Vegas, Baby, Yeah!

What does one do in a town designed for vice, when one is absolutely uninterested in gambling, clubbing, or the sex trade?  Time to get creative and look at Vegas as Disneyland for grownups.  So, we had to find the Tiki Room and Tom Sawyer's Island, and stay off of Space Mountain.  Still plenty to do, and more likely less smoking around our activities.  Still, rules will be broken.

Broken Rule #1:  Out of the hotel by 9.

Dude, we slept in.  The day before was soooo looonnnngggg.  We were in no hurry at all.  We still were on our way by 11:30, however, and wandered over to Planet Hollywood, and Cabo Wabo.  My dad recommended this as a cool way to have breakfast outside.  Too late for breakfast, and very sunny. 

Broken Rule #2:  Reasonable alcohol start time.

Even though it was almost noon when we ordered, to us it was still breakfast, and deliciously dangerous to have Breakfast Booze.  Emily had a Bloody Mary and I had a Margarita, blended with salt, promptly earning a brain freeze.  We talked to a fun drunk couple who had this suspicious indigo slurpee that I don't think was for kids.  I asked them what it was, and the way they slowly searched the inside of their eyelids for the words to describe "In the hotel lobby", convinced me completely they were avoiding a real hangover by staying completely buzzed for their whole visit.

After breakfast, we walked through an odd street fair with a band, and then to The World of Coke.  We ordered Coke Around the World, and sipped all kinds of yummy, and odd flavors.  I really don't like watermelon flavored anything.  The tamarind flavor was good though.

Then to MGM Grand.  Emily kept remembering the amusement park that was there years ago, although we knew it was closed, we walked through the casino determined to prove them liars.  I guess we didn't walk far enough, because we didn't reach the amusement park at all, but found, instead, the CSI Experience.  What a fun way to spend an hour.  There was a crime scene and a lab, and we could solve the crime.  Grissom is a good boss.  Bugs and drugs and car tread red herrings. 

After that, we participated in a TV show test.  We watched a pilot episode of a show pulled straight from Say Yes to the Dress.  It was so awesome, especially since it was with Emily.  We told those Neilson folks to put that show on, and boy will we watch it.

It was almost 5 and we wanted to regroup for the evening, so off we went back to Paris by way of the monorail.  We decided when we got there we should have dinner first, then figure out what to do.  Good decision.  The restaurant was Mon Ami Gabi.  French bistro and sidewalk cafe with a front seat view of the Bilagio fountains.  Fantastic gluten free menu too.  YUMMMMMMM.    Such a relaxing, elegant way to spend an evening.  We were so rejuvenate by dinner, we decided to wander around the strip up the other direction without going back to the room. 

We crossed the street to watch the fountains up close.  Cute ducks living in the fountains.   The lake shone like glass (quite a contrast to the stinky canal at Venice, do they make it stink for authenticity?). 

We then tried to catch the pirate show in front of Treasure Island.  It was in process when we got there.  We thought we might hang out for a bit until it was time for the next one, but we couldn't get close enough to see the schedule.  The wonders of the interweb cell phone age...  Emily called Josh back in Benica and he looked up the schedule on his google machine.  Dang...  It was going to be another hour and a half.  It was getting near the usual pumpkin hour, so we decided to go back to the hotel.

They left us such a nice note.  "Don't forget to change your clock for daylight savings time, because, if you don't, you might over sleep and check out of the hotel late.  And we wouldn't want that, would we?"  That may not be the exact words, but, that's what I got out of it.

Road Trip!

When I was a kid, we'd take vacations in the National Parks of the Southwest.  All vacations began with a nighttime trip though the desert to Vegas.  Somewhere around the Nevada border, the sky began to change with the dawn.  Adventures were to begin with the new day.

In the pursuit of recapturing the magic of that moment, we woke up at 1:30 and were on the road to Vegas.  Road Trip, Baby.  My dad was up with a cup of coffee, and we took off.  The 10 to the 210 to the 215 to the 15.  Stopped for gas, used the cruise control.  At 4:30 the sky began to brighten in the east and the mountains began to glow.  The moon was full and setting in the west and Emily acted as DJ.  My favorite songs were American Tune by Paul Simon and Old '55 by Tom Waits.  Feeling so holy....

We were still early for hotel check-in, so we went straight to Hoover Dam for the Dam Tour.  It was the best Dam Tour ever, and we saw the Dam turbines and a film about how the Dam thing was built.  The Dam Tour Guide filled the tour with Dam puns, as was appropriate.  The last time I had visited, there was a dynamic diorama that showed the impact of the Dam on the Colorado River, how it dried up just as it got to Mexico, where it used to be a fertile delta as it reached the Sea of Cortez, but for some reason, all talk about the water downstream was gone, and the emphasis was on the human achievement of the actual structure.  It is an amazing feat of civil engineering, and even the bathrooms were cool.  Terrazzo tile was everywhere, including the floor of the power plant.  Gorgeous!

Off to Vegas!  We drove through Downtown then down the Strip.  They had signs and lights from old Vegas hotels on display.  Things like the original Silver Slipper and Aladdin's Lamp.  There was a line around the block at the Silver and Gold Pawn Shop.  Yay, Pawn Stars!

Once we got to the end of the Strip, it was time to check into Paris.  Time to hit the town.  We found our way to Cesear's Palace, and practically bumped into Mesa Grill.  I was hungry and I knew Bobby Flay could cook me a great gluten free lunch. And he did.
Wandering up and down the Strip, we saw art and shops and fancy stuff, and found our way to the New York, New York piano bar.   I had fun here.  It was a neighborhood bar feeling in the middle of Vegas with sing alongs.  We jumped on the roller coaster and wandered back down the strip.  We looked at the Chihuli ceiling and suddenly realized, while looking at our hotel across the street, that although it was only around 9 pm, we had been up since 2 in the morning and were very, very, very tired.  Back to our room we went and to bed.  Welcome to Vegas!