Day 13 and 14: Universal Studios and stopover Las Vegas

After having conquered Venice Beach yesterday, today we have the Universal Studios on our schedule.

We started early in the morning to avoid the rush hour, or so we thought. Full of anticipation, we finally arrived at the Universal Studios parking lot after an hour of stop-and-go traffic (yes, even though we were so early). There, we were charged an additional $30 for parking, which made Manfred quite angry.

After overcoming the initial frustration, we entered the hustle and bustle. Apart from the long waiting times, the attractions were very impressive. Especially the 4D highlights and the Universal Studios Tour are highly recommended. However, overall, we don't think that the price-performance ratio is justified. The price is too high for too few attractions, and many things were also closed, such as WaterWorld, which Manfred was particularly excited about.

With a slightly disappointed feeling, we returned to our AirBnB after about 10 hours at the amusement park, where we spent a cozy and beautiful evening together.

On day 14, we continued from LA to Las Vegas (only as a stopover to the Grand Canyon). The car ride was more or less uneventful, with a small stopover at the Seven Magic Mountains. That's why we will go straight to the evening. Since Anna overlooked a small detail when booking (in Las Vegas, in almost every hotel, in addition to the room price, you have to pay a resort fee, which varies everywhere), we stayed at a very fine resort, the STRAT. That's the hotel with the big tower at the end of the Las Vegas Strip. The hotel was amazing, and we were both very impressed by the comfort, cleanliness, and ambiance.
Since we wanted to make full use of our resort fee, which includes all additional amenities in the hotel, we visited the fitness center, the rooftop pool, and the in-house casino, despite the limited time.

Unfortunately, our wallet was not very thrilled about it, which is why we will leave this experience as a one-time event :).