"In Vegas, I got into a long argument...

...with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number."

- Stephen Wright

(The text below was written on July 14 - I meant to add pictures when I got home and didn't get to it until now.)

US Airways Flight 232: Philadelphia to Phoenix, coach cabin

I’ve just spent 24 nights away from home. 25 days away as well, but the 24 nights matter more than I had expected. 24 nights in other bedrooms. 24 nights not in my bed. Five nights at the Philadelphia airport Marriott; one night crossing the Atlantic Ocean; fifteen nights in my childhood bedroom in Sweden; and three nights at the Philadelphia downtown Marriott. With the exception of the transatlantic flight, all fine accommodations, but I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. There’s no place like home. Hard to say it better than that.

I’ve done a lot of traveling the last several months. A lot of fun traveling on top of the work trips. A wedding in Mexico, a fraternity reunion in Vegas, and a summer visit to Sweden.

I want to find the time and the energy to write it all down. To share the experiences with others, for sure, but mostly for myself so I can go back and relive the memories later. I’m overwhelmed by the magnitude of it so I hesitate to even start. I’ll just jot down some observations without any ambitions of completeness or organization.

The trip to Mexico was my first trip to an all-inclusive resort. It was a destination wedding for my friends Tracy and Mike and I was one of about 40 wedding guests. The adults-only (brilliant!) resort – Excellence Riviera – was located in Puerto Morelos, less than an hour south of Cancun on the Mayan Riviera, and was absolutely gorgeous: right on a beautiful beach, seven sparkling pools, well manicured grounds, etc. I spent most of the time at the resort – always fun to be together with a big group like that – but also took a trip to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. I wanted to visit Chichen Itza, but it was a bit too far to work with our schedule.

View from the hotel room

Tracy and Mike - just married!

The whole vacation was really nice and I had a great time. I’m not sure how I feel about the concept of all-inclusive, though. I really liked the fact that I didn’t need to carry my wallet or think about what anything would cost, and the unlimited supply of drinks that kept appearing. The bar in the pool was particularly to my liking, and the selection of name brand alcohol was quite good. However, the quality of the food left a lot to desire. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, since most all-you-can-eat establishments cut corners to keep their costs reasonable, but in this case it really stood out in relation to how nice everything else was. In every other regard, the resort was top-notch, pure luxury, but most of the food quality was somewhere between Red Lobster and TGI Fridays. I would have much rather paid a bit more up-front to get better food to match the rest of the experience.

The Vegas vacation was also a big group affair – 25 guys from my college fraternity congregated in Sin City for a long weekend of nostalgia and debauchery. There group ranged from recent graduates to the four of us from my era, and everyone stayed at New York New York except for Petter and I who’d found a good deal at THEhotel. (My fourth stay there and perhaps my favorite hotel in Vegas.)

Nu Delts at New York New York

The first night I learned two things: 1) my affinity for night clubs ended well over a decade ago and will likely never return, 2) a private box and bottle service makes the experience significantly more bearable. We had made arrangements for bottle service at Rain (one of the clubs at the Palm) so we started by bypassing the endless line and the $40 entrance charge. Once inside, a secret service-looking gentleman escorted us up a private elevator and as the doors closed he whispered into his sleeve “Skybox 5 coming up”. From there another agent took us to our private box overlooking the dance floor and introduced us to our two waitresses and the huge bouncer who would make sure that nobody else would enter our area. We picked out bottles of vodka, gin, rum and whisky and had the waitresses make us some drinks, sat back and looked out over the DJ and dance floor below. I felt like an Eastern European villain in a b-movie.

Marco Pravia, me and Petter Skantze were the first to arrive to our Skybox

Some of the guys and our two waitresses

We also had VIP-access to the other three clubs at the Palm, so we could go past the line there as well. So, we also checked out Ghost Bar on the roof with a great view of the strip, the Playboy Lounge (gambling with Bunny dealers) and the penthouse nightclub Moon at the top of the other tower. All-in-all, not a bad night, given that it was completely not what I normally like to do.

Marco, Petter and I at Ghost Bar