The Benderz' Vacation Adventures: Hollywood and Vegas baby!

Holy tired batman. We packed this day full of goodness...I am so ready to snuggle in to the eighth of the bed Zoe allows me to sleep on and close my eyes. But first, I'm excited to share our adventures today.

We woke up in Marina del Rey. Chris went to the gym this morning instead of running, so no Bender pics today. This was the view from our hotel.

But if you looked a little to the right, you could see the harbor. So fun, and foggy! We were more than a little worried that we wouldn't end up seeing the Hollywood sign because of the fog. Kind of like when we missed Mt Rushmore on our first cross country trip right after college! Couldn't see a thing!

The kids were actually up and moving by 8 our time so we headed to Hollywood. I'll be honest, it is not on my top ten cities list. It could be that we were just doing the things all tourists do, making it crowded and tiring, but it also felt less safe somehow. Uncomfortable. We didn't have anything bad happen to us, it just was stressing me out. (And as I've mentioned before, I really LIKE cities!) Our first stop was the Walk of Fame to see the stars. Zoe took this one of a blank star so she could use her editing software and make her own! Actually, I think Bridget Sloan (her gymnast idol) may have gotten one sent to her via Instagram shortly after Zoe got back in the car!

Did you know that Bobby Flay was actually the first chef to receive a star! Bender was excited!

We hit a couple of different sections of the walk and I was struck by how most of them had both really recent honorees and honorees from long ago. Zack and Zoe recognized very, very few names. Chris and I recognized more but definitely not all.

This is us, huddling in a side street with the Hollywood sign far in the background. You can't see it in the picture, but it's there I promise you!

We actually took a drive to try and get closer and ended up driving around in a really cool neighborhood. We didn't have a star map, but I'm sure we drove by at least some semi-famous peoples' houses today. Or at least the people who work for the famous people!

We came back to check out the Chinese Theatre and found our friend Walt on the walk!

Zoe was all over posing for pics by stars, Zack not so much.

Her face says it all

We finally made it to the Chinese Theatre! Zoe was super impressed with the handprints Shirley Temple made in the cement and how small they are.

Chinese Theatre done, we jumped back in the car. We had almost three hours left to go before we were in Vegas. Bender started out driving, so I was free to find out next adventure 😉. It's dangerous to set me free with Google and an open road. I knew we didn't want a long, leisurely lunch, but we did want an experience! Hence, Peggy Sue's Dinner.

The food was basic diner food - Brian Vosteen, you would have been proud. Zoe got meatloaf and mashed potatoes, Zack got a Philly cheesesteak.

Chris and I did eat sandwiches, but more importantly, we got pie. The strawberry rhubarb was yummy, but nowhere near as good as L's!

After we took this pic, one of the waitresses said we did good. She said she gets bored with everyone who stands next to the Blues Brothers and doesn't do anything fun. No worries about boring with this fam!

Did I mention that outback at Peggy Sue's there is a Diner-Saur Park. You read that right, diner-saur. It was 115, but we spent a couple minutes checking out the beasts!

Dab photobomb by Zack! Very uncharacteristic. He must have wanted to mess with Zoe.

I asked them what they wanted to get their pic taken with...this Stegosaurus was the winner. Totally fun...but crazy hot! (I'm not lying, 110!)

Then it was my turn to drive though the desert....

While Zack knocked out Module 4 of his summer math. So exciting! Although he's not fond of school work over the summer, he seems to like the online platform and his teacher. He's moving right along! He even did his conference with his teacher from the road!

It really was 115.

And the desert.

We almost thought it was a Mirage when we saw this appear out of the sand. Yay! We were at our Vegas hotel!

The girls did a bit of exploring while the boys checked in. We got upgraded to a room overlooking the volcano, but because of shows we have tickets to, we won't be here to watch it explode. It's still super neat to be able to see the strip from our room!

View from our hotel room.

We quickly changed and grabbed an Uber to the Excalibur where our show was playing. We saw Tournament of Kings, which was kind of a take on the Kights is the Roundtable. We picked seats in Dragon, which was totally the bad side. Sometimes it's fun to cheer for the bad guy!

Front row seats!

Us with Merlin.

This was dinner. Here comes the best part. No utensils! Seriously. Drink your soup and eat everything else with your hands. The food was actually pretty solid. The show was lots of fun. We yelled Hazah, toasted the king, and pounded the tables... A lot. It was a fun way to start Vegas!

Then it was on to explore the strip. We took uber to the show, so we were walking the 1.7 miles back to our hotel and exploring along the way. One thing we noticed was how hard it was to wander down the strip. Lots of sidewalks closed off making it necessary to climb up stairs to cross walkways and climb back down. A few extra flights of stairs certainly wasn't going to kill us!

In front of the Statue of Liberty!

The kiddos in front of New York, New York. They were so excited to ride this coaster!

So we headed down to the bowels of the hotel to buy tickets, only to discover Zoe was an inch too short to ride. Such a bummer. Zack and I rode (totally awesome! Zack was a bit worried to be riding after dinner, but he didn't puke on me or on the people in front of him...which he threatened to do.)

Time for a few arcade games! When we walked into our hotel earlier, Zoe said to me, "I can't wait to play mom!". I looked at her and told that was against the rules, she was very perturbed that out of the whole casino, she wasn't allowed to play anything. Glad we found some games at NY, NY!

Selfie with the giant martini glass!

Enjoying the strip at night!

So...it was still 100 while we were walking around. (For real! It felt like we were standing in front of a hot hair dryer when the wind blew!) So we may have had some fun with this water feature...and gotten more than a little wet. (You can see my short but cute dress fashioned from a shirt too!)

It was definitely time for ice cream if we were going to make it all 1.7 miles on foot back to the Mirage. This is my new favorite ice cream store. They made me a milkshake with coffee ice cream and Baileys. So much yum!

Paris at night.

The Bellagio fountains were next on our list of things to see. The show was crazy cool. Music, lights and water all coordinated. The kids were entranced. We were all sad it was such a short show.