Man I can't believe I've been back from my Las Vegas vacation for a week already, and I'm just getting to write about it now.



I feel like my schedule has been pretty much insane since the last weekend of January, so it was really nice to have a vacation on the calendar where the plans were to sit by the pool and go to the Backstreet Boys concert.

Yes, that's right. I went to Vegas to see the Backstreet Boys residency, and it was amazing.



This was my first time ever in Vegas, and since the trip wasn't super long, I never really adjusted to West Coast time. This basically meant I was awake super early Vegas time every day.

That worked out in my favor though because it gave me a chance to run the Strip early in the morning before it got too packed with tourists.



On Wednesday morning, I decided to head south on the Strip to the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. The run south took way longer than I expected because of the weird street crossings on the Strip.

If you're not familiar, to cross many of the streets you have to go up a set up steps and over a sky-walk and then down another set of steps. Because of some construction on the way to the sign, I ended up inside some of the casinos. My Garmin was very, very confused about my run that day.





Running past all the crazy looking hotels and casinos was kind of fun though, and I did eventually make it to the welcome sign, and asked some tourists to snap my picture.



On Thursday morning, I had a slightly more ambitious run planned. My mom had told me it was worth heading to Old Las Vegas (or downtown Las Vegas) to see what Vegas was like before the Strip existed.



It was about a four mile run from where we were staying on the Strip up to downtown, but I figured with my East Coast wake up times, I'd have plenty of time to get there and back before the pool opened.

The run north was nothing too exciting in terms of scenery. I went past some of the way less nice hotels on the Strip, but then it was just a lot of nothingness through potentially questionable parts of town. (When I got home my friend who travels to Vegas a lot for work questioned my sanity running up there, but I never really felt too unsafe).

Old Las Vegas was fabulously tacky. It reminded me of a ridiculously over-the-top boardwalk, with blinking lights and carnival games. Since I was up there pretty early in the morning, I didn't get to see it in all its glory, but I'm glad I took the time to make the run up there.





After 8 miles on Thursday and about 6 on Wednesday, I was happy to spend the bulk of my days lounging around the pool reading many books.



Wednesday night was the Backstreet Boys concert, and man it was everything my middle-school self could have ever hoped for. It's one of the only concerts I've been to where literally every person there sang along to just about every song.



We also spent some time playing games in the casinos (turns out I have no luck), watching the dancing Bellagio fountains and watching a volcano erupt in front of the Mirage.



It was a quick trip, but overall the perfect mix of relaxing and fun.