The text started with “Hear me out…” so my friend, also named Amanda, had my attention.
She and I take an annual girls trip. We’ve been to Punta Cana, cruised to the Bahamas, and last year went to Barcelona and Mallorca. This year, we were planning Scotland.
I’d been before and loved it, but it would be Amanda’s first time. And since all our girls trips include a modest amount of innocent flirting with the locals, this seemed like the year to upgrade to locals with kilts and brogues.
But we just could not seem to make the trip happen.
Amanda started a new job this year with a severely limited number of vacation days, which meant we needed to leverage a holiday weekend. There are only so many of those, and apparently everyone else also wants to travel on them.
Between the two of us, we have two jobs, six kids, plenty of other responsibilities, and two husbands whose schedules also had to cooperate so someone would actually be home parenting said children. Planning a girls’ trip had somehow become a complicated exercise in resource allocation.
Still, I was determined to make Scotland work. I’d mapped out a few different combinations of dates and flights that could squeeze the trip into the vacation time we had available. I just needed Amanda to pick one.
But then I got her text: “Hear me out… what if this year, we went to see the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere in Vegas?”
I considered this.
Vegas wasn’t exactly at the top of my list since I already had plans to go in December. And I’m not the world’s biggest Backstreet Boys fan. (I was an *NSYNC girl.)
But I’d been dying to see a show at the Sphere, and everyone I knew who’d seen the Backstreet Boys there absolutely raved about it.
And most importantly: I wanted my girls’ trip with Amanda. This would be our fourth year, and I didn’t want to break the streak just because the trip we’d originally planned wasn’t working out.
So I responded with a “Vegas, baby!” Backstreet Boys GIF, and we started looking at tickets.
And that’s how I ended up in Vegas on Saturday night, dressed head to toe in white sequins alongside thousands of other millennial women doing the same, singing along to “Backstreet’s Back” and deciding that while all five Backstreet Boys have aged remarkably well, Nick has developed a certain ruggedness that may have earned him a spot on my celebrity crush list.
In the end, we had less than 48 hours in Vegas. We met at the airport Friday morning and were back on flights home by Sunday before noon. Other than the hotel and concert tickets, we had made exactly zero plans.
We spent most of our daylight hours lounging by the Bellagio pool, sipping absurdly expensive drinks ($25 cocktails for me, $10 Diet Cokes for Amanda), reading, writing—Amanda is also a writer!—and catching up after not seeing each other for months.
Amanda also attempted to give me a crash course in Backstreet Boys lore since I knew all the singles but apparently lacked the necessary knowledge of the deeper catalog. I think she was worried I’d embarrass her at the Sphere.
Friday night, we had an amazing dinner overlooking the Bellagio fountains, then wandered around the Cosmopolitan looking for a speakeasy disguised as a ski lodge.
The drink was just okay, but the atmosphere was great. There’s something delightful about tricking your brain into thinking you’re cozying up after a day in the snow when it’s actually more than 100 degrees outside on the Las Vegas Strip.
It was a very different trip than the one I’d planned. It was shorter than we would have liked and definitely not cheap. (You think Europe is expensive? Try Vegas on a weekend.)
But it happened. And that’s what counts.
Because somewhere in all my attempts to make Scotland work, I’d gotten a little too attached to what our girls’ trip was supposed to look like.
The tradition wasn’t that Amanda and I had to take an elaborate international trip every year. The tradition was that, once a year, we went somewhere together.
Maybe that’s the trick to keeping traditions as our lives get busier and more complicated: knowing which part actually matters and being willing to change everything else.
This year, I didn’t need a carefully curated European adventure through the Scottish Highlands, pretending we were extras in Outlander.
I needed 48 hours with my friend, making plans as we went.
Oh, and reliving our youth while watching the absolute spectacle of the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere.
And the concert was absolutely worth the hype. I’m usually suspicious of things everyone seems to love, but the Sphere is genuinely jaw-dropping, and the Backstreet Boys put on one hell of a show.
Sure, it felt a little cult-ish that we were all wearing white. Apparently, the unofficial dress code also included body sequins. At one point, Amanda pulled out a sheet of stick-on silver gems and asked if I wanted some.
“I’m always up for bedazzling my body,” I told her.
Honestly, that might have been the quote of the weekend.
But I smiled through the entire show. The effects were incredible, the nostalgia factor was through the roof, and Amanda—who likes the Backstreet Boys considerably more than I do—was screeching with delight in octaves I’d never heard her reach before.
It was just so much fun.
On the way back to the airport, we decided Scotland can wait until next year. This year, Vegas was exactly the trip we needed.
And who knows? Maybe Scotland has a rugged Nick Carter waiting for us, too.
This is such a great reminder that traditions are about the people, not the itinerary. Sounds like you and Amanda had exactly the trip you needed, sequins, Sphere spectacle, and all. Here's to Scotland (and Nick Carter) next year! Carried with care!
Vegas is always the answer ✈️🪩