Vegas, Baby!

On Memorial Day weekend 2018, I headed down to Las Vegas, NV for Lucy’s bachelorette party!! In attendance were myself, Ivory, Kaveri, Lucy’s cousin Ashley, Paige, and Natalie who were both Lucy’s sorority friends from college. Lucy was marrying her sweetheart Randall in August (check out my blog post on her destination wedding in Cancun!), and the 7 of us gathered in Sin City to celebrate. Ivory and I were the party planners and hosts for the weekend.

We flew in Saturday morning and flew out Monday afternoon. Our itinerary for the trip was jam-packed into 2 days. I booked a 2-bedroom villa for the group at the Marriott Grand Chateau. The hotel was right off the strip and close to popular tourist attractions such as the Cosmopolitan and the Bellagio. Our villa came equipped with a kitchenette, washer/dryer, and even had a separate living area! After checking into the Marriott, we stashed the suite with snacks and decorated it before Lucy arrived. When I asked for a step stool, the hotel initially gave us push-back and said they may not be able to provide one because of liability. They did say they would see what was available and call back. Natalie is an attorney in Washington D.C., and she was prepared to fight with the hotel if they would not oblige with the accommodation request. Fortunately, they were able to locate a step stool for me to use.

Our first activity was getting our nails done at Beautiful Nails and Spa, which was a 15 minute drive off the strip. We relied on Ubers as our main mode of transportation during the trip, especially when we had to get to a show or dinner reservation on time. We then came back to the hotel and changed into black dressy outfits for a night of fun! The bride-to-be wore a red dress. Dinner was buffet-style at Tamba, which is an Indian restaurant. Even though I’m Indian, I have a lower spice tolerance than others so the food was disappointingly too spicy for my palate. I instead filled up on dessert. One of the servers there gave us a round of tequila shots in honor of Lucy but didn’t mention that the shots were not free until the bill came. We grudgingly paid it for that was not a smooth move on his part.

The Las Vegas Boulevard strip was really long and bustling with so many people; walking from one place to another takes a lot longer than it seems when looking at the strip on a map. A building right across the street actually meant walk a block to the corner, go up the long escalator, take the sky-way bridge all the way to the other side and go down another escalator. I was prepared to walk. Little People tend to have difficulty walking long distances at one time as it can cause soreness and tingling in our legs. For me, living in the city of Chicago has enabled me to get my exercise by walking everywhere. Therefore I was able to walk a lot in Vegas without having to take many breaks. There was one part where we easily walked 2 miles by the afternoon; it took 15 minutes just to get from one end of the Paris hotel to the other. We topped off our Saturday night with the Magic Mike Live show! This is a can’t miss attraction in Vegas. It was a great time!

Sunday was a full fabulous day. We started off with mimosas and brunch at Ocean One Bar and Grille . Lucy got us matching T-shirts to wear for the day. They read “Dulhan Tribe”. ‘Dulhan’ means bride in the Hindi language. Before the trip, we each purchased a Go-City pass through Groupon, which included admission to 3 different attractions. One of them was the High Roller, which is the tallest observation wheel in the world. We were treated to amazing views of the strip, the city and the mountains. Another highlight of the trip was the ax throwing activity we did at Axe Monkeys! Everyone enjoyed that; I was thrilled to have hit the target just once with my smaller axe. The regular axes they had were too heavy for me to throw and hard to grip. After the axe throwing, we headed back to the strip for some gourmet nachos at Nacho Daddy and a mind boggling time at the Mentalist show. At the request of the bachelorette, our final expedition, which was not on the itinerary, was an adventure to a strip club called Hunk Mansion. All I can say about this is that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

On our last day in Vegas, we ate delicious egg sandwiches at the Eggslut cafe. It took an hour for us to wait in line but it was worth it. I wish there was one in Chicago! We then spent the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel and by the pool until we each had to leave for our flights back home. Lucy’s bachelorette party was a big success, and she was very happy to have it with all of us in Las Vegas. I recommend everyone goes to Vegas at least once in their lifetime so they can experience it for themselves. Even though I wasn’t blown away with the city as much as I expected, it was still a very exciting and memorable trip.