2009, by Daniel Chen

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Gingerbread House

Before we left for LA, we made a gingerbread house. It survived surprisingly well. We figure we'd take a picture of it before we tossed it out. (The candy was pretty inedible). It did make our kitchen smell nice.

Palazzo and Paris

The lobby for the new Palazzo hotel (add-on to the Venetian).

Paris, smoke-filled casino yuck.

Christy before we head up to the fake Eiffel Tower.

We caught one of the fountain shows at the Bellagio while we were up at the Eiffel.

Great view of the Strip from the tower.

Animals in Vegas
Hippo and other animals at the Luxor

Dan getting eaten by a Sabretooth tiger at the very sad and empty FAO Schwartz.

Trojan Horse that is the front entrance of the FAO Schwartz

Pegasus fountain at Caesar's

Check-in Horrors at the Luxor & Dinner at the MGM

After our little hiking trip, we (tried to) check into our hotel. We stayed at the Luxor because its cheap and you get to ride on the diagonal elevators. I forgot how poorly designed the place is. And that's just the beginning. Our first room, the heater knobs were broken so you couldn't adjust the temperature without a pair of pliers. AND the room was set at about 85-90 degrees.

The next room they gave us that was "an upgrade" was not cleaned yet. We walked in, the towels were on the floor. There was food and soda cans all over the place. Take-out boxes, you name it. We called up the front desk and said that after an hour of running around their poorly designed hotel, we'd meet them at a room which better be nearby. So an hour and a half later, we finally got to our room. We decided to go get dinner at a Chinese restaurant at the MGM. Of course, the nice restaurant that my dad and I used to go to closed and was replaced by a hip fusion restaurant. It was nice and pretty, but the food wasn't all that spectacular.

Red Rock Pictures 2

Red Rock

Christy and I went to Vegas the day after New Years'. (It's cheaper and less crowded). The day we got in, we had a few hours to spare. So we took a nice little hike up to the Red Rock area. It's about 30 min outside of Vegas and has some nice rock climbing areas to just scramble around on.

The pictures don't really do the color of the rock formation justice. It's actually a very bright pink.

This picture below just looks so fake.

Will Rogers State Park

Dad, Andrew, Christy, and I also went for a nice little hike in Will Rogers State Park. Our original plan was to visit the Getty Villa in Malibu, but we didn't know we had to get tickets mailed to us ahead of time. Here is a nice picture of the LA coastline.

Will Rogers called it "Inspiration Point" or "Point of Inspiration".

Huntington Library and Garden

During our winter break trip to LA, my dad, Andrew, Christy, and I all went up to the Huntington Library and Garden. We saw Pinkie and Blue Boy and walked around all the various gardens. The Japanese garden with all the unique Bonzai trees was my favorite. Sadly, their new Chinese garden was not open yet, although it looks really neat. Here are some photos of Orchids that Christy took in their greenhouse.