Hi y’all! A few weeks ago, I marked off a bucket list item and went to Las Vegas, Nevada for the first time ever. My friend Courtney’s dad goes with his friends every year for the first weekend of March Madness and this year we decided to join the fun. It was a blast!
We stayed at The D hotel in Downtown Las Vegas, which I think was great for a first timer in Vegas. It seemed a little more chill than the main strip, but still was so fun and full of activity.
We ate at a few restaurants downtown. The first was Carson Kitchen for lunch on Thursday. I got a Jerk Turkey Burger with tater tots, and it was delicious! The atmosphere of the restaurant was very industrial. The ceiling had all the electrical components exposed and was basically just raw 2×4’s; it was pretty cool!
The next day we had breakfast at Park on Fremont. They had quite an eclectic look with lots of animal heads and tons of wall paper! If you saw my laundry room renovation, you might know I’m in a wall paper obsession stage, so this was a pretty cool restaurant. They also had great outdoor seating and what looked like a great dinner and drink menu. The breakfast was also excellent.
Most of the weekend was spent watching basketball since that was the purpose of the trip. The D had a great setup on the 12th floor with plenty of seating, food, beer, tons of TVs, and short lines for the sports book. My dad gave me some bets to make and he did pretty well the first round, but not so great the second round. The only bets I made myself were Liberty over Mississippi State and a parlay of random teams. I was pretty proud of the Liberty win, but lost my $5 on the parlay. It was so much more fun to watch games when you have money on them, and I loved it!
We went to the strip a few times during the trip. On Thursday night, we explored the Venetian Hotel and grabbed dinner with some friends who were staying at the MGM Grand. The Venetian was amazing! I was blown away by the detail they added to the hotel! We grabbed dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the “water.” The food was decent, but it was pretty cool to sit next to the water and watch the Gondolas ride by.
After dinner, we went to Magic Mike live at the Hard Rock Hotel. They did a great job of making the theatre feel feminine and fun. It was not my idea to go to this show but it was actually really fun! I never saw anything I didn’t want to see, if you know what I mean. There was tons of comedy and almost the whole audience was around my age, so it was a great atmosphere. But Courtney’s mom and grandma went the next night, so it’s appropriate for all adult ages.
Friday, we spent most of the day exploring the strip again. Courtney showed me some of her favorite hotels including the Paris Hotel and a quick stop in the Mile Mall at Planet Hollywood. We eventually ended up at the MGM Grand to have dinner with our friends again at FiAMMA Italian Kitchen. That was by far the best meal I had at the entire trip; if you go, I highly recommend the blueberry mule and lobster gnocchi.
Saturday was another day of watching basketball and hanging out downtown before we all boarded our red eye flights back home. This was an amazingly fun trip, and I will definitely go back again because I feel like there is so much I didn’t get to see!
