January 27, 2014 visit to Vegas for Wife's 40th Birthday

It's September and I am just remembering that I had a writeup about what we did in Vegas back in January for her birthday.

A short read on what we did in Vegas.

It was my wife’s 40^th 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 12^th 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 3^rd 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 8^th 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.