The trip my parents always warned me about. Vegas April 20-23

[BayAreaOlli]

Let me apologize in advance for the length but I don't think I do this weekend justice if I keep it short and there will be pics too.

Planning Stage:
Right after my last trip to Vegas in February I started to plan for the next. Coincidentally right around that time I got an invitation by Caesar's to come see a special VIP concert with Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley so I thought that is a good reason to make it out to Vegas again. So initially wasn't sure who to go with so invited a friend of mine from Chicago, she said yes so I thought that was settled. But low and behold from there it grew as friend after friend wanted to come too, especially as we started adding our other activities around the concert so in the end we were five, four girls and myself, and the concert had more or less moved into the background paling to all the other activities we had planned.

Day 1 Friday April 20th:
I took the day off from work after an early meeting with the East Coast and headed to the airport for a morning flight and without delay arrived in Vegas at noon. All the girls would arrive later that day, so checked in at PH and had luck that both rooms were already ready, mine a nice little Strip Suite with an awesome view including big bubble tub.

That's the sun-screen that makes the pic look all weird.

So after checking out the rooms, I was off to do some gambling before the girls got there. Actually made decent money and felt great when the first girl arrived at 4:30. Picked her up downstairs at the cab stand, dropped off her bag and as I hadn't had a drink yet, shame on me, we stopped by the Daimond Lounge at PH. Nothing wrong with some free beers and cocktails to get the weekend started. Stayed there until about 6 when the others arrived and then the waiting began. If you ever traveled with four girls that very much want to look perfect everytime they step outside, then you know what I mean. So for the next 90-100 minutes I just stayed in the room blarring some good EDM from the speakers I brought while watching the girls get ready and having at least 7-8 vodka red bull. So by the time they were ready to head out for dinner I was already seriously buzzed, but hey that's what Vegas is about. Headed over to Tao, only waited like 10 minutes and were seated.

In front of Tao

We had to rush a bit as my casino host made very clear that we had to be at Surrender by 10:30 for our table reservation, which turned out bogus in the end but more on that later. Tao is great, I love the atmosphere and the food is pretty good too. The Kobe Beef Sashimi is just awesome, we had like three orders of it lol. Also had some Geisha Girls, it's a drink, and a couple bottles of sake. Service was great and prompt as we did mention we only had a limited amount of time, so we were having a great time overall. I think we got out of there within an hour which was perfect for our plans, but next time I would take more time to enjoy it. Now the walk back to the cab line followed and as a guy that's ex-military and does a lot of walking, I constantly had to hold myself to not leave the girls in their heels way behind lol.

So we got to Surrender to see Calvin Harris just about in time, got into the table line and the first host checked for my reservation and fuck I wasn't on it. Not happy at that point as why was I rushing here to make it in time if I didn't even have a supposed reservation, could have taken my time at dinner then. But oh well things happen and I am not someone to dwell as he immediately asked anyway if I still wanted a table and I said hell yeah of course. So he said it would be two bottles, which was what my host had told me too so of course that was fine. He set it up, exchanged card for handshake and we were in within 15 minutes. Now I did ask if we could get an inside table, but when he said that would be $10k that night, I kindly declined as I like spending money but am not that flushed lol. So we ended up at an outside table to the immediate right of the club near the bar and that was totally fine.
The view of Surrender outside.
The girls at Surrender.

Bottles were ordered and we started drinking, friends were made to the right and left, but I don't even try remembering names at that point in time. It turned into one of these nights, that you wake up the next morning with 10 new numbers in your phone, male and female, but you have no idea who any of these are. So everything was going good, we all got pretty slashed. One of the funnier moments happened when one of the typical random girls started chatting me up to of course get a drink in the end, which I had no problem providing, but then she returned within not even five minutes being all sad because her girlfriend had supposedly taken off with her drink so she asked if I would be kind enough to give her another one and before I even could answer her one of my girls just categorically said no. I just looked at her and in the driest tone she just said "You don't need no table whores, you got us", which did turn out to be true. I started laughing so hard and of course the girl took off rather quickly lol. Eventually I made it to the gambling area, never a good idea to leave me alone to gambling when drinking this hard for so many hours and that's kinda when the night went off track as when I returned to the table about an hour later the girls were gone. At that point I think to remember it was 3am, so I thought no biggie just gamble a little more while enjoying Calvin. In the end I closed the club down, did some more gambling in the Casino and by the time I left Encore it was bright daylight and I was in serious need of some rest.

Second Part to follow in a few.

