Last week, a bunch of friends flew in from various parts of the country to meet up in Los Angeles and have a little vacation. With very little on the schedule, it turned out to be nice and relaxing. Brett, Kate, Matt and Josh were all in on Thursday and the weekend started out with Ladies Night Out at the M Bar here in LA. Fun for the girls, not so much it seems for the guys.

Shane joined us on Friday when we caught the opening of Hot Fuzz, which turned out to be fucking hilarious. Even better, we discovered when we bought the tickets that after the show would be a short Q&A with Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost; the guys behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. As if it couldn’t get better than that, we got the added surprise of them being introduced by Quentin Tarantino. After the Q&A, we hit up an interesting restaurant called Ketchup that we’d be hearing a lot about from friends. Fairly new, the interior is all white with red lights. Even better, they have a martini cart that goes from table to table, making your drinks right there. Which, of course, I took full advantage of.

Saturday night we all went to a BBQ at the home of the same friends who told us about Ketchup. With about 30 people there, it was quite the party and I got to meet some cool new people, which is always fun, and chat up some friends I hadn’t seen in awhile, even though we all live in the same city. Since we were all out so late on Saturday, Sunday turned into a lazy day. Josh and Kate went up to Vegas a day early while Matt and I went out to meet up with a friend of his from college before crashing early to be rested up for Vegas.

While the whole trip was fun, Vegas turned out to be the best part. It had a rocky start, thanks to an extremely turbulent flight from LA to Vegas. So much so that they skipped on drink service. Luckily, Matt is good at distracting me, so I was able to make it through the whole flight without curling up into a ball and rocking back and forth while praying that I didn’t die. But once we landed, our stay was great. We ended up staying at the Wynn, which was fucking awesome. I’ve been wanting to stay there since before it was built, so it was really exciting for me to finally get a chance to. It definitely lived up to all my expectations.

Most of the time we were there was spent gambling on video poker and video blackjack, eating at all the amazing restaurants at the Wynn and relaxing. On our second night, we took a break from all that to see Spamalot, the musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I’d seen the movie so many times and it didn’t seem the type of movie to work as a musical, much less a 90 minute one, but it was hilarious and definitely worth it. Throw in a little shopping, and it was your average trip to Vegas, minus copious drinking since I’m not a big drinker. Oh, and to add in a fun little coincidence, while watching TV in the hotel room, we got to catch a little bit of National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation.

Overall, it was a great week spent with awesome friends and having a ton of fun. Next up: Europe.