Day 13 - Las Vegas to San Francisco

Thursday 24 April.  Our flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco was scheduled for 11.55am, so we left our hotel about 9.30 to make sure we had plenty of time to return our rental car and get the shuttle to the airport.  Both  the airports we have been to so far - LAX and Las Vegas, both have off site car rental depots which provide a free shuttle to and from them.

We got to the airport with plenty of time, and then our flight got delayed.  By the time we took off we were about an hour late leaving.

Once we arrived at SFO we travelled by shuttle to our house.

The house is actually a second floor apartment, it is about 30 minutes on the MUNI away from downtown San Francisco.  We all bought MUNI passes so we could use all the trolley/trains, cable cars and busses that we needed, with a good MUNI app on our phones we didn't really have any troubles finding our way around.

Our first night we headed into the Fishermans wharf area for dinner, and we had a bit of a look around, the temperature change from Las Vegas was fairly extreme, about 15celius difference, it was cold.  Then we caught the train home, it was an interesting experience, lots of weird people come out at night!

More Las Vegas

Here are some more photos we took in Las Vegas...

On "The Strip"

The view from our hotel window.

The girls sharing the sofa bed.

The only gambling we did, a quick 5 minutes on the pokies.

Watching the Bellagio fountain.

We went to Cirque du soleil LOVE, fantastic show.

Overall my opinion of Las Vegas isn't very high, it was a very dirty city - in that the footpaths and roads were covered in black dirt/soot, the kids would come home with black feet, and our shoes etc were all totally black on the bottom.  There are homeless people, and people walking around drinking everywhere.  But we are all glad we went to see it for ourselves.

Day 12 - Hoover Dam

Wednesday 23 April.  Even though we saw the Hoover Dam from our helicopter trip the day before, we decided it was worth the 45 minute drive each way to see it up close.

The main highway (US93) previously went over the dam, but in 2010 a new bypass was opened, that allows traffic to avoid the dam.  The bypass included a stunning bridge...

We walked over the dam, one side is Nevada (where Las Vegas is) and the other side is Arizona.

Once we left the dam, we went up to the new bridge bypass, there is a lookout and path to walk along the side of the bridge, the views are amazing...

Day 11 - Grand Canyon

Tuesday 22 April.

Both families had helicopter flights booked for sightseeing trips over the Grand Canyon.  The Godfrey's were booked with Serenity, and they were going to land in the canyon.  We booked through Maverick and we chose a non landing option, but we did fly over the Lad Vegas strip.

Here is a collection of our photos.