The next morning I was amazed at our view of the Strip and the airport, we could watch the planes make their way into the air, one by one while watching the always moving city go about its morning. Mountains loomed in the background of everything, standing majestically tall and making me want to go hiking. Maybe next time, we only had high heels because we’re starry eyed first time independent travelers.

We dressed as casually as we could (our feet were still suffering from the injustices of walking everywhere the night before, we had obviously made bad shoe choices) and made our way to the Strip. We had a good look about the rest of the street before making our way to the New York section.

Wait-aren’t we in Vegas…?

Our eyes were inevitably drawn to the promising sight of Hershey’s, and found the largest collection of our favorite candy. I had to take a lot of pictures of that because I knew most of my students would want to see candy, not the Titanic memorabilia we were planning on seeing. I could hear it now, “ugh, so lame Ms. Proffer!”

I want!!

We stopped by a magic shop and got to see the magic of flying cards and cat in a bag (don’t touch, the sign warned us but it didn’t stop me from wanting to). We wandered the Strip some more, took Snaps of a man drumming quite well on some plain white buckets, and made our way to Caesar’s Palace again to really take a look about the place. Did Caesar really live here?! Apparently they get asked that a lot.

Our room issue (and Camille’s persuasive words and talent) the day before got us $75 resort credit, and so we dressed up again and made our way to Olives, a very classy restaurant in the Bellagio. We were sat next to an Asian family with the most adorable and well behaved daughter who had to sit on her knees to reach her plate. My food was drowned in pesto which is usually a good thing, but not after half the plate has been consumed. So I stole from Camille’s plate and was overwhelmed by the taste of her chicken and the sauce they had with it. Few things have tasted that wonderful.

My pesto meal-2 stars

We made our way to the casino in Mandalay Bay, after a horrible altercation with a very high and rude man who told me I would be a lot more attractive with longer hair and then proceeded to get handsy with me. Of course I thought of very good comebacks once in safety, but lacked them in the moment.

I bet five dollars in the casino with very disappointing results. I did not win a million dollars, which means I will have very disappointed students who shook hands with me in the bet that if I did win, I would owe every student passing my class $50 (a very large sum to them).

Maybe next time!

I did get a shout out from a man in suit, asking for my number for his friend.

I never did get that to you, did I? Maybe if you lived in Texas, I do like a man in a suit.

We observed some older couples having a lot more fun than we were (hence some alcohol that was forbidden to Camille). There were some high kicks by the older men with noticeably younger women, is that a Vegas thing?

My cousin back in the Dallas area then began Facetiming us and telling his break up woes amid a cocktail of unwise liquid. Camille told my cousin over the phone to ‘make me go dance with the old people’ at our hotel, and he obliged. So we went back to see if the party was still on. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t, and we returned to our hotel room complaining of foot pain and other ailments. Instead of partying with the elderly couples we took turns taking warm baths with the LUSH bombs we had purchased earlier. I included gold glitter in mine, because why not?

Most of the fun was the posing with the statues in our hotel.  We had a little too much fun with that. Pictures not included for reasons of that we like our jobs. And classy reputations, don’t forget that!

Allons-y!