Al and I have lately been trying to really soak in these years together when it’s just us two, no kiddos, and we have the chance to be spontaneous. Our best friends called us early last week saying they wanted to spend the weekend in Vegas celebrating their four year wedding anniversary and wanted us to come with. After a day or two of getting Al on board (haha!!) we booked our weekend trip on a Thursday, scheduling to leave that Sunday!! We had juggled around with timing because Al had hurt his ankle playing basketball that morning and both of us also had just come down with some gnarly colds!! 👎🏼 But we just didn’t wanna wait so we decided to tough it out because leaving three days later would just be too fun! With such short notice, we had to get right to asking around for recommendations and trying to figure out what we wanted to do while we were there! If you’ve read some of my travel recaps before, you probably know that Al and I usually don’t make itineraries when doing shorter trips like this. We are weird and like to decide day to day what we want to spend our time doing! This trip was no different. We booked our hotel of choice, and just took screenshots on our phones of conversations with recommendations and different restaurants we found online. I will say that we got SO many recommendations and since we were only there three nights we didn’t even get to half of it!! (Side note, if you are reading this and had DM’d me a recommendation, thank you so much!! I got so many messages I haven’t even had time to respond to them all but I am so grateful for you guys taking your time to tell me about some of your favorite places!!) Anyways, it was also an average of 105 degrees during our three days in Vegas so as you can probably assume, the day times were all spent the pool and we left the exploring aspect to the night hours. If you are someone who gets antsy or bored with pool bobbing, I’d definitely suggest going to Vegas a different time of year and not mid-summer!! Thankfully pool time is all four of us’ favorite time so we soaked in every moment of it!
We decided to stay at Aria based on reviews online and I was so happy we stayed there!! I feel like we got so lucky because I am a huge “location” person when on vacation – I always want to be right in the action and walking distance to everything. And since I hadn’t been to Vegas, I assumed the strip was a little shorter than it was and that every hotel would be good location, but some seemed pretty far!! Aria is right by tons of shopping, across from Planet Hollywood, has good restaurants, and has a little walkway to the Cosmopolitan which has tons going on there too! We never had to Uber or taxi to dinner, we could always walk which was perfect!! The hotel itself was gorg. They have three swimming pools, as well as Liquid which is a pool party/club thing that goes on everyday. They also have the nightclub ‘Jewel’ right in the hotel! Our rooms were beautiful and spacious – we were very impressed! My friend we were with always bases her opinion on a hotel based on the bathrooms in the rooms and she gave it an A+. We didn’t upgrade our rooms to the ones with “views” and we both felt like our views were awesome! We looked right at the Cosmopolitan from ours and they looked right at the swimming pools from theirs! Overall, I was super impressed with Aria and would definitely stay there again.
Now onto food!! The first day we got there, we did lunch by the pool and then Momofuku for dinner! It is located inside of the Cosmopolitan, right near the Chandelier Bar! This was the most “daring” restaurant we went to as far as menus go but we loved it!! We ordered a pork bun and a shrimp bun to start. Then each couple split both a cold spicy noodle bowl and their rotisserie chicken! Just in the past few months have I started to enjoy spicy food, and boy oh boy those noodles were spicy. But SO GOOD. I seriously couldn’t stop eating them and then chugging my water!! 😂 We ended up loving the food & the atmosphere here! I would definitely suggest it to you guys! Once we were done here, we headed to the Chandelier Bar to grab a drink there! I got one classified as a ‘feminine mule’ that was delish! This bar was easily my favorite as far as going somewhere to “grab some drinks” goes! It was gorgeous! We did end our night at Krispy Kreme so I just had to throw that in here too 😉
The next day was full of shopping!! We walked around several different malls and just spent the evening mostly window shopping but it was so much fun! We ended up not eating dinner until 11:30 because we had such a late lunch and also because #vegas haha! This night we went to Hexx for dinner right on the strip that had views of the Bellagio fountain show! It was so pretty and they had such a great menu! The spaghetti and meatballs definitely seemed to be the favorite here, but I got the shrimp linguini! Al got the spaghetti so I got to sneak some bites of his 🙂
Our last day we had lunch at Herringbone Patio which is right by the pools at Aria. We all shared sliders, fries, and chicken wings! The wings were my fave!!! That evening we got reservations at Giada, which is one of the places we wanted to make sure we went!! It is owned by & named after a celebrity chef named Giada and is amazing Italian food! I will say out of all the places we went in Vegas, this one was my favorite. I am such a visual person and the branding of this restaurant was right up my alley!! All I could do was look around! For drinks, I got the La Strada cocktail and our table also shared a bottle of wine. We started with a variety of meats and cheeses and a bruschetta then Al and I shared their risotto dish that had crab, asparagus, and scallops!! Everything was amazing and the views here were unreal! I would say this restaurant is a must for your Vegas itinerary! We had plans to see a show that night and had seen availability earlier but then the show sold out so that didn’t happen, haha. But instead we went shopping where I got my first Louis Vuitton handbag!! AHHHHH! I think I literally looked like a 12 year old girl getting her first American Girl Doll or going to a Britney Spears concert I was so excited! Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen this trip!! We went into three different LV stores over the past two days before and had been eyeing a couple so it was such a hard decision but I’m so excited to style this bad boy and show you guys! 😍 Alex, our best friend we were traveling with, also got a Burberry handbag that she’s had her eyes on forever so it was so fun getting handbags with one of your best friends that you will have forever!! Such a fun memory!! THANKS HUBBIES! 😉❤️ We ended the night at an Irish Pup in Aria that we would randomly grab drinks and appetizers at throughout our trip! The guys got some sort of beer drop shot? I’m not really sure but I think they are known for it! And us girls got milkshakes 🙂 The food here was really good if you are ever looking for an easy and low key lunch or dinner!!
Creating memories with your best friends is something you’ll look back on forever & I am so grateful for times like these! I did get tons of recommendations we didn’t get to so if you are planning a trip and want me to give you a few, just shoot me an email! Thanks again everyone for helping us plan our trip!! Until next time Vegas!!
Shop some of the things I packed on our trip:
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