I have had an amazing couple of days! It started yesterday afternoon, Spencer rode his bicycle to the car hire place to pick up our rental car. After considering our options, hiring a car for an alleged 4 hour trip won out over the 6 hour trip with Greyhound and the 300 dollar flight per person which would only take an hour, but cost four times as much as the hire car.

He brought the car back to his apartment and we loaded it up with our cases and some nibbles for the journey and set off on our ROAD TRIP baby!!! I was so excited to be taking a road trip in the states and imagined wide open roads with hardly a car to be seen for miles. I was slightly mistaken in this imagining. In fact, the road was packed from Spencer's house all the way to Las Vegas. It took us an hour and a half to drive 32 miles, and the total journey was 300 miles long!!!! However, after that first hour and a half traffic did die down a bit, but we certainly were by no means alone on the road. The road was always busy. The whole journey took us 5 and a half hours in the end, and we kept ourselves entertained on the way with regular CD changes, a mixture of Punk, Indie and New Wave - a random selection from Spencer's CD collection. I had sneakily stolen his apparant joke gift that someone had given him and put it into the CD player before he could see what it was. His face as he heard the dulcet tones of Jessica Simpson wailing away to 'Angels' when he was expecting to hear something like the Sex Pistols was priceless.

Our hire car was quite snazzy and had a various buttons all over the place that looked interesting. We resisted the temptation of pushing them.... until we were about an hour away from Vegas. Then, the button with the red cross on it was just singing out to it and I was so curious as to what it would do.... so I pushed it... From out of nowhere we heard a ringing sound, and we both scrambled to try to push any button that might shut it off. Eventually after several rings we pushed some button that turned it off and all was calm again in the car and we giggled nervously wondering what on earth we had been ringing. We found out moments later when the nice gentleman at the other end of the emergency line called us back!!! We were looking all around us trying to figure out how on earth this man knew who we were and how he was calling us back. We considered not answering but the service automatically kicked in and he asked us - what is your emergency. I was so freaked out by the whole thing that I just covered my mouth in surprise and Spencer leaned in to explain - sorry, we pressed the wrong button. I have been banned from pressing any other buttons of which we are not sure of the function.

Shortly after that, and after four hours of bland desert landscapes, we passed the county line of California and entered Nevada. As soon as we entered the state of Nevada we saw a huge hotel casino and lots of flashing neon lights. The town that this hotel was in was tiny, total population of the town without tourists: 300 people. We drove on by and an hour later we were entering the craziness that is Las Vegas!

It was about 9pm when we arrived. We checked in and headed to our room, crossing the mezzanine level of fun on our way. A steward caught us as we were walking past and asked us if we had just checked in, advising that she had offers available to people who were just checking in today. We said yes, indeed we had just checked in, so she showed us to the counter and passed us to another steward. She took us through the whole spiel, keeping us there for about ten minutes before stating - you guys are married right? Spencer and I looked at each other and laughed - er, no, not actually. Oh, she said, but you live together, right? Er, no. she lives in England and I live in America. Oh, right, she said, well, in that case I cant help you. And that was it, we didnt hear a peep from her after that. So, we took our queue and from then on when someone offered us something for free we quickly let them know that we werent married so they could let us know if the offer was still valid or not.

We dumped our bags in our room and after our long trip we just about had enough energy to find something for eat for dinner and drink a jug of margaritas before turning in for the night in preparation for the next day.

We woke ourselves up at about 9.30 to give us time to get ready and downstairs for the 10.30 class on Black Jack. It was a very useful class which explained the odds to us and what we should be considering when placing our bets. After the black jack lesson I went to a deli to get some breakfast and saw Mr and Mrs Fat with their family of Fat kids ordering a foot long chilli dog with cheese each for breakfast. I havent seen as many fat people over here as I thought I would from everything that i have read, but sinve I have come here I have seen them all. I ordered my bagel and cup of tea, and Spencer and I sat there in awe as the Fat family ate their way through the chilli dog, and then went up to order a second!

At 11.30 it was time for our lesson in Roulette and 12.30 the lesson in Craps. Maybe we had had information overload, but we really couldnt understand the craps rules, and in a bit of a fuddle we decided to try to escape the insanity of Circus Circus, our hotel/casino and make it down the strip.

