Earlier today after lunch with Claire and Jamie, Uns and myself headed back to the Flamingo and out the back to the pick-up point to wait for our lift to the airport for the Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour. As part of our packaged deal we bought, we would get picked up by stretch limo and dropped off at the airport, then returned by limo again after the helicopter ride. That's certainly one up on your average taxi ride.

After getting dropped at McCarran International Airport, we had our safety briefing then hopped into our allocated helicopter, with Russell at the helm. The flight out to the canyon took a bit over 40 minutes with us flying past Lake Mead, via the Hoover Dam and the Black Canyon and then towards the Grand Canyon and finally descending 3,200 feet below the rim of the canyon and landing on a private landing site, which is part of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Next to the landing site, there's a pre-built shaded picnic area where we got to have lunch, but Uns and I decided to take a stroll down the path and have our food with a view looking down the canyon instead. Not a bad spot for lunch :)

After maybe half an hour on the ground for lunch, it was back in the helicopter and back to McCarran Airport. On the way back we got to sit up front and landed chatting to Russell just about the whole way back, about the canyon, flying, his job, etc., which was pretty interesting, as long with the amazing views of the Nevada Desert and the Grand Canyon alongside us. Before coming into the airport, we flew down alongside the length of the Vegas Strip to get an awesome bird's eye view of the Fremont Street Experience as well as all the hotels and casinos along the Strip before coming into land. Once on the ground, we once again had our black limo waiting for us again to take us back to our hotels.

We decided to get dropped at New York-New York Casino instead of the Flamingo to check it out plus I wanted to go on the rollercoaster which looked awesome and is built around the casino AND even goes through the casino in one section. Crazy. But I had to try it out. Unfortunately Uns was wearing a dress which she figured wouldn't be ideal on a rollercoaster so couldn't join me on that. Will just have to know for next time!

After a walk around the casino, we stopped in at Nine Fine Irishmen pub for an Irish Coffee then headed over to the road to Hard Rock Cafe for a quick look inside. We landed up eating there, served by Misty who took American customer service to an entirely new level, as Uns said "it felt as if there were three of us at the table". Haha! I do however now think I'm done with burgers... had my fair share of them and other fast food for a while. Apparently California are a bit more sensible with their portions, so hopefully back to slightly more normal eating.

After a walk around the Hard Rock Memorabilia floor upstairs, we made a mission over to The Mirage to watch their hourly Volcano and Fire show which was pretty darn impressive - glad we managed to get to see that.

After the show we made our way back to the Flamingo to pick up our bags, find a taxi and head out towards the bus station for the overnight bus down to L.A. which should get us in first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully it's not too disruptive or dodgy, but at least we get a full day around Hollywood and L.A. tomorrow.