Well, I’m back. After travelling around fifteen thousand miles in 31 days, using 9 planes, 5 boats, 4 trains, countless cabs and a whole bunch of buses my carbon footprint is almost as big as the hole Vegas left in my bank balance.
I’ve only glanced at my statement (and quickly glanced away) but it looks like I spent as much money in three days in Vegas as I did in the four weeks leading up to it. And even though luck wasn’t with me I only lost a fraction of that money gambling, the rest seemed just to evaporate as part of the cost of eating, drinking and just being in the place. I’m glad the exchange rate is favourable.
Sadly I don’t have much else to say about Vegas, I went to wind down and spend a few days on my own and it served it’s purpose admirably. It’d have been nice to at least break even, but the city is built on people like me losing a few dollars over a weekend. I’ll go again, but I think it’d be better to have a few more people so there’s a group of you to do stuff with if (when) the gambling funds run out.
I’ll hopefully take time to write about the rest of the holiday when I get a second, but I’m sure I’m still due a few posts about Russia from last year so it may take a while.
Looking back I can say that it was fun, a bit more hectic than I expected but worth doing and with some notable highlights. I realise that I had no idea what the trip would really be like. Now that I’ve done it — and had the chance to talk to people who’ve been on dozens of other trips — I’ve got a much better idea and I’ll be more informed if I’m picking another trip like that. But I’ve already decided not to do something similar next year, it’s too much time and money in one go, better to spread out my time off for a change. I have a faint idea of what to do instead, hopefully it’ll should take shape over the next few weeks.
Having said that I’ve already caught myself looking at a couple of tours on the web this morning, and one of the other guys on the tour pointed me to a site that searches multiple tour companies, so maybe I’ll change my mind.
However, it’s time for a few days of relaxation then I’m going to plunge forward and get the kitchen and bathroom finished before the end of the year.