[BayAreaOlli]

Day 2 Saturday April 21:

Sadly not too much rest was waiting for me as we had table reservations for Marquee Dayclubs's grand opening and we knew we needed to be there early. So after about three hours of sleep, I was back up and running. As soon as we stepped outside of PH to make the walk across the bridge to the Cosmo I knew this was gonna be a scorcher. Who expects 95 degrees in April in Vegas, but oh well better than 65 for what we had planned. We made our way over to Marquee and it was a madhouse, people everywhere and Marquee staff running all over the place to keep it somewhat under control. I think the only reason I was actually able to handle that after that much sleep was that I still was quite intoxicated from the night before. We got into the table line but for a good 15 minutes the line was pretty much ignored so I stepped out to just get somebodies attention, but fat chance of that. So back into the line and then luckily there was some movement and by my best guess we were in the elevator after probably about 25 minutes. So up we went and back into the next line, which then went really fast though and then the third little line on the club level to get the wristbands and table assignments, which went really smoothly there too. So all in all concerning the getting in part, chaos downstairs but once you were in the elevator it was a breeze to get to your table/daybed.

As I had assumed prior to going to Vegas our location was probably one of the least desirable due to my casino host making a deal so our limit was only about half of what the club had quoted me directly. We ended up close to the waterfall to the right behind the stage where it goes to the restrooms, but I honestly couldn't care less as I was just happy we were in and everything else would fall into place. Another side effect of the location ended up to be that we were the first ones in the shadow once the sun moved behind the Cosmo tower behind the club, but at least for me because I wasn't really there to get a tan anyway this actually was a good thing because it took some of sting out of the heat. It took a little until our waitress showed, which seemed to turn into common theme over the afternoon as they switched waitresses twice after that on us, once pretty early I guess because they reassigned stations and then once again because our waitress dropped a bottle on her foot and had to taken out. So overall service was a little spotty but nothing majorly annoying and I would honestly put it down as growing pains for being their opening.

So then the ordering began goose, red bull, mojito pitcher, some food and we were up and running. a big compliment to the chilled trio dip, which is really yummy and a great snack food to have around for the whole day, we re-ordered that a couple of times. This was followed by several more pitchers of a lovely drink called Painkiller, which is even better if you add some shots of amaretto on top of it, as it reminded me of the great drink called Rocket Fuel, which is very popular in areas on Long Island, NY, and that I have very fond memories of. We also had a couple of pitchers of some other pretty awesome drink but I don't recall the name at this point and we ended with a bottle champagne. The other food we ordered was pretty decent too but nothing the would really standout.

So now to the activities of the day, the crowd was nuts and the place filled up really quickly. If people stayed away due to the mentioned pre-sale ticket issue, I am sure Marquee was able to backfill them with GA as I don't think there was an empty spot in the whole place. We made friends with a lovely French couple that had placed itself across from us by trading drinks for sunscreen as my friend had forgotten our sunscreen in the room even after I had placed it in her bag as she had taken it out when looking for something. The initial DJ, whoever that was, did a really good job at getting the crowd pumped and we really enjoyed that part already. There was a lot of walking around, taking pictures, meeting people around us and just having drink after drink.

The girls 1
The girls 2

FYI what I learned is that if you leave food out too open, people will eat it and it might not be your group lol. We had a basket of fries standing on our table next to the bed and for like 20 minutes I just made it my priority to watch the people walk by and watch them take some, I think I stopped counting at 10 and there were these two cute Asian girls that must have walked by five times in that period and without fail every time they grabbed some, so much so that I was ready to just give them the whole thing if they would have come again. The fun you make in your head when you get drunk lol.

Yup I am whiter than white bread, really need to get a tan before the next trip.

Part 3 to follow in a few.

[BayAreaOlli]

So anyway Avicii took his time to make it out, after rumors first started spreading that it would 1, then 2, it ended up being closer to 2:30 if I remember correctly. By that time of course the crowd was pumped and it just freaking erupted when he started. Dancing, jumping around, screaming, you had it all. Damn much fun. For the next hours we just partied our butts off, it was crazy for sure.







The energy was truly electric, but it still didn't prevent me from falling asleep for a short power nap, I know big party foul but I just couldn't anymore. Luckily it literally was just like 15 minutes and the girls rallied me to finish what we had started. In the end we stayed until the very end until we were kindly asked to leave just because we didn't want it to stop. Thank you Marquee, that was an awesome introduction for me into the Dayclub Party scene.

