Leaving Las Vegas

Wednesday, November 20, November 20, 2013

We were both up a little before 5am. We got right about our business and got packed up and checked out. Our total bill here for 2 nights is unknown to me. Clay said he had checked out on TV or something while I was in the shower. For all the other hotels, they sent a paid invoice to email but not the Venetian. So, we expected to pay $461.44 and we prepaid it when we booked online. We stopped and filled the rental car’s gas tank and then returned it. The rental car ran about $26 per day. We had a short wait there and then walked right out and got on a shuttle bus to the airport. We went to an American Airlines self-check kiosk and got our boarding passes and checked our two rolling suitcases. We had TSA PreCheck on both our boarding passes this time, so we were through TSA security quickly and painlessly. We’re not sure how that happens but we have only had it on both once before leaving LAX and they didn’t have the line going or something. This time it worked well and we appreciated it. We stopped for breakfast at Cinnabun. I had an egg, sausage and cheese sandwich and Clay had a cinnamon bun. We went directly to the gate and didn’t wait long to board. We were on the same plane and the same seat as inbound. Smooth flight.

We got to DFW and wanted to eat but there was only 1 restaurant in the gate area. It was a Mexican place so that was fine but it was packed and they couldn’t seat us in time for our flight. We went and sat at the gate and ate Nabs and protein bars. While we sat there they changed our gate, so maybe it was good we weren’t eating in a restaurant! The flight to RDU was oversold and they were offering $500 to bump people. They were offering to check bags for free because they weren’t going to have enough space. Finally we got to board and after they scanned our boarding passes they gave us new ones and told us because of equipment change they had to reseat us. Instead of 8 A & B which we had all 3 previous legs, now we were 8 D & E. We got onboard and it was the exact same S80 we had flown on this segment inbound. The 8 row was the bulkhead and instead of the 2 seat side, we’d been moved to the 3 seat side. We had the middle and aisle seats and some guy had the window. Two men who did not know one another had our original seats. The first guy who was sitting in our row on the aisle acted a little put out when the window seat guy arrived, so we guess he must have thought he had displaced us for the row to himself. Anyway, I had to put my purse and backpack overhead since it was the bulkhead and my and Clay’s bags took a lot of abuse as several people and a couple of stewardesses tried to jam wheeled bags on top of them or crush them to the back and slam the door on theirs. It was ridiculous. It was a good thing we had checked our bags because there was no space for them on either flight home.

We were about 5 minutes late leaving because they were moving bags around so they could pull out from the gate. We ended up arriving home about 10 minutes early though. Then we lost that time waiting 20 minutes to reclaim our baggage. We missed the 6:10pm TTA bus 100 to downtown and got out about 8 minutes before the 6:41pm bus was expected. It was a couple of minutes late. We were the only people riding and that is the first time that has happened. The bus did not return to Moore Square Station, instead he let us off on Wilmington Street nearby. According to the schedule I had printed off the website before leaving home, there should have been 3 more buses to and from the airport last night. I hope he was just going off duty and some other bus went into Moore Square Station to pick up people waiting to go to the airport and back. Clay said he didn’t think so, he said he checked the sign posted at the bus stop at the airport and it said that 6:41pm was the last departure. It doesn’t make sense that they would change a sign and not a website. Anyway, we got home after 7pm and had a pizza and went to bed. Clay had told the people at work that he would be working today, in error, since he was flying all day. Anyway, that means he has to go back into work tomorrow.

Clay has told me that he updated his travel spreadsheets and that now Las Vegas is our most expensive trip per diem.

Vegas Day 8

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

My nose started tearing yesterday. I wasn’t congested, just tears constantly running out of my nose. It feels like the start of a sore throat. Then late last night I started sneezing and couldn’t stop. Clay offered me one of his Benadryl. I don’t normally take that because it tends to knock me out, but it being bedtime that just seemed like a bonus. I took and it slept right away and through the night. Great. The drapes fully blocked the outside light and we were both still sound asleep at 7am. That was when the excitement started. It sounded like someone was playing bongos in the bathroom, then another bongo player started up. At some point we realized it was the sound we had heard from the bathroom sinks when you washed your hands in one the other would make loud glug noises. But now we were both in bed and not using any plumbing. Clay went in there and ran water and it got worse. We both used the toilet (which is our first in Vegas without that jet flush) and washed our hands and it just kept getting worse. It went out for about half an hour. It was funny for about 5 minutes and then we wondered how we'd get a 2^nd night’s sleep in here! Anyway, we slept in and now we’re up!

