Next.

 

Going to let the Vegas breathe a bit after the long Xmas trip. 

Already starting to get the bug again, just 1 week back, but I'm going to let my better senses calm that a bit and give myself a few months to build up the hype. Secondary reason is to let the vaccine hopefully do it's work and allow me to get back to a Vegas that looks more like Vegas, unlike the Xmas trip.

I had considered doing a "10th anniversary" trip in February to commemorate my first trip 10 years ago, but instead I'm going to be prudent and stretch that out to a birthday trip in April. Nearly a 4 month gap between trips but again that gives things time to calm down from the winter virus hit, and hopefully some more things will be up and running by the time April rolls around.

I have tentatively booked Aria in a basic strip view room for the 21st-26th. Going over a weekend saves on PTO used at work and will likely be a better experience in terms of people on strip and things open for them. The weekday trips right now are fruitless until the daytime convention crowds come back, there's just not enough open during the week to make it fun. That costs me a little bit more, as I'm usually not comped on weekend nights, but still got a great rate of $27/night for an upgraded room at a great resort. If something better comes along from Cosmo or Venetian I can always dump this and rebook, but it'll probably be hard to beat this rate at a 5-star over a weekend.

Holding off til April gives me a nice comfortable save regime for this one too, I will need to pull together around $4K and can take my time doing it starting with my next check. A Feb trip would have meant a crash save and no money for anything else. The trip length is more sane this time too, 4 1/2 days as opposed to the 5 or 6 day monsters I've been doing this year. Those get to be too long for me body-wise these days.

The flight's on Southwest this time, haven't flown with them in years as they're usually more expensive but got a RT non-stop at perfect in/out times for $88. Won't do any better than that with Alaska. I'll get in around 5:30p Wed and leave at around 11a Sunday. Can get to the airport after work on the Wednesday then not have to be up too early on fly-out day.

It's a haul away, but I'm glad I have dates mapped out. Always raises my spirits, especially now, to have a trip on the horizon, even if that horizon is distant.