Our Independence Day could be described as very long, very tiring, but very fun! The day was long and tiring because we started it the minute we touched down in Las Vegas, and didn’t stop until the wee hours of July 5th. Christina & Tony, my sister and brother-in-law arrived in Vegas on Friday and spend the day enjoying the city of lights. Driving our car, they picked us up at the airport, and took us back to our shared room at the Palazzo. We wasted no time in getting started and headed straight to New York, New York to visit our usual breakfast spot: America.
After a hearty breakfast, we started walking the south end of the strip and ended up at one of the merchant plazas along the strip. Christina and Tony had gotten 4-week tattoos the day before and it didn’t take much convincing for us to do the same. Bethany had a design with an intricate cross, with a heart in the middle.
I went with a more contemporary design on my arm:
We walked back up the strip and stopped at the Coca-Cola store for one of Las Vegas’ best values. If you go upstairs you can order a Float Sampler, which gives you 8 ice cream floats for $8. The four of us could barely finish four of the floats, let alone 8 of them. This was a very refreshing treat for a very hot day.
We went back to the Palazzo to spend some time at the pool. Unfortunately pretty much every other guest at the Palazzo had the same thing in mind, as the pool was completely full. We managed to finally snag some lawn chairs and enjoyed a nice cool swim. The temperature was over 100 degrees, and we had a schedule to keep, so we headed back up to the room to get ready to head down to Fremont Street and dinner at Hugo’s Cellar.
Hugo’s Cellar is a five-star restaurant located in the basement at the Four Queens Hotel. This is one our favorite Vegas traditions, one that we’ve been looking forward to for months. We definitely weren’t disappointed. One of our favorite things there is that they have a guy that comes around with a salad cart and prepares each salad right in front of you, asking each person what ingredients went on each salad I asked them to be generous on the anchovies, and they gave Bethany a hard time about whether she knew I liked anchovies this much when she married me. The staff at Hugo’s caught wind that we were on our honeymoon, and prepared Bethany and I a special surprise:
We enjoyed the White Chocolate Moose cake and all of the other good food.
We gambled a little bit on Fremont, then headed back to the Palazzo to get in position to watch the fireworks over Caesar’s Palace. We staked out a spot right in front of Harrah’s where we also got a view of the Mirage’s volcano going off:
The fireworks kicked off a little after 9:00pm, and while they were not the caliber of fireworks we’ve enjoyed at Coors Field for the last 4 years, we definitely saw some great sights:
After raving about the gondola ride at the Venetian, Christina and Tony were interested in taking the ride. The four of us bought tickets and managed to get on the same gondola rower that Bethany and I had, Santo. He treated us to more beautiful songs as we went under the “Tunnel of Love”.
We headed back to our room to refuel on beverages, and caught another Mirage Volcano eruption from our 22nd story view of the Strip. We ended the 4th by playing slot machines down in the Palazzo casino, turning in at 1am. Before we pulled out of Vegas on Sunday, the four of us shared our last Vegas meal at the Monte Carlo’s brunch buffet.
Thus this brings the official end to our Honeymoon. We are currently en route back to Colorado and both of us are scheduled to be back at work on Monday. Our adventure in Las Vegas and Hawaii may be over, but we are excited to go home to continue our adventure in our new marriage.
I’m taking part in NaBloWriMo which commemorates National Blogging Month (who knew!) by committing to blog once each day. With my blogging track recording being as dismal as it’s been over the last few months, I thought this might a good jump-start to getting back to blogging. 