We went to Casanova for breakfast because it was the first place we saw serving breakfast. Honestly, we can’t find our own asses with 2 hands, a map and a flashlight inside The Venetian. It is a giant maze and makes no sense. I think the recreation of St. Mark’s Square and the indoor canals are on the floor above the casino. We had a coupon for 10% off at Casanova, so bonus. We just had normal breakfasts. We have yet to be served real maple syrup on this trip and at the prices that is just tragic. I had a cup of coffee and never was offered a warm up or refill. Clay said it was my cheapest cup of coffee all trip at $3.50.

We walked around and then over to Casino Royale so Clay could play $5 blackjack. The only seat at a table when we walked in was at Free Bet Blackjack. He didn’t like the rules and lost his $100 in about 30 minutes. I lost $5 in a penny slot machine in less than 5 minutes (it said 1 penny but the minimum bet was 35 cents). We walked back to Venetian to do the indoor gondola with our coupon for $18.95 for the 2 of us sharing with another couple. You could go by yourselves for $75, or $56 I think with the coupon. We shared. Our gondolier was Roberto and he sang 3 songs for us. It was good, I enjoyed it. At least we were sitting down for a while. Clay asked me at breakfast today if I thought the Disneyland trip in December would be as exhausting as this trip has been. I told him I thought it would be more exhausting. Three days walking outdoors all day and into the night in the parks, yeah it will be worse. He said you really have to appreciate the cruise travel experience. You can always sit down somewhere without spending money to do it. The food on all our cruises has been better than all of our expensive meals here and really there is no excuse for the bad meals we’ve had here. He said he thought he was getting too old for this. I have to agree, it is too hard and I seldom enjoy it enough anymore to go through the trials and hardships. I don’t know how much is me and how much is that so much of what you pay for anymore does not meet your expectations. There is not enough help working, or they don’t care or aren’t trained, the quality is not as expected, etc. Or maybe it is me. Probably it is some of both.

We used a coupon to buy Clay some big malted milk balls and another to get gelato. Neither of us could think of anything else we wanted to do or figure out how to get anywhere, so we’re back in the room at around 1pm expecting to nap until 4pm and early dinner before our last show, Mystere at Treasure Island right across the street. I think Clay picked out Enoteca Otto for dinner. We have a coupon for one free glass of Prosecco with an entree there.

I moved some things around in an attempt to be ready to pack. Now I guess I’ll nap. We have to leave here around 6am tomorrow morning for an 8:30am flight and to return the rental car.

We had probably our best meal of the trip finally at a named restaurant. Mario Batalli’s Otto Enoteca on St. Mark’s Square in The Venetian. We sat right out on the square and had an excellent view of the performance stage they have set up there for Winter in Venice. The location was great and so was the food. I had short rib in ravioli with tomato and mozzarella sauce. We had a coupon for a free glass of Prosecco with that so I had it. Clay ordered Butcher’s sausage with roasted red grapes and dandelion greens. It was some kind of white sausage that was very mild. We both liked all the food. For dessert, Clay had pistachio, dark chocolate malt and salted caramel gelatos. I had what was billed as warm chocolate cake with toasted meringue and dark chocolate malted gelato with salted caramel. Mine was a surprise. It came in a water-sized glass. The chocolate gelato on the bottom followed by a scoop of salted caramel gelato, then the toasted meringue which tasted like marshmallow crème with a cookie-sized or muffintop-sized round piece of cake nestled in next to the meringue. It was really rich and good, but we were both surprised at it since it was called cake and there was so little of that in the glass. I also had a caffe latte which was very good. Finally. At least we finished on a high note rather than a disappointing one. Enough of that already!

