Salt Lake City - December 25th/26th 2014

Salt Lake City - Christmas Day, 2014

The forecast was for a white Christmas, and how right they were.  

We awoke Christmas morning to the sight of snow falling across the city.  How exciting, and what a bonus for the Ahearn boys as they head to Brighton for some snowboarding.  

For me it was to be a day inside, lazing, watching some telly, catching up on my blog. might even do some washing - why ......  because I don't like the cold or the snow!! 

the snow is so thick you can barely see the buildings that were so clearly visible yesterday, as for the mountains, they were impossible to see through the white

 the snow piling up in our hotel carpark and over the buildings next door

 they're back - and what a great time they had - Kash is sporting some amazing helmet hair!

Boxing Day 2014 - the snow has cleared and you can now see the hills - but it is still cold.  Time for me to do some shopping while the boys are off snowboarding in the mountains again today.

looking out from the front of our hotel

I headed to the local Walmart today.  Our hotel offered complimentary transport, so the lovely driver happily drove me over there, then I just called him when I was ready to get picked up.  Some great bargains were had, but I chose to only buy what I could carry - to limit the amount of money I would spend.  Some unreal Christmas bargains, that's for sure. 

Headed back to the hotel and organised our bags while waiting for the boys to get back from snowboarding.  Our flight leaves at midnight tonight - heading to Orlando, so I have organised our transport and we are ready to go. 

Salt Lake City - 24th December 2014

We left Vegas at 7.35am on the 24th December, 2014, heading for our Christmas holiday destination - Salt Lake City.  Flew Southwest again and again the flight was outstanding - so impressed with their service, attitude and help.  Would not hesitate to recommend them!
Col had the window seat so he got to see the amazing landscape as we were leaving Vegas and coming in to SLC.

We are staying at the Doubletree Suites in Downtown SLC.  The room is really nice, separate lounge, bathroom and bedroom.  Kash has the lounge area with his own TV.  The sofa bed is quite comfy but he is still not sleeping well :(

Kash trying to catch up with some more sleep!

 the view from our hotel room

I took this photo (below) while I was waiting for Col and Kash to get fitted with their snowboarding gear.  The sky was soooo pink, but the photo does not do the colour justice.  You can see the snow topped mountains in the background.

Col and Kash are planning on going boarding for the next couple of days - Christmas Day and Boxing Day.  I am just going to hang around the hotel, no worries though, my Christmas day will be a Disney World!

 inside out hotel, there is a large open section through the middle, it is really very pretty

Christmas Eve and we have a booking at the local Tucano's Brazillian Restaurant.  I thought it would be nice to walk because I wanted to see the lights.  It took us around 20 minutes.  The meal was awesome and the service was outstanding.  It cost us $126 including all we could eat, our drinks and some rather delicious sweets (cheaper than a night at Sizzlers) 

Got to bed fairly early, waiting for Father Christmas to come!!!!!!

Las Vegas - 23rd December 2014

Our second day in Vegas saw us catching one of the local buses and heading to Walmart.  How fun to also find a Dollar Tree - one of my favourite shops in America.

The days go so quick in Vegas.  We did lots of shopping after getting off the bus near New York New York.  A lazy few hours to relax as we are all still struggling with trying to adjust our body clocks.

As we missed out on seeing the volcano at The Mirage, this was on my list of things to do and we weren't disappointed.  It took us about 20 minutes to walk from our hotel to The Mirage, but we spent about half of that waiting at the traffic lights - the crowds are really thick now.

We finished off the evening with a feed at the legendary Planet Hollywood Spice Market buffet.  It was quite a line when we got there, but luckily for us the group in front of us had some $5 off vouchers, more than they needed, so it ended up costing us $81 for the 3 of us.

What can I say about this buffet except yum, yum!!!!

 Bye Vegas, so nice seeing you again!!