waiting for us. We had arrived early and that was originally given as the reason for not being ready for us.

Eventually, a car was brought round but not the one we had ordered, although it was in the same category. We were not happy to see it had 61,000 miles on the clock either but after checking it out decided to go with it. We drove to the Exit only to be told by the attendant that she couldn’t let us take the car as the licence (car tax) was due to run out in the middle of our hire! 🤷‍♀️

Upon our return to the office (smoke now coming out of our ears) the only person serving was an elderly gentlemen called Joe. Sadly, he was rather hard of hearing and didn’t seem to understand what the problem was. It was at this point that I walked away and Si continued to explain what the problem was.

Long story short, Joe eventually found us another car, an upgrade, with just 21,000 on the clock so we took that and went on our way, albeit an hour later than intended. I feel another complaint winging its way to Hertz!

As today was a driving day there’s not much to report. The drive took about six hours to get to Salt Lake City crossing various time zones along the way. That can be very confusing with the car and our watches flicking times back and forth. We started off in Nevada then passed through Arizona before arriving in Utah.

We set off from Las Vegas in glorious blue skies and lovely hot temperatures but alas, the further north we came it started to rain and at one point, was so bad we couldn’t see the road in front of us. But, by the time we arrived here it had all cleared up and the sun was shining once again but the temperature on the trip dropped by 30º. 🌞🌧️🥶

The road from LV to SLC is 435 miles on Interstate 15. The sat nav doesn’t say a word for 5.3 hours as there are no turnings. It is one long, more or less, straight road and very boring!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was just a truck cab pulling another truck cab but it did us a bit of a scare! 😂

One, kind of funny incident, happened as we left the hotel this morning. When we went to breakfast we put our valuables in the safe and I told Si not to let us leave without them. Needless to say, as we were leaving the room checking that we had everything I casually said we should check the safe to make sure we hadn’t left anything and it was then I realised we had nearly left without our cash, passports etc. 😱💵🛂

Can you imagine if we had driven six hours only to find we had to drive all the way back again to Las Vegas!! 😱I blamed Si of course!! 😂

Tomorrow we drive to Jackson, Wyoming where it seems they have had a little snowfall today!! ❄️ Good job we packed all our winter gear as well! 🧣🧦🧤

Thanks for reading. Comments always welcome.

 

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