Anyone who knows me knows that I have a fundamental dislike of Las Vegas. When I think of Vegas, I think of gaudy nightclubs, sad old ladies parked in front of slot machines, overpriced tickets to washed up musical artists, and thousands of tourists sporting fanny packs and the ever-loved socks/sandals combination. Not really my thing.
I also think of all the times I’ve been there before: the time we flipped my car down the Rocky Mountains driving through a blizzard to Vegas, the time a drunk guy tried to bust down the door to our hotel room, the time I got really bad food poisoning the night before my best friend’s wedding… Vegas has not been kind to me, and I probably haven’t given it any reason to. In fact, in at least 6 visits, I’ve never gambled a penny, never been to a club, and never paid for a show.
Nonetheless, my fiance’s brother was playing at the Cosmopolitan for the final stop on his tour, so his siblings, cousins, and significant others all decided to fly out and hang out, and I decided to join them.
I got in on Thursday night. After checking in for my cheap night at the Luxor, I immediately hightailed it down the strip to the Cosmo, where Grouplove, a band we are friendly with and see pretty frequently, was playing.
The Boulevard Pool at the Cosmo is a pretty awesome venue- they drain the shallow end of the pool for the crowd to stand in, but leave the deeper end of the pool open so people can sit around and dip their feet in. Above the stage is a balcony which is full of cabanas. The view all around you is pure Vegas.
As always, Grouplove’s set was awesome, and we had a great time afterwards hanging out in the Chandelier Bar at the Cosmo.
The next day, the rest of our party, including Young the Giant arrived. After moving our stuff over to the Cosmo, we spent most of the day at the newly refilled Boulevard pool. The group of guys in the cabana next to ours fancied themselves musicians, and had an acoustic guitar sing-a-long for half the day that eventually had about 20 of us belting out Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” while all the people attempting to relax on lounge chairs in the pool looked on.
The Young the Giant show that night was pretty epic. We stood backstage for the show, having a ridiculous dance party for 10. For the final song in the encore, “My Body,” our Dutch friend led the song off with a bathrobe-speedo-striptease for one of the female crew members as a birthday present. Towards the end of the song, all of our group was allowed onstage to dance (pic is a selfie from onstage).
We were so cool that Rolling Stone even captured the action. (Okay I know it wasn’t because we were cool, but let a girl dream).
The next, we had a day bed at the Spa Pool in the Cosmo, and spent half the day lounging around.
Once it was dark out, I finally got outside of the casino for a little bit to check out the Bellagio show (in true Vegas fashion, set to “My Heart Will Go On”).
That evening, after an epic walk through the casino carrying pizzas from the in-resort pizza parlor, a bunch of us went to the Ellie Goulding show at, you guessed it, Boulevard Pool. This time, the Cosmo gave us a couple cabanas, and though none of us knew much of her music, we still had a lot of fun.
Afterwards, we went down to the casino, where pretty much everyone except me participated in a riveting game of War (I did not know this was a casino game!), and a few folks, including the band’s tour manager, won pretty decent money.
All in all, I thawed a bit on Vegas this trip. It’s still never going to be one of my favorite cities, but I’m so glad to say that I finally made some happy memories there, and had a wonderful time with everyone just appreciating the music, the fun, and finally being away from the never-ending East Coast winter!
Also, I should apologize to everyone for so long between postings. Typepad has experienced several DDoS attacks in the last week that kept me off, and I didn’t want to make any updates until everything was working again. I have also decided that, because of these security issues, and various formatting issues, I will be moving the site to a different host in the next couple weeks (better earlier than later, right?). Bear with me if production of new content is slow during this time, as I sadly am not a web-development guru.
Thanks for reading!
-A