i think we may have walked a marathon...

so today . . . we walked.

we walked and we walked and we walked. we ate our thanksgiving meal. and then we walked and walked and walked some more.

the reason we are in las vegas is to scope out wedding venues for diandra's wedding this spring. this seemed like a good time to come, since we would have three days free, and none of us would have to take any time off from work.

apparently half a million other people thought it would also be a good time to visit las vagas...

there are a lot of people here. a lot! but i digress...

my plan was to do the wedding stuff today, while rollie camped out in our room and watched football. then i thought we could do fun stuff tomorrow before leaving to go home on saturday. but my plan was thwarted when the venues we wanted to check out were mostly closed today. this is vegas baby! i thought everything was open all the time! i was wrong again.

so instead we walked up and down the strip--twice--and around and around and around in the hotel shops. we stopped to sit--twice just to rest and twice to eat. and that is all. you cannot even imagine how our feet and legs feel now that we are back "home" on our cushy beds. i fully expect to wake up screaming in the night from muscle cramps. doesn't that sound like fun???

i should clarify that diandra and i did most of the walking. oddly, rollie was not interested in walking and walking and walking. which is probably just as well. because when he walks with us in crowds of people, he can't help but do his secret service routine--stand tall, eyes moving above everyone else, slowly, side to side, anticipating trouble. (i personally think he is secretly hoping for trouble so he can go into his black belt ninja stuff. he says that is not true--he just wants to be prepared, you know, just in case. but i still think he is always hoping his black belt ninja stuff will one day come in handy...)

we started out this morning (and i use that term loosely,) headed for the bellagio. it is thanksgiving, and my friend wendy said we HAD to eat at the bellagio buffet. so that was our plan. diandra and i took the circuitous route through the caesar's palace shops while rollie took the direct route. he arrived first even though he left a couple of hours after we did. he texted us (thank goodness for cell phones!) and said there was a line. he was not exaggerating. there was a LINE! a line that zigzagged like toy story 3 at disneyland, and then went around a corner. i think it would have taken us the rest of the day to get in there. i like to eat, but standing in line for hours and hours was just not my idea of fun for today. so we got out of line and went on a search for food that could be immediately ours! we tried outback steak house, but we were too early. i was ready to settle for mcdonald's. really! i mean, it wouldn't be the first time we had eaten fast food on thanksgiving day... but we settled on panda express and pizza. i knew it was meant to be, when a table opened up right in front of us!

after lunch we decided it was time for coats. did i mention that it is coooold here? it wasn't too bad earlier in the day when the sun was shining on us. but by the middle of the afternoon, we either had to get our coats or turn into human popsicles. and that is when i made a terrible error in judgement--i decided i wanted to walk all the way to the end of the strip to the excaliber hotel. diandra reluctantly went with me. it got colder. it got dark. we went up long flights of stairs to cross walkways across the busy streets. we took a few more pictures. and finally we arrived!the colored turrets were beautiful. the hotel? not so much. it wasn't exactly what i expected. at all. and now, we had to walk all the way back. and it was colder. and darker. but we huddled together and just kept walking. and walking. and walking.

we were going to go shopping in the morning before doing the wedding stuff (which is why we came here in the first place--but it is easy to forget that when we are busy having so much fun!) it is black friday, and we ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS go shopping early in the morning on black friday.

but not this year. this year we are sort of exhausted. and sore! we are thinking of spending black friday on the internet. and we still have to get the wedding stuff done...

...because i am not sure i have the energy for another weekend in vegas!

at least, not until after christmas ;)