On our way out of Cosmo we ended up in one of the clothing stores right there before you get out, where I just plucked myself on a very comfy couch and made friends with the lovely gentleman from Norway next to me, not sure what he thought of me though especially when I started asking the sales staff if we could get some drinks. Sadly they didn't have any, oh well probably better that way.

We eventually made it back to PH and I pretty much immediately fell asleep.

The Rest in a few.

[darksideofjae]

awesome, wish I could see the pics at work. Will definitely take a look when I get home.

[BayAreaOlli]

So now this was the night of the initial reason I had planned this trip to Vegas, which was the Rascal Flatts/Brad Paisley concert, but guess what when I feel asleep which i assume was around 6 or 7, I didn't wake up until 10pm and none of the girls did either and at that point the concert was finished. Funny how things go and this hasn't been the first time I have missed things in Vegas that I had planned, heck I missed midnight last NYE because i partied way too hard early. So I wasn't all that much upset as I was having way too much fun and knew I probably would have been dead at this point if I would have gone to the concert.

But we did have to get up as we had table reservation at XS that night to see Steve Angello, so we did get up but as mentioned the first night it took a good 90 minutes for everyone to be ready so we didn't get to XS until about 12:30am, which actually turned out perfect as we pretty much breezed through the line and a host took care of us immediately.


The Group in front of XS.

One of the girls had actually set up this one with a previous host hook-up so we ended up having an inside table for just a two bottle limit, which was great. But then when we got to the table the most embarrassing thing happened to me, my card's fraud protection kicked in when our waitress tried to run it. I wanted to hide under a rock, but the waitress made me feel very at ease pretty much saying it happens to her at least once a night and it was nothing new, true or not it definitely made me feel a little better. So out I went and after about 15 minutes on the phone with my bank, the card was working again, at least until Monday morning when they did it again to me lol. So we did it all again bottles were ordered, drinks were drunk, friends were made. When the table next to us was filled with one guy and 8 girls, all of a sudden my ratio didn't look all that special anymore lol. We ended up closing the place down this time and it was daylight again by the time we left Encore after a little gambling in the Casino. Headed back dead tired, but what a day it was.

Day 3 Sunday April 22:
This one I can keep pretty short, as we all were just beat. Initially we had thought about Wet Republic maybe, but we decided against it, instead we just did some shopping, laid out at the Encore Pool, where one of us had a distant cousin staying, which is actually very nice. At night we did hit up Jaleo at the Cosmo, which was really good and they do have a great white sangria bowl, but afterwards we pretty much just gambled deep into the night and hit the sack.

Day 4 Monday April 23:
The girls all had early flights, so we already had said our goodbyes the night before and they were pretty much gone before I even awoke. Had some lunch, did some gambling and got to the airport just in time to see my flight be delayed by 90 minutes. Hate when that happens after I get to the airport, but at least it was the way back so it's not as bad. Got back home Monday night and just crashed.

Overall an amazing weekend with a pretty steep price tag, but I have no regrets at all and am already planning the next two trips, EDC in June and maybe Miss USA the weekend before lol.

A few side notes:
- if you are with a group of girls, that don't eat much and you expect to pick up the tab pick places with shared plates, it works better than having the girls order a big menu item of which they will only eat half and it will be easier on your valet.
- Tip your security, I met some great security guys and they definitely take care of you if you show your appreciation and once you do tip them don't be afraid to use them either if there is a situation that you would like to have resolved.
- Call your bank before u go to Vegas if you have a card with fraud protection and are planning to use it to spend a serious amount of cash, I learned that the hard way. Wouldn't even let me buy cigarettes Monday morning lol.

That's it then, congrats if you got all the way down here without skipping shit .

[Svetlana]

Nice TR! I love your friend's blue bikini. super cute

[Carolina J]

Nice TR!! The chicks are hot and it sounds like you guys killed it!!

[IRockNvegas]

Ahhhh a good trip report, so refreshing , you all did it up!

[Stix]

What a great trip! Thanks for sharing the pics too.

[BAJA]

Great trip report, thanks.

With friends like that to roll with, who needs GTL?

[BCEagle]

The real question is, did you bang any of them?

[T Dot]

The real question is, did you bang any of them?

The real question is, how much did it cost to bang them?

[WT661]

hahah damn

[BayAreaOlli]

The real question is, did you bang any of them?

The real question is, how much did it cost to bang them?

Cost of weekend without gambling loses divided over four girls divided over three nights, now that I am thinking about it not all that much

[Jhaulotte]

I would also like to say thank you for the pics.