Last month I went to Las Vegas for the first time ever. I went with my BFF Stella and we had a blast. Stella sent me an email last September wondering if I would like to celebrate my birthday in Vegas with her and I jumped at the chance.

This vacation was the first time in I can’t remember that I did something without children in tow. In fact I think it was the first time I’d ever taken a vacation without family of any kind.

And it was awesome!

There was no doubt we’d be gambling and both of us had budgeted a certain amount to do so. However since neither of us are living in the lap of luxury and we aren’t professional gamblers we knew we’d have to fill our days with other things to do besides gambling.

So we bought a bus pass and toured the city.

Mostly we toured the city because I’d forgotten my medication and had to get a refill and the first drugstore we walked to had only recently removed their pharmacy from the store, though they’d not updated their website to that fact yet.

Stella had been to Las Vegas many times and was happy to show me around. She decided my birthday was a good day to visit Fremont Street.

Stella is from Seattle (though she grew up in St. Paul) and is a huge Seahawks fan. Apparently fans of the Seahawks wear their jerseys on Friday so Stella wore hers. Everywhere we went people were high fiving her, hugging her and calling out the Seahawks battle cry.

As a Vikings “fan” I couldn’t wrap my head around this kind of team loyalty.

Glitter Gulch neon Light, neon lights for Glitter Gulch, cowgirl neon lightSo Fremont Street was already a blast, even before Stella dragged my ass into Glitter Gulch.

With a two drink minimum Glitter Gulch isn’t a cheap place to visit. At $10 per Budweiser it was a pretty expensive way to get sad about the state of strippers. I’m not really sure if they were strippers or dancers. They didn’t really dance and they didn’t really strip. One rather large woman walked the length of the bar and threatened to expose herself though no one was particularly interested. Stella wanted to see someone do some pole dancing, and even asked several of the girls to do so but none of them knew how.

While the dancing left everyone wondering the street show was about to begin and that was a much better show.