A short read on what we did in Vegas.
It was my wife’s 40th birthday on January
27. The previous weekend was my birthday
celebration where we met up in Denver for a few days and went to the AFC
Championship game. She decided on Vegas
since she had never been there. Same
protocol as the weekend before I headed up last Thursday and got in late. With all the inclement weather her original
flight was cancelled but she was able to take an earlier flight. This change in plans allowed for her to beat
me to the airport. She was coming from
Chicago on American Airlines while I was flying Southwest via San
Juan/ATL/Hobby.
When I arrived at the airport I found her half asleep in the
baggage claim area. She was sitting down
on the carpet next to a wall. After a
hug and kiss we proceeded to figure out how to get from the airport to our
hotel on the Las Vegas strip. I decided
on a shuttle and proceeded to pay for that and hop on the shuttle. It took much longer than I would have wanted
to get to the hotel but we did have a full shuttle. I think all total it could have well been
over 45 minutes from airport to the hotel at the Palazzo.
We arrived at the hotel and checked. Due to the Palazzo’s deal with
Intercontinental Hotels we were able to obtain a free upgrade on our room. It’s one of the perks of traveling and staying
hotels al the time. Our room was on the
12th floor and overlooked the pool area out towards the strip.
Now this is where we get spoiled. The room size was just under 1000 square
feet. It included a marble bathroom that
could have been it’s own room with a shower stall, a bathtub and it’s own
TV. The main area was broken into two
section. The bed area and the
“entertainment room”. I am sure there
is a more elegant way to put it but the entertainment room included a table, a
desk, a corner leather couch, a credenza with it’s own TV (there is also a 3rd
tv by the bed), and finally this very large square table with cushions covered
with leather. I believe the term my
wife used was Italian gaudy. I do have
pictures!
We were both exhausted from our travels and wasn’t feeling
the greatest. Chin’s hotel the night
before had the heat go out twice and she couldn’t sleep while I had over 12
hours of flying. We called it a night
and decided that we would start our adventures in the morning.
Let me say that the older I get the harder it is for my body
to adjust to time changes. Vegas is on
Pacific Standard Time. I thought it was
Mountain Time. To make matters worse my
body had just got accustomed to Atlantic Standard Time. This is a 4 hour time change! With this information my body took the only
logical course of action and it split the difference. Forcing me to get up 2 hours earlier than I
wanted to.
Nah, just kidding. My
stupid body was side awake at 4 am giving me a whole 3 hours of sleep. I layed in bed for another 2 hours just
playing on my phone while Chin slept. I
went downstairs to a coffee shop next to the elevators and brought her back a
hot water and a chocolate croissant.
They had a Coffee Bean & Tea shop located on the casino level. I always enjoyed their coffees.
Over the next few days we logged 25,000 to 38,000 steps each
day. That works out to lots of
miles. I wanted to take her through the
hotels on the strip so she can see what each one looked like. We weren’t their to gamble or go to shows but
we were there to go out Saturday night.
We got lunch at a chocolate place
that also served burgers. This was at Caesars.
She also got to see one of their shows.
In fact, it was the only show on the strip she saw. We missed the fountains at the Bellagio. We made it down as far as the Monte Carlo
where we decided to head back. On the
way back we stopped at a shop at the Tropicana to buy some alcohol beverages to
drink on our way back and in the room.
Back at the hotel we decided that we would go to Ra Sushi for Happy
Hour. I believe this is our 8th
location. We had been to:
·
2 in Arizona
·
2 in Chicago
·
1 in Miami
·
1 in Dallas
It may be weird to think that we go to this chain restaurant
wherever we go there is lot to like at Ra. Discounted sushi and saki along with a more
hip atmosphere. Lots of sushi places are
over-priced and stuffy. The Ra Sushi
was located at the fashion mall which was on the other side of the Strip from
the Wynn which happens to be next to the Palazzo.
