Viva Las Vegas – Day 3

Today was the day we knew would be the warmest, so we were looking forward to pool time. We once again hit the café for breakfast, but before changing into our suits, attended the free Craps lesson going on, as Sara’s one goal for the trip was to learn craps. It seems like a very confusing game, even after the lesson – I shall stick to blackjack. Down at the pool, we were slightly disappointed to find that while warm and sunny, a heavy desert breeze was blowing through pretty often. We stuck it out for about three hours though, because we had to log more miles on the lazy river! Eventually though, we couldn’t handle it anymore, so we packed up went back to the room.

From a cab the other night I had spotted Zara at the Fashion Show Mall, so I made a pilgrimage that direction while Sara went down to practice Craps. It was nice to get out and walk a bit. Treasure Island has tried to reimagine itself as “TI”, and across the street from there are the Wynn and Encore, both pretty plush. At Fashion Show mall I picked up the Jones Family favorites, liquor barrels from Ethel M chocolates, as well as a lavender sweater from Zara. I walked home on the other side of the strip and ducked into the Venetian to visit Bouchon bakery of the recommendation of BK. Got pain au chocolat for breakfast the next morning, as well as their versions of a nutter butter and oreo. I let Sara know when I was back at the Monte Carlo and we met in the room to change for dinner and our last evening out.

We had chosen the Monte Carlo not only because of the lazy river, but also because on every previous trip we have eaten at the Monte Carlo brew pub. It’s nothing special, just casual normal food, but we always go there. So, that was our dinner spot for the night as it had been closed the two previous evenings. From there we walked down the street to Excalibur in hopes of finding some $5 dollar tables to play at. We found one blackjack table, but I had to wait quite awhile before finally getting a seat. Sara meanwhile found Craps and roulette, and we both did pretty good! I came out $80 ahead on blackjack and Sara won like $100 at craps! To round out the evening, we went farther down to Mandalay Bay to see what was happening. We had read about their ice bar so we decided to check that out.

It had a hefty cover charge, but since we were big winners we decided to splurge. We also got two drinks included with it, as well as our parkas, gloves and boots to keep us warm. The bar was small, and not very full but pretty cool (literally and figuratively). The bar, tables and benches were all carved of ice, and a bunch of sculptures were around too. Even our glasses were carved of New Zealand Spring water. My drink of choice was the frozen apple. As we were leaving, three guys arrived and begged us to stay – since they were buying, we did two were from New York, one from Calgary, in town for a brokers conference. They were pretty entertaining, so we stayed much later than anticipated, but it was fun. Their next stop was a club, so we parted ways and caught a taxi home. But before bed we had to play a little more Goldfish of course, where we each lost $20 (but not before being propositioned by a new pair of guys. (Big night out for us!)

It was a really good, quick break – especially since it was snowing in Seattle. I had never been to Vegas mid-week, so it was interesting to see how many less people there were, and I’m sure even less due to the economy. We talked to a lot of cabbies about the situation around town, and it’s sad. Hopefully folks will start traveling there again soon…

Viva Las Vegas – Day 2

Slept in a bit, then hit the café downstairs for breakfast. I ordered a Dutch Pancake which was fairly disappointing – not eggy at all, but regular pancake batter cooked in a cast iron skillet. Once fed and awake, we stopped by the spa to book an appointment, then changed into suits and hit the pool. A few clouds would pass by periodically, but otherwise it was nice to be warm. We had strawberry daiquiris and did several laps on the lazy river. After a snack of chips and guacamole, we packed up and ventured toward the spa for our facials. The facial was good, though I always forget how much it hurts when they start digging into your nose extracting blackheads. Ow! But man was my nose clean. We also dunked into the Jacuzzi and steam room before exiting the spa.

For the evening we decided to walk up to Caesars for dinner and then head downtown. Heading towards Bellagio we walked past the ginormous new City Center project going – $9 billion dollars worth of hotels, shopping and condos. One of our cabbies told us it would be self-contained, with their own police and fire. How crazy is that? It’s huge. At Caesars we went in search of Mesa Grill, one of Booby Flay’s restaurants I wanted to try. However, we were told the first opening was at 9:30pm. When I asked to make a reservation for tomorrow night, they handed me a card and told me to call the central reservations number. Seriously? Because the staff was as full of themselves as Bobby is, congrats Mesa Grill – you are now on the black list. Instead we went to La Salsa Cantina for half the price and no attitude. From Caesars we caught a cab downtown.

In all my trips to Vegas and I had never been downtown, but every time I go, Grandpa Homer asks me if I went to see the Fremont Street light show. So that was my one goal for the trip. We arrived just in time for the 9:00pm show, which was set to Don Maclean’s American Pie. Everyone pours out of the casinos and crowds a two-block area, all the casinos turn out their lights, and then a two-block canopy projects a glitzy digital lightshow. It was cool – later at 10:00pm we saw the Queen tribute, and at 11:00pm listened to the KISS tribute.

We wandered the two blocks and decided to gamble at Glitter Gulch ‘cause we liked the name and sign. As we got closer though, we figured out it was actually a strip bar. We were delighted to find an ABC store (Hawaii specialty, and Sara purchased a giant daiquiri in crazy cup. We had thought the casinos downtown would have cheaper tables, so we were looking forward to playing blackjack and craps down there. However, as we walked through the Golden Nugget, all the tables seemed to be $10 just like on the strip. Therefore we stuck to Penny slots. After a few missteps we finally found our favorite slot – Goldfish. We played it for quite awhile, and when we got back to the Monte Carlo, we played it some more! But once we ran out of our $20 in free play, we headed up to bed.

