What a day!! :).Highlights of the day.
Airport : Sucks!! I guess I just had a lot of expectations for the airport. It was dingy, smoky and dark. And I got the first glimpse of the “addicted” gamblers. The ones with the weary, worn out look on them. At least that is my theory :). Naveed thinks that I am crazy..
The Strip : One of the most magnificient creations of the human race!! Regardless of what one is told, I don’t think anyone is prepared for the “garishness” of the strip. It is bright, it is loud, it is large and it is addicting :).
The Hotel : I think this was one of our (or the only!!) bad decision for the trip. We decided to skimp on the money a bit and decided to stay at CirusCircus. As soon as we dropped off at the hotel, we were surprised at the lenght of the line for registration. It took me ~40 minutes to get to the counter. And then, we were offered a “smoking room”!!! because they didn’t have any non-smoking left. Me being the “take-whatever-you-get” type, just took the keys. When we went to the room, Naveed was like “Hell no!!!, we are not staying here”. He called the frontdesk and gave them a piece of his mind (him being smoke allergic and all!! 🙂 ). Surprise-Surprise-Surprise, the hotel suddenly found a non-smoking room for us. The rooms are still not something one would be excited about… I would not reccomend “CircusCircus” to anyone going to Vegas. Unless, you are there just for “gambling” :)..
Breakfast : We had breakfast at the “Bagel Store” in Circus Circus. Made plans for the day and had some bagels.. Hmm.. creamcheese. Shailah wanted to go the Spa and the rest of us decided to run some errands and get tickets for some shows. We planned on meeting up at noon.
Morning Fiasco : So, my IPod Nano decided to take a crap recently. It just wouldn’t start up. A “www.apple.com/support” error message shows up when booting it. Formatting it or restoring it, didn’t help. Hearing about Apple’slegendary support, I decided to take it to the apple store in Vegas. We had to wait for ~1.5 hours, but they swapped my Nano without any questions. Kudos to the apple support team.
Afternoon : Went to Wal Mart to get a camera for the trip.. here is one of my most memorable shots from the trip..
I know..I know!! It is crazy… Don’t ask, why we have to have the anonymous shot :).
The Kona Airport is such a big difference from the huge hectic airports that we see in many cities nowadays. Actually this was the first airport that I saw in the US that was completely “open”. As you can see from the picture, you can literally see the plane from the baggage checking area. In fact there is only one terminal. I instantly felt at home on the Big Island. The whole atmosphere was so laid back. No hurry to get anywhere. No hustling..No jostling. Not to mention that the weather was just great.
So off we go and collect our luggage. I took out my new 
So we were supposed to go South from the airport to get to our hotel, but as it happens with such things :), we went North. It was interesting to observe the landscape. I wish I had a picture to show for it. The ground was made up of cooled down lava. It was like a chocolate brownie, but just black in color :). As we drove along the highway, wondering why we don’t see the exit to the town yet, we noticed that there were white stones placed in funny ways on the ground (cooled lava). There were sentences from “I love you Jim” to “Katsumoto was here on 1/1/2001” [Alright.. I made that up] and the usual graffiti symbols. It was great to see them scattered all along the road. Now when one see such stuff, one has to dutifully pull over and take some pictures :). Michelle immediately went into “artist” mode and made up the following…
Why 2..? well that is something that Michelle has to explain. Just make sure that you have a couple of hours to spare when you ask her that question :). After taking some pictures, we hop back into the SUV and start driving. Somewhere around this time, we realize that something is wrong with our sense of direction 🙂 and decide to turn around. An advice for anyone having to drive through Kailua. Don’t ever drive through the town during rush hour. It was a nightmare. Took us ~30 minutes to get across a 2 mile strip. It was faster to walk :). Finally we get to our hotel. It was a great place. I would recommend it to anyone. The condo was pretty spacious and had all required amenities. I took a picture of the condo as soon as we arrived.
It was a long day and when it came time to hit the town for dinner, the girls passed on the offer. Mark and Me went into town and after strolling along for sometime and looking at umpteen restaurents, decided to dine at 
