How About That Ride In?

You sort of hope that your first trip to Las Vegas is everything you see on stupid shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and/or The Girls Next Door. You buy all new everything and just anticipate the moment that you’re invited to be a special guest in a Cirque show or better yet to sing at the piano with Sir Elton John. My first trip was in 2010, and when I described this trip to Joseph, he replied with, “Yeah that doesn’t happen to dudes.” 

Well Fast Pass to the flight real quick: We'd been in the air for an hour and I almost caused us to land. Not really, but based on the comments from the flight attendants, you would have thought that I poured gasoline all over the other passengers and lit ten cigarettes.

The flight attendants had already come through offering us drinks and snacks, and they came back through a second time.  I saw a bucket on top of the cart with an overturned cup and napkin sticking out of the top of it.  I assumed it was a garbage can.  A magazine order form had slid out of my Us Weekly, so I placed it on top of the bucket. 

The attendant turned back around with giant eyes and exclaimed, "Oh...my...god, WHO just did that?"

I raised my hand.

She glared at me and said very loudly, "That's NOT trash."

I thought this was a little dramatic, but I apologized then took the paper back, looked at her, and smiled.

She snatched the ice bucket and stormed off to the front. Three minutes later she came back to the other attendant on the cart, which is still right next to my seat and I had to go to the bathroom. 

"Oh, my god.  Someone just put trash into the ice bucket and I had to take that ice bucket and go to the front and get new ice," she said to the other attendant.

I guess she thought we didn't see her do any of that.

The other attendant smirked and said, "Nice. How annoying. Do people not see that this is ice?"

Little Miss Sunshine continued, "One time I had someone put a dirty diaper in there. How gross."  

They continued to speak out about all of the terrible incidents that they had experienced where people put their garbage into the ice bucket, thinking it was trash. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t label the bucket or move it altogether.

The stewardess came back through asking for trash.

She approached my seat and said smugly, “Do you have any trash?”

I replied, “Oh, absolutely not.” I had already shoved my oreo wrapper and banana peel into my handbag.

This was two hours after we nearly missed boarding call because we were buying Us Weekly magazines, which is what got us into this mess to begin with. 

We landed and headed to Caesars Palace (thanks to the movie The Hangover, this is where we chose to stay). Our suite in the Palace Tower overlooking the pools was waiting for us.

I really don't even know where to start, maybe the part where we got invited to Hugh Hefner's birthday party. But we'll get to that later.

We got stopped by several Promoters who offered us passes to various clubs that evening.  We met a guy named Chris who invited us to Lavo that night and offered us VIP entry and free drinks all night. Perfect, I thought. Here is our first step toward hanging out with Kendra from “The Girls Next Door.” We got all of the details and made plans to meet him out front so he could escort us in and to our table.

After an entire day of pool luxury, we headed back upstairs to get ready for our first official night out in Vegas. The bathroom was as big as my house, so we all got ready together. It was truly beginning to feel like an episode of something on E! network.

We were a little early to Lavo nightclub (who knew that 9:30pm was the equivalent of eating dinner at 4pm at Morrison’s cafeteria), so we decided to put our names in and eat dinner there first since you don't sleep in Vegas unless you accidentally fall asleep in the shower. The later you get started, the easier it is to stay awake through it. As we're standing in line, I made my way up to the hostess stand and told her our names.

My friend yelled, “Kari! Hold on,” and motioned for me to walk over to her.

I walked over and my friends were talking to another guy in a suit with a blackberry and two iPhones all in the same hand. 

“Hi, I’m Shawn. I have a dinner table set up with reservations for 7 people and there are 3 seats open. If you ladies are interested, we’d love to have you. Everything will be on the house. We just ask that you tip your server.”

She said, "Great, we’d love to." 

I of course also loved the idea but I spent the better part of the walk to the table wondering who we would have to sleep with before, after, or during dinner for this.

We sat down with three of the most adorable girls with fabulous British accents. We held back from asking them annoying questions about tea, crumpets, and the Queen. Shawn introduced us to his friend and coworker, ChaZzy, who was a promotions hostess at Palms. We were all dying to get in there thanks to Holly, Bridget, and Kendra.

Dinner was insane, and the fact that it was all free was even more insane.  The server just kept bringing out more food. I imagined this was what King Herod’s banquet tables looked like. After dinner we were led over to the glamorous lobby to sit on the VIP couches until we could go up to our table in the actual nightclub. 

Throughout the evening we had been getting texts from the initial host that we met which is the reason we even came to Lavo in the first place.  I kept saying things like, "We're eating dinner and will be up soon" or "Call you shortly" to which he replied, "How did you get a table? I have your tickets in my pocket and will come say hi. Where are you sitting?"

I looked down at ChaZzy {I say this with love, she is my tiniest cutest friend (yes, we have remained friends for these past 10 years!)}.

“What should I say? Chris keeps texting me telling me that he’s going to come say hi and bring us our tickets. We want to stay with you guys!”

“Don’t respond, Hun. You’re with us now.”

I loved that statement so much that it gave me chills.

