1. It's really hot here. Really hot. Like melt your sandals beside the pool hot. But it's not like home where the humidity weighs you down and makes your clothes stick to you. There's been a constant desert breeze and, except for the walk we took at high noon on a cloudless Sunday, it's been really kind of gorgeous.  I've drank an exorbitant amount of water {which puts me at a financial disadvantage to all the drinkers - Bottle of Water: $3. Beer: $1. What?} but I've discovered that our air conditioning is so strong in our room that I can refill a bottle from the sink before I go to bed and it's basically ice cold by the time I get up.

2. The grass is all astro turf. That's basically as weird as the dancing drag queens on Fremont Street. Landscaping companies are considered 'synthetic lawn specialists'. Even the trees planted along the strip are in giant pots, probably rigged up to a giant, million dollar irrigation system.

3. There is no time. Nothing stops or slows down or tells you that it's dinner time. There is nothing to mark the passage of days except the rising and setting of the sun. You sleep when you're tired and you go do stuff when you're not. It's totally strange and I have no idea how we'll go back to the real world when it's all over.

4. Black out blinds are the greatest invention on earth. Because of point number three sleep happens when it happens - not when real life would normally dictate. I woke up just before noon today and it was as dark as midnight in our room. The joy of ABSOLUTELY NO OBLIGATION is gorgeous!

5. Raphael is not a ninja turtle, he's a fast-talking European who really thinks I need a time share. Because we are frugal but really wanted to see some Vegas shows, we went to a presentation that had us fighting off some pretty aggressive marketers BUT we stayed strong - having agreed before we went through the doors that under no circumstance would we buy any sort of package no matter how amazing - and got four tickets to any show at the V Theatre in Planet Hollywood!

6. If you vacation here with your young children, I will judge you. I'm serious! Who brings their children here? Dragging them through casinos at three in the morning while people are smoking and stumbling drunk? It's disgusting. Shame on each and every one of you!

7. It's incredibly beautiful {and incredibly sad}. The architecture is gorgeous. The view of the mountains is breathtaking. The way the lights play against the buildings at sunset is truly something to behold. The fresco ceiling in the Venetian? There are no words! Yet spattered among all this beauty are the dirty, forgotten, almost invisible people, begging just to survive. Old old men with matted beards and torn shirts, a young man with his skinny dog asking everyone who passes if they just had a morsel of food to feed them both, a mother and her two children holding signs, a wraith of a woman clasping a Big Gulp cup like it was her life line, shuffling past a gorgeous fountain. Such a juxtaposition - the yin and yang of day to day in Vegas.

And this is all after only two full days. It feels like we've been here for weeks already! Here's for five more days of discoveries and thrills {and zombies burlesque shows}!