Good Morning Loves xoxo
So where do I start? We left our house at 5am on Sunday 23rd of April to get to the airport for a 7am flight, everything went smoothly, parking was a breeze (we use QuickPark http://quickpark.ie/ here's a link if you are travelling from Dublin airport) our flight with Aer Lingus was smooth and quick and we landed in Gatwick Airport about an hour later. We were met with 2 Virgin Atlantic reps who brought us through to a private check in desk and security screening and we were through to the terminal in about 30 mins. We grabbed a coffee and headed to our connecting flight. For those of you that have flown with Virgin before you will know how amazing their flights are.
The flight was approximately 10 hours but we were delayed about an hour on the runway for refuelling but all in all it wasn't a bad flight. The food as nice and with having your own TV screen you are free to watch movies, TV shows and play games at your leisure. When we landed we made our way to the baggage carousel where our bags were already waiting for us so we picked them up and headed to U.S. immigration. This took about an hour as we opted for the self service kiosk and it was kind of busy but we made it through without and hastle. We hopped on to a shuttle to the car rental building (about a 5 minute drive away) and went to collect our car but when we got to the desk the guy informed us that we had booked our car from a different location and he would need to charge us $220 to collect it there. We respectfully declined and hopped in a taxi to Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, a $20 cab ride to our location and we picked up our car from 2 lovely reps at the car rental desk. It took a little while to process the paperwork but we got our car eventually.
So after approximately 18-20 hours of travelling we made it to our hotel. We got to check in and there was no line (this is pretty much unheard of in Vegas) and we were checked in straight away. We got a lovely girl at reception who gave us our room keys and slightly groggy, tired and hungry we made our way to our room. We were given one of the newly refurbished rooms and it was lovely, just what we needed. When we went to unpack and put some things into the safe it wouldn't work..... queue a little mini meltdown, when you've been on the go for 20 + hours and your starving and tired having a problem with your room is the last thing you want. We rang reception and they told us someone would be right up......
So about 90 minutes passed and we still hadn't heard anything so us being very tired and hangry grabbed all of our things and made our way back down to reception. We explained the situation to another girl who spoke to her manager who told us that they didn't have any other similar rooms available at that time and that if we wanted she would send security up straight away so we made our way back up to the room and met security at the door. He reset the safe and it seemed to work when he left. We started unpacking a few things and went to put some items in the safe and it broke again, I could have cried....... I was so tired and really hungry so again we got all our luggage and went back down to reception. We got to the desk and a lovely guy called Duane helped us, we explained the situation to him and within 10 seconds he had found us another room and given us our keys, he apologised for the inconvenience and told us that he had upgraded our booking to a suite. I was actually really shocked because I was quite happy with the room that we had but I wouldn't have felt comfortable leaving items in a broken safe so we took the upgrade and headed back up to our room.
The suite is lovely, it has 2 bathrooms, a kitchenette, a spacious sitting area, a big bedroom, 2 small balconies and a double wardrobe. All of the rooms come standard with a hairdryer, iron and ironing board, a coffee maker, a TV and a few toiletries. We have a partial strip view which overlooks The Mandalay Bay, The Tropicana, New York New York and The MGM Grand hotels.
Yesterday we decided to pick up a gift card to load some money onto so we picked up a prepaid visa card which we have done a few times in the past. We picked up the card in a local Walgreen's and we loaded some money onto this card and when we went to activate it the company requested proof of I.D. and proof of address which had never happened before so we had to ring them. After 30 minutes on the phone (I dread to see my phone bill) one of the guys requested that I send a copy of my passport and my drivers licence onto them so they could verify my identity and they would activate the card within 6 hours. We were a little stressed about the whole thing but we got ready and went out for breakfast. A little after 1pm I checked my emails and I had received an email from the company declining our request to activate the card.... Queue another mini meltdown. We drove back to the hotel to ring them again and after about another 20 minutes and a slightly heated conversation we managed to get the card activated.
If you are ever in the states and want to buy a prepaid gift card instead of carrying cash DO NOT purchase this card from netSpend..... Its a pain in the ass.
Buy one of these instead, they are a godsend and you can use them online as well as in stores.
So after a stressful few days we can finally relax and enjoy our holiday. Its currently 7:45 and I have been up since about 5:30, Jet lag can be a bit of a pain but it passes in a few days. I'm just about to get ready to go for breakfast (and wake my husband who could sleep through anything, at any time and pretty much anywhere). I hope to have a few more blog posts up while I am here but I plan t relax as much as I can so we will see how it goes. Have an amazing day everyone and if you want to follow me on Instagram I will be posting there daily.
Lots of love
Kim xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment