The hotel cost us $59US a night which is a bargain as although the hotel is not to the same standard as the Rio Hotel it is real value for money.

Once we checked in to the Gold Coast Hotel and dropped off our bags we immediately set off in a taxi to pick up the car. In Las Vegas you don’t pick up a rental at the airport but instead you get on a free bus from the terminal that takes you to a centralized area in Arby Ave which is nearby.

When we got to the Alamo rental counter the customer service officer asked us continually if we would like an upgrade to a  bigger vehicle. Her reasons were better security and more power for our trip to the Grand Canyon. At first we thought this might be a good idea but the $120 extra fee for this upgrade plus the extra couple hundred dollars for insurance, roadside assistance, 2nd driver free, taxes and the GPS brought the cost for eight days to $790. We then declined the upgrade so she then offered it to us for only $80. We suddenly caught on that Alamo probably didn’t have a small car available anyway which is why she kept insisting on an upgrade. So we still declined the upgrade offer as we were used to a small car anyway and knew it would do the job we wanted. She finally realised that we wouldn’t upgrade and as we walked upstairs we said to each other - “I bet we get the bigger car” and sure enough we did!

Once we got in the car we sat there for about 10 minutes trying to set up the GPS. This was an extra cost but as we found out later well worth it!!!

Wanda was brave enough to take the first drive out. We drove to the security check out and the lady in the booth took our paperwork and looked at us funny and asked us where Robert was. Since we didn’t have anyone that even looked like a Robert in the car she realised that there was an error in our paperwork. This meant us going back to Customer Service to get it all sorted out which took about an hour.

Getting back to our hotel was an experience since we took the wrong off ramp but thank god for the GPS as it directed us back onto the correct road and we got back to our hotel in one piece.

By this time we were starving as we didn’t have any breakfast and it was now 12.30pm. We headed to the hotel buffet which cost only $8 each and was excellent value for money. Beautiful food and plenty of it. We wish we had discovered it earlier.

After lunch we spent the rest of the day in our hotel room working on our laptop catching on some work.