Day 3: up, down, all around

On Saturday, which was Day 3 of our trip, we woke up to much nicer weather than the previous day. Josh requested that we go see Hoover Dam--so we left the hotel and headed south of Las Vegas that morning. It was fascinating to see the design of the dam as well as the new memorial bridge that was just erected a few years ago. We wandered around both for a couple of hours. 

 

 

 

After looking straight down over the side of the dam, Josh got a little queasy and had to back away from the edge!

 

The parking garage and Visitors Center are both built into the existing rock cliffs, and I found it very interesting that some of the electric wire towers were built on an angle (which are hard to see in this photo)

This is a view of the enormous memorial bridge from the dam.

We walked across the entire bridge on the dam--half of it is in Nevada, and the other half is in Arizona.

 

This would be Josh's idea of a job from hell:

This is a view of the dam from the Memorial Bridge:

We walked to the center of the Memorial Bridge, took some photos, and then we walked back because the swaying movement that Josh was feeling from all the passing vehicles, coupled with the height, was making him weary and sick.

 

When we drove back to Las Vegas, it was early afternoon, and we were hungry. We went to the restaurant Naked City Pizza, another find I researched online. It was featured on the TV show Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins, and the menu looked good. I was dying to try their stuffed mushrooms with homemade sausage and garlic sauce. They were good, but not as good as my friend Gina's stuffed mushrooms!

 

We ordered a small pizza pie, and I love that their small was pretty large for 2 people to eat! The crust was phenomenal. Mmm Mmm Good!

And for dessert we got fried dough with chocolate drizzles & powdered sugar. Naked City Pizza is inside of a bar, and the vending machine seen here behind Josh was filled with chips, crackers, pretzels, and 3 rows of a variety of cigarettes. I've never seen a vending machine like that before!

After we engorged ourselves with the yummy food, we drove back to the Strip and went walking and shopping for a few hours.

We saw the Bellagio's water fountain show, set to the music "Simple Gifts". It was beautiful!

 

All the different resorts are so large in scale and so unique. I liked seeing all the various attractions they had to offer. Las Vegas is like seeing the entire world in one condensed area. Where else can you see the Statue of Liberty within walking distance of the Eiffel Tower?

 

Being in Las Vegas is like experiencing culture on crack. Everything is so over-the-top. It was hard to fathom the expense of these resorts. We walked by one that was under construction, and we were contemplating the millions and millions of dollars it takes to build one of these grand hotels, and yet we can't even get the support of our local community to build a small K-8 school because of the cost.

 

After our feet were all tired out from walking up one side and down the other of the central section of the Strip, we headed back to our hotel for a break. Obviously Josh and I are getting older, because we've never stopped to take naps on vacations before, and we did both days that we were in Vegas all day!

 

That night, we got all dressed up to head to Caesar's Palace to go see Celine Dion in concert! This was the reason we made the trek to Vegas to begin with, and I was so excited for this moment to finally come! On the way, we encountered an accident, and had difficulty finding a place to park, and then we walked and walked. I was afraid we wouldn't get there in time, but we did!

All over town I'd seen advertisements that looked idental to this, and it wasn't until we got to the Colisseum that night that I finally understood the double-reference: Celine was BACK again performing in Vegas, and this is a photo of Celine's BACK.

Josh and I had seats toward the top (like usual), but we could see pretty well from where we were.

Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed during the performance, so I didn't get any cool shots of what we saw, but it was an amazing concert. I was very impressed with her singing, and all the different effects they had. She sang to a live orchestra & band, and there were instrumental soloists that were fantastic. They had a waterfall for one song, videos of her family, a holographic image where she sang a duet with herself, duets with other singers, and she appeared out of the ground. It was an awesome show and I really enjoyed it! It was worth going to!

After Celine's show ended, we went to another late-night comedy show across the street at the Flamingo and met another couple from Idaho that we got along with. We went to bed after midnight, and fell right to sleep. It was an awesome day--my favorite one of the trip. I loved being outside and walking around Hoover Dam, and seeing Celine Dion in concert was so fulfilling for me!