As I mentioned earlier we had wanted to go out just one
night to the Vegas clubs. We started
first at the Vazzo whch was more lounge than club. It is right off the main entrance to the
Palazzo and had 2 levels. We had only
one drink there and while we thought the place was beautiful we knew we were
looking for a dance club. We got there
early and therefore was able to bypass any cover charge. After about an hour we headed to the
Palazzo’s sister property next door called the Venetian and found Tao
Nightclub. To get into Tao we didn’t
have to wait in line either and no cover!
We had our hand stamped at Vazzo and that was good enough to get through
the door at Tao. In Tao we headed to the
top floor where all the action is. It’s
a multi-leveled dance club with bottle service at the tables and a bar set to
the side of the DJ stage. As expected it
was extremely crowded and loud. People
had these plastic tubes that lit up on one end and they were waving them in the
air. We each had a drink at the bar
before we worked our way to the dance floor.
We stayed till a little after 4 am before leaving. While there they had this guy dressed in all
metallic silver. He looked like he could
have come out of a Mortal Kombat game. I
tried to take a picture but all the lights were reflecting off of him! It reminded me of an episode of Almost Human
were the bad guys showed up on the security footage as blobs of light. It was impressive and a most enjoyable night.
We didn’t crash right away when we got to the hotel
room. I think we finally went to sleep
around 5:30 am.
The next day, Sunday, our goal was to finish up the casino
exploring. That didn’t go exactly as
planned as we had a little detour to our plans.
I knew there was an In and Out Burger a few blocks off the strip but I
didn’t know how to get there. Our first
attempt of the day was basically a failure.
We were walking from Excalibur on down the road there. We couldn’t
figure out how to get across the freeways and overpasses. We started to walk parallel to the Strip to
see if we could cross at the next road.
Turns out we couldn’t walk there either.
We also thought we could cut through to get back to the strip. The casino’s have security over there as it
is employee parking. We had to walk back
the way we came. This tacked on what
feels like an extra 2 miles of walking.
We headed back towards are hotel but on the MGM Grand side in order to
find some food. We settled on Bubba
Gump’s Shrimp which happens to be a Landrys.
We belong to their loyalty program and got the meal for free and still
had leftover for a shirt. We thought we
would have gone on her birthday to use the rewards but this worked out just
fine. Between the walking and the
dancing the night before we were around 38,000 steps for the day. We define our days based on what fitbit
says. In this case our days are linked
to AST so this was the numbers between 8 pm the night before and 7:59pm the day
of.
For dinner we went to an Asian place in the Palazzo. We both had some amazing Thai food. It was absolutely delicious. After the great meal we headed back to our
room and proceeded to fall asleep well before 10 am.
The next morning we grabbed some greasy breakfast sandwiches
from a café and went out to finish the casino trip. This time we did succeed in seeing all the
casinos. Not only that but we took the
monorail AND was able to eat lunch at In and Out Burger. The key was to walk on the OTHER side of the
road to get across. In and Out is only
the greatest burger joint of ALL TIME.
The other cool thing that happened today was I had taken a
wrong turn when trying to go from Mandalay Bay to the Luxor. Basically I went left through the casino
instead of right. We headed to the
convention center on the outside at Mandalay Bay were we ran into another
security person. This person was very
and she said if we wanted to go for a great walk we could walk to the Welcome
to Las Vegas sign just down the road.
This was on Chin’s bucket list.
She was so thrilled when we walked over and she had her picture taken in
front of it. After the picture taking we
finished up the casino treks by heading back to the hotel to have a nice dinner
on Chin’s actual birthday. We ended up
choosing a Bobby V’s Ristorante. An
Italian place that recently opened. What
was weird is it got horrible reviews!
Glad the reviews turned out to be from stupid people because the service
and food was excellent. The staff went
out of their way in making sure we were comfortable and had everything we
needed. The waiter recommended their
house white wine which turned out to be perfect for the occasion. He could have suggested an expensive bottle
but didn’t Pricing is on par with what
we pay at Carlito’s in Chicago.