Naturally, I spotted Chris out of the corner of my eye and he was looking for us in the crowd. ChaZzy stood up and said not to worry, she would block us from his view. Now I appreciated this gesture so much, but please revisit my previous description. I wasn't sure how this was going to pan out.

Finally, Shawn tells us it's time to go up.  The girls and I follow Shawn, ChaZzy, and the Brits up the staircase to Lavo Nightclub. This was truly a scene from a movie. The music and lights were overwhelming. He takes us past the extremely long line, straight to our table set up behind a rope. A server comes and brings out two bottles of Grey Goose. She sets them on our table with pineapple juice, cranberry, tonic, fruit trays, and anything else you could imagine.  

“Hi Ladies! Welcome. Please enjoy this, on the house. I’ll be back to check on you very soon,” said a girl in a sequined bikini top, red panties and clear heels. I knew this was going to get crazy, quick. I was looking around hoping to spot an LA Laker.  I glanced down at a menu and noticed that ONE bottle service was $595, and we had two, for $0.

We were dancing and having a blast. The girl next to us was standing up on the back of her booth with her leg up on the wall showing everyone her underwear.

We all danced for hours, our feet were killing us, but we didn't care. The music dimmed momentarily, and a host got on the stage and announced that the bikini contest was about to take place. The girls that got up on the stage were all competing to win $100,000.00.  If I had not eaten all that food at the pool followed by our massive free dinner, I might have gotten up there for that.  

At about 4am Vegas time the girls and I were winding down. I was starting to fall asleep standing up. Shawn, ChaZzy, and The Brits all gave us hugs and told us that we would touch base the next day, because they already had our next night all set up.

 ***

The next day we decided to go to the Venus Pool Club at Caesars. The pool host escorted us over to three chairs that were right next to the bar and across from the stairs to get into the pool. A server came over and brought us a tray full of food and a pitcher full of margaritas.  

“Hi ladies, see those gentlemen across the way? They sent this over for you.”

We look over and this group of fraternity brothers are sitting on a Daybed, waving at us. Two of them approached us and sat down.  

“Hey Ladies, why don’t you move your party over to our side?”

Nice pick up line. Of course we go.  

The DJ had just finished setting up. His first song was Snoop, so just like any other normal white girl group we dropped everything and started dancing right there. Some other girls around us decided to join in. After about 10 minutes, we invited our whole area to join, and the pool was filled with dancers.

I looked at the DJ and yelled over the music, "You're welcome!" 

The next thing I know, another server walks over with shots of Patron for everyone. A few more hours of this passed and we knew we had to go Boot & Rally for the upcoming evening’s festivities.

We had plans with the same crew as the night before to go out to dinner and the nightclub at Tao. We got the same VIP treatment that we got the night before. Shawn met us at the door and paraded us past everyone in line.  He led us down this long entryway that had fountains on each side filled with rose petals and floating candles. He brought us into the VIP Lounge to wait for our table. The decor was unlike anything I had ever seen. He came back for us 5 minutes later and led us up a staircase to our table.

We ate more sushi and Asian dumplings than I knew what to do with. We were sitting with the Brits from the night before and 3 new girls who were at a Bachelorette Party. The Bride to Be was a little too excited to have us at their table and in all of their pictures. 

All the Bride-To-Be could talk about is how her husband was Asian and she knew all about this food that we were eating.  

“So these are chopsticks, and this is soy sauce. My Asian fiance Todd taught me a lot about Asian foods since he is Asian.”

“Todd?”

We just let her keep going.

“Egg drop soup is something that the Asians really like. Also, edamame. And don’t forget sake.”

At this point she was just naming foods off the menu at any Panda Express.

The Brits were not paying her any attention, and they just kept bringing out more food and drinks.

“Oh, my god, this is the most fun party I’ve ever been to. I’m so glad that everyone could come out,” she declared.

We were very confused since I didn't even know her name. But we assured her we could not imagine being anywhere else but with her at her party.

The server brought us our ticket and the total shown was $10.00. We obviously left a very generous gratuity, but I was still in utter shock that this was happening at each meal.

We met back up with ChaZzy after about an hour. The rest of the night was basically the above on repeat except at different places. Standing on the 55th floor on a glass patio at Ghostbar after visiting The Playboy Club really made me second guess how I was going to be making future decisions for my life.

“Hey Girls, what are you up to tomorrow night?”

“Ugh, we are flying back to Atlanta tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. We’ll be celebrating Hef’s birthday tomorrow night and I wanted to put you three on the VIP Guest List.”

At this moment, all of the Girls Next Door episodes that we had seen were running through my mind in fast forward. I know some people aspire to finish law school or create a new fundraiser to stop malaria. I just wanted to meet Hugh Hefner.

I am still mad that I didn't change our flight. In fact, as I'm typing this sentence, I'm getting madder about it. 

Our trip had sadly come to an end. On Saturday afternoon, we called Shawn, ChaZzy, and The Brits to tell them goodbye.

Getting into our cab, we officially closed out the most perfect trip in the world. It was really hard to adapt to regular people life when we got home. I mean who wants to wait 30 minutes to eat at Chilis? They don’t even have a VIP section.