I have to mention that Circus Circus was absolutely packed. There are piles apon piles of people everywhere. Its like what I imagine Glastonbury would be like at festival time. People EVERYWHERE. And that was just our hotel/casino. And there are a thousand of them in the strip area, most of them even bigger and better that Circus Circus.

We left the hotel and found some space to ourselves. It seemed that we had hit the streets a bit earlier than most other people in Vegas.

We made our way slowly down the strip. This place bombards your senses. It is overwhelming, amazing, gaudy, classy, fun, exciting, embarrasing, the best place ever, the worst place ever!!

We stopped in places that I had heard of and read of and seen on TV, Ceasars Palace, Flamingo, MGM Grand, New York New York, Casino Royal, and places I didnt really know about, like the Venetian, Palazzo and so on, the list is endless.

We spent the first few hours just taking in the whole place, had a couple of drinks at a bar and played the electronic 25cents per hand version of Black Jack, to practice what we had learned this morning.

We had lunch in Planet Hollywood (although we didnt realise that is where we had been until later on as we were looking back to where we had come from) in their Chinese restaurant, and as we were leaving the music was so good I started dancing, and then got accosted by one of the stewards who started dancing a bit of salsa with me.

I was totally in the party mood by now and boogeyed my way down the street and accross the road as we headed to New York New York. It must be a thing in Las Vegas but many of the Casinos are named twice, rather than just the once.

Spencer wanted to have a drink at the Irish pub Nine Fine Irishmen, where we drank the worst pint of Guiness in our lives and I did a spot of Irish dancing, but Spencer couldnt work the camera properly so failed to get it on video. But, to make up for it, he let me go on the rollercoaster in New York New York. It was, as they say here, awsome!!!

Fighting a little to keep our lunches and beers in our stomachs after the loop de loops of the roller coaster, we carried on through New York New York and on to the Bellagio, full of designer label shops and extremely wealthy people. We felt very out of place so left there quite quickly and headed back across the street to the cheaper hotels in search of O'Shea's irish casino which seemed to be quite grubby and might have the 5 dollar tables that we fancied taking a bash at. There were no suitable tables in O'Shea's so we kept going. We walked past a sign for Karaoke and I was really in the mood for a bit of singing so we followed the signs for that. When we found the poor desolate Karaoke Bar it was empty, all the lights were off and nobody was home. Looks like the excitement of Karaoke pales in comparison to some good old fashioned gambling!

From the Karaoke bar we saw some signs to the main Casino room and entered Imperial Palace, where we found the tables that we were looking for. 5 dollar Black Jack tables. We hovered for a bit and then very nervously sat down at a table and changed 50 dollars each into chips. The first 5 to ten minutes of the game were quite nerve wracking. Spencer kept on checking with me to see if I was alright. Apparantly i was frowning quite a lot and not really looking like I was having much of a good time. It was time to put my lessons into practice and I felt the pressure heavily. We ordered a beer and after a couple of glugs of that I felt a bit better, and soon enough our first time nerves passed and we settled into the game like old pros. Spencer did a pretty good job of keeping track of what was going on. I was distracted from time to time by the various entertainment items that were going on around us. Spencer started stacking up his growing pile of chips and my pile started dwindling. We ordered a gin and tonic each, and my chips diminished to a small little pile of one. Spencer slipped me a couple of his chips and I built my pile up again only to lose it once again 20 minutes later. Once again Spencer helped me out, but the third time I lost all of my chips I was on my own, there would be no saving me this time. Despite a third G&T I kept my wits about me and won back enough chips to where i was finally ten dollars up on what I had bought in the first place, and Spencer was rocking along having doubled his money. I decided this was the time for us to take our chips and leave.

We exchanged our chips for cash and made our way back along the strip. By the time we got back to Circus Circus it was 1am and we had been going for more than 15 hours!! I think we managed to eek out as much as we could from Las Vegas today, although we have decided against going to a club. We have a huge list of things that we want to do tomorrow, so fingers crossed we get it all done!