Las Vegas: Sleazy Hotels, Birthdays and Dead Bodies

Driving from San Francisco to Las Vegas takes just over 9 hours. It’s been an interesting and eventful weekend celebrating my sister’s birthday.

Meghan, my sister and I left at around 7PM on Friday and eventually got into Las Vegas at around 4:30AM. We checked into the St. Tropez Hotel and noticed that our hotel room was definitely not up to par (this is the SAME place we stayed at in 2001 that had blood all over the hotel room… I’ll have to find and post that story for those who don’t know about it). There were dried remnants of vomit near one of the beds, the pillows and sheets were stained and dirty (thankfully, not with blood this time) and the place just reaked of cigarette smoke.

We slept for a few hours and awoke to the sound of a cell phone. It was our parents informing us that they were going to drive to Las Vegas for the weekend as well! That was awesome. However, this denied us getting anymore sleep (only 3 hours), so we awoke to straighten up the room and wait for friends. While waiting, we noticed how horrible this place actually was. There were needles in the parking lot, as well as used condoms. Definitely a classy looking place.

Michelle called our parents to complain and they offered to upgrade our accomodations! For Saturday night, our entire group of 11 people would be staying in the Bellagio! That was an amazing hotel and all of our friends were extremely thankful to our parents.

We had a quick blitz around Vegas, checking out various things such as a museum at the Venetian, the swimming pool at the Bellagio and then went out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe with our parents. Afterwards, we went out on the strip to examine more casinos and drink/gamble away money.

Michelle ended up feeling sick, so she didn’t go out. A few of us checked out the Excalibur and Luxor and then headed back to our hotel to catch up on sleep we missed the previous night.

On our drive back on Sunday, Interstate 15 was shut down since there was an accident about half a mile ahead of us. We must have just missed it. After a half hour of sitting on the freeway, they began to let traffic through. The hold up was a motorcyclist that had somehow crashed.

As we drove by, we noticed things weren’t entirely right. In the middle of the road lay a body partly covered by a blanket. It’s legs and feet were sticking out from underneath in a very contorted position and a motorcycle pulled off to one side of the road. It was a horrid sight.

Besides funerals, this is the closest I have ever experienced to human death. It hits especially close, since that person was also most likely returning from Las Vegas for the weekend and had probably passed by our car not more than 10 minutes before hand. They were probably thinking of the money they had spent this weekend, or how anxious they wanted to get home… crashing probably wasn’t even on their mind. Ugh.

It’s also kind of sobering since I know quite a few friends, as well as my Dad, who ride motorcycles. You can be the most cautious driver/rider in the world, but it only takes one idiot to change everything. Meghan believes that she explicitly remembers the rider and believes it was a female. I haven’t found any news reports on it yet though.

In anycase, we finally made it home at 11PM on Sunday night. This weekend was a lot to deal with, physically and emotionally and it’s good to finally be home. Now to tackle school.

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