USA Fam Trip Day 1: 14th November 2015

I can't believe it's been a year since I went on my American adventure, I didn't blog about it then as I wasn't writing as much and didn't really get the chance to, but here we are a year down the line so I thought it was about time I told you all about it.

For those not in travel, a fam (famil / familiarisation) trip can come in many different forms - some are very structured and keep to a strict timetable and include lots of hotel visits and some follow the trip itineraries that clients would and slip in hotel visits here and there. I've been lucky on my trips as I've not had too many hotel visits to do; it sounds awful but they all blend into one after a while and you can't remember!

Anyway, my trip to Spain with a different company was cancelled in the morning and in the afternoon an offer came in from North America Travel Services (NATS) and Alastair very kindly put me up for it. I'd not worked with NATS before joining Norseman so it was appropriate really and they were great, booking everyone from their local airports.

Fam trips are funny things, you throw together a group of people from all over the country and hope to God they get on for the duration of the trip! I must say with one exception (there's always one!) this group was brilliant, we all got on so well and are still in touch - we're actually planning a reunion for after Christmas! Once the itineraries were sent out, we all had each others' email addresses and were in touch before we left. There were 3 of us travelling from up here so Martyn took charge and checked us in for the flights :) 14 November eventually arrived and I met up with Martyn and Stacey at Newcastle airport and we flew down to London Heathrow together; by the time we got to London we were like the 3 Musketeers. We met up with the rest of the group at Heathrow and had a quick briefing with Curtis from NATS who was hosting the trip before boarding the plane to Las Vegas. It's always a special treat (for me) to travel in business class (or Club World as British Airways call it) this was the first time with BA and although it was very nice I think the layout is awful but never mind, the 3 musketeers liked it...

It was dark when we arrived in Las Vegas and we were whisked off to the hotel. We stayed the first night at Wynn, it seemed like a hike from the lobby up to my room along the longest corridor I've ever seen but the view was fab! We literally had time to freshen up before heading to the hotel theatre to see the resident show "La Reve - The Dream". What an amazing performance - I must admit I was really tired and didn't actually feel like going but I'm so glad we did, I was mesmerised for the entire show. I've never seen anything like it and probably never will again! If you get a chance, have a look at it on YouTube. We met up with our Detours guide Paul and had a drink after the show - he was so enthusiastic about what he had planned for us and we all wandered off to bed full of excitement for the days ahead. When I finally got to my room (at the end of the looooooong corridor!) the view that greeted me was amazing! I couldn't figure out all the buttons for the curtains so just left them open - let's face it, there's not going to be many people spying on rooms this high up lol