Viva Las Vegas – Day 1

Last Wednesday over a delicious dinner at Mar’s house, Sara said she was thinking about going to Vegas the following week for spring break, and randomly asked “anyone wanna go with me?”  My brain started scanning my upcoming week and as I thought about G being trapped in China, I soon blurted out “I totally think I can.”  Thursday morning was spent comparison shopping various Vegas deals that had arrived in our inboxes over the week, and by early afternoon we were booked for three nights at the Monte Carlo and flights on Alaska.

Picked Sara up in the morning, got all checked in, made the obligatory stop at Dish D’Lish for some food and boarded our plane.  However, just after sitting down, the captain alerts us that maintenance is work on a problem, it’s gonna take 1-2 hours, and we need to de-plane.  I should note here that Sara and I are in the very last row, so it’s gonna take like 30 minutes for us to just get off the plane. As we are standing and waiting to de-plane the Captain gets on the speakers again and lets us know we have a new plane instead, so head to gate D10. Yay! We all caravaned over there, head to row 30 once again, and wait to take off.  At this point the Captain reminds us that we are headed to Vegas and what are the odds that two planes would break on us?  Say what?  He tells us the other plane needed a new hydraulic pump that would take awhile to replace so they decided to switch us to this new plane they had just flown in from Denver. HOWEVER, there was a blizzard in Denver and two of the landing lights cracked, so now we had to wait for maintenance to replace those.  Seriously?  Luckily screwing in a couple light bulbs doesn’t take too long and we were on our way soon after.

It was a quick flight and we only landed an hour late despite all of our delays. We grabbed our bags and a taxi and were soon at the Monte Carlo for a couple days of fun.  We chose the Monte Carlo for two reasons:  first, we always eat here at the brew pub, and two, their pool area features both a wave pool and a lazy river.  The other reason is that it’s a quieter hotel in a good location, easy to get in and out of, and easy to get to other places from.  We have room on the 15^th floor, just halfway down the hall from the elevator.  It looks like any other hotel room in America, except our view is of the New York New York roller coaster.  We quickly dumped our stuff, changed into our suits, and ran back down for an hour on the lazy river.

Arriving at the pool, we grabbed towels and inquired about inner tubes, where we were told they cost $16 a day to rent.  Excuse me?  I asked about a multi-day deal, and then the girl told us we could also buy our own at the pool shop next door for $10.  Ahhh, much better.  So, that’s your tip of the day if you’re gonna be on the lazy river more than once J  Since we arrived in Vegas later than planned, parts of the pool and river were already shaded from the sun, but we hopped in our tubes and floated for about 45 minutes, round and round.  So awesome!  Some of you know the story of me and Sara at the Sydney Olympic pool where they also have a lazy river, so this was a good spot for us to be.  As the sun finally crept behind a building, we hopped out, toweled off, grabbed our inner tubes and went up stairs to change for the night (which really just meant putting on our previous outfits since it was a Monday night).

Whit had told me about the ½ prce ticket booth across the street from our hotel, so we wandered their first to see what was available.  We had figured out that of we wanted to see Love (the Beatles show) or Wayne Brady, tonight would be our only shot.  Love was starting in just like 20 minutes, so we didn’t think we would make it, and the ½ price seats for Wayne Brady were sold out.  Looking at the other options though, we decided to taxi up to Venetian and see if full-price seats were still available for Wayne.  They were so we splurged, and since the show didn’t start for a couple hours we wandered looking for a dinner spot.  We ended up at Enoteca San Marco, along the Canal and owned by Mario Batali.  Good were the 8 oz. wine pours and fried risotto & prosciutto balls.  Bad was the bread – it was burnt all around the crust.  We asked if this was normal or could we have a new batch.  We were told it was normal, part of the process they use.  Who wants burnt bread? Especially when they didn’t give us any oil to dip it in.  Our pasta entrees were good, though not amazing.

Back at the theater we were looking forward to sipping some sort of blended delight, but the slushie machines were empty.  Just wine for us.  Wayne Brady was hilarious – I don’t know how he makes up all those songs on the spot.  The most crazy part of the evening though came when he asked for volunteers and all of sudden Sara was on stage with him! It was Sara, some other guy, Wayne, and Wayne’s partner Jonathan.  Sara and the other guy had to make sound effects for whatever Wayne and Jonathan were doing.  It was great!  Sara is officially a Vegas Show Girl!

Walking into the Venetian we had surprisingly noted the existence of penny slots.  As we walked around after the show we headed that way, but noticing it was almost 11:00pm, thought we would run outside first to see if the pirate show was happening.  (Real Fire!)  Sadly it wasn’t, so instead we walked next door to check out the Wynn.  To our delight they also had penny slots – this is a sure sign of the recession I’m convinced.  We sat down, plugged in two bucks and started playing.  Sara immediately won like $16! (remember this on pennies) which was great.  I eventually racked up a couple to keep me fairly even, but I think I lost my initial $2 investment.  Drats.  With our winnings from the slots we also took on penny draw poker while sipping our gambling drink of choice, Amaretto Sour.  Sara ended with about $15, me with $4.26.  Yep, big first night.