With a 13.45 flight from JFK to Las Vegas, wechecked out of the hostel and headed straight to the airport. I thought our airline, JetBlue, would be a small outfit but they had their own terminal with excellent facilities.

The only bad thing I can say about the airline was due to the incident I had read about in the New York Post a few days before when having breakfast.

A JetBlue aircraft had been forced to make a crash landing after the undercarriage had somehow twisted so the wheels were facing 90 degrees in the wrong direction. In the end no-one was hurt but it was more the details of the story that disturbed me.

The planre had been forced to circle for a time whilst the engineers deicded what to do, and the emergency services were called into position. During this time, someone alerted the media to the plight of the plane and they swarmed around like flies and you know what. Within a few minutes the fate of the plane was being discussed on national media.

This doesnt sound like much, but when you are a passenger on a JetBlue aircraft, you have access to 36 nationally broadcast television channels, including 3 news channels. I`m sure some of those passengers must have stumbled across the coverage whilst in the air, and listened to the fate of the plane and possibly their lives being discussed while they sat helplessly in their chairs.

Anyway nothing that major happened during our flight and we arrived in Vegas at around 4pm. After checking into the Stratosphere I fell straight asleep, only waking up to Flan and Godders banging on the door wanting to go get lashed. Feeling a little groggy I followed them out, down the strip and into Treasure Island Casino, where we had a drink. Its fair to say I`m not at my best when tired and I was hard work for the first hour, but after that I livened up a little. We got to Bally`s and The Piano Bar, which was ok, but then we were attracted to Carnaval Bar just outside, and the band that were playing. This was more like it. After about an hour in Carnaval, we were ready to find some new places to go.

At this point its worth mentioning that the setup in Vegas is a little odd. Each casino is like a huge complex in one, with everything and anything you could want in each casino. Add to that the casinos benig built like mazes to keep people in, and it not easy for first timers to find the best spots. So it was with much relief we met two Vegas locals, sisters Stef and Gill, who showed us a few places to go. Not only were they good tour guides they were a fun pair and we had a good time for the remainder of the evening, finishing with our first visit of the trip to Denny`s, an American Diner franchise who make some superb scrambled eggs!

We finally rocked back to the hotel at around 9am to finish off a marathon first night in Vegas with some well earned sleep.