Las Vegas & Grand Canyon

We spent our last few days in North America exploring Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, which was the perfect end to the first phase of our trip.

After a long bus ride from LA our first evening in Vegas was very chilled out. We stayed at the huge Circus Circus hotel so we spent most of the evening exploring the site. We had to be up very early for our tour to the Grand Canyon the next day so we decided to leave the gambling and the big casinos for our final day in Vegas.

After a very early start and a six hour bus journey (stopping at the impressive Hoover Dam), we finally made it to the Grand Canyon. We were both really excited and full of anticipation as we approached one of the seven natural wonders of the world. However, nothing could have prepared us for the mindblowing view. We had about three hours to walk along the South Rim and take in the many different vewpoints, so we made the most of this and walked as far as we could in the given time. We were positioned at the widest part of the Canyon, and being able to see 18 miles across was quite breathtaking. The depth, width, length and colours of the canyon were quite spectacular - words can´t even begin to describe it.

As we have found at many times on our trip, rather than being able to tick places off the list, we now know that we would love to come back and take a rafting trip along the Colorado River deep in the canyon.

Our last day in America was very long and pretty crazy. As we spent the day exploring the casinos on the strip we soon adopted the phrase that, 'nothing is going to suprise us' as we witnessed whole shopping malls, aquariums and lion enclosures, all within the grand casinos!

After a long day exploring the strip we grabbed some food and headed out for a night in the casinos. The strip was buzzing as we made our way past the famous Belagio, and we stopped to take in one the excellent fountain shows. Having toured the casinos during the day we decided on the Mirage for our evening entertainment. After watching for a little while Joe sat down for a game of poker and I explored the addictive slot machines. 5 hours later we finally left the casino having had our first real gambling experience. Joe came out of his poker with some chips remaining but I had lost mine to the super addictive slot machines!

Our flight out of Vegas was at 09.30am so at 05.00am in the morning there was really no point in going to bed! We got back to Circus Circus and decided to put our few remaining chips on a couple of games of blackjack - if only just to pass the time and get a couple of free Coronas!

As we headed to the airport weary from our 'all-nighter' we realised that Vegas truly is the city that never sleeps.