We wandered and finally found our way out to Treasure Island via the pedestrian bridge from Palazzo across the Strip. We had about an hour to kill. So we wandered the TI casino, visited the Mystere gift shop and found the pedestrian bridge to Fashion Show Mall. We went over and visited the art gallery where we had purchased a lot of art during the 1980’s. They were still carrying a lot of the same prints for obviously a lot more money. I told Clay he needs to contact them and offer to sell them back at even half of what they are asking now.

We walked back to the Mystere Theater and went straight in to our seats. We had good seats on the 2^nd row of the 2^nd section from the bottom. Mystere is in its 20^th year and is classic Cirque du Soleil. We really liked it. Our tickets were $77 per person.

It is about 9:30pm now and time to get to bed. We have to be on our way to the car at 6am tomorrow. We’ll have an early start and a long hard travel day flying through DFW. Not looking forward to that but looking forward to being home for a few weeks before our next hard trip to Disneyland! Good night and I’ll try to get these posted in a timely manner when we are home. I’ll see if Clay has any useable photos from either his camera or his phone.

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Vegas Day 7

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Monday, November 18, 2013

I didn’t get much sleep last night. I kicked and twitched until about 3am before I finally knocked out. We were up around 7:30am so I had a short night. Clay went downstairs to get me a yogurt and a Coke or a coffee, some caffeine. He came back with a yogurt, a paper and a bottle of cranberry juice. It seems that all our hotels so far have been MGM or MLife affiliated and they are Pepsi loyalists. So, no Cokes allowed. That meant in addition to only 4.5 hours sleep I was now caffeine deprived.

We checked out and dropped the keys and left for our drive to the desert. It was an interesting drive. The Corn Creek area is seriously under construction including the 4 mile gravel road to where the new Visitor’s Center is being built and including the trails. There were construction workers and heavy equipment and trucks everywhere. Two of the trails were closed or inaccessible. So, we only got to walk 3 of them. We saw birds, snails and Pahrump poolfish. I guess the construction noise was too much for any other wildlife. Oh, well it was a nice day. Sunny with a cool breeze.

Clay had a lunch place picked out for the drive back. It was TC’s Rib Crib in a strip shopping center on the way back. It was good. Clay had beef ribs and I had a $4.99 lunch special. It was a chopped brisket sammie with a side of mac and cheese. It was good. It was kind of like a sloppy joe on a toasted potato bun, with a sweet/spicy hot sauce. Clay said his ribs were good too. After the waitress offered us $1 desserts of peach cobbler, banana pudding or glazed doughnut bread pudding. Clay got peach cobbler and I went for glazed doughnut bread pudding. She heated little servings in tiny Styrofoam cups. I was surprised to find apples, peaches and raisins in mine, though the primary flavor was Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was good. She thought my serving looked skimpy so she brought over another cup with peach cobbler and Clay ate it. We left full and happy. It was good tasting food at reasonable prices. We made our way on to The Venetian our home for the next 2 nights. I fell asleep in the car. I couldn’t stay awake. I was just crashing.

We got to The Venetian and it is a huge property and we had to keep asking for directions. Even with a map and directions we are still getting lost here. We are in room 14130, a king resort view room. That means we overlook the pool. At least the Venetian’s pool is open unlike the pools at Mandalay Bay. What is up with the building across from us? The top of the building is just a picture printed on fabric! This room is our most expensive I think, at about $250 per night. It is also our biggest and most impressive. It has a big poorly lit bathroom just off the hall from the entry door. It has a tub, TV, shower, toilet room, 2 sinks and a make-up vanity with lighted magnifying mirror. Even the lighting on the mirror is poor though and the unlighted magnifying mirror at Mandalay Bay was better. The toilet is the only one of the trip that wasn't jet powered. I guess that must be an MGM chain thing, since The Venetian is the only non-M hotel of our trip. Also, they must have had some kind of fluorescent bulb in the little toilet room, because it took a long time to light up and it was really dark in there! Next is the bedroom and past that and down 2 steps is the living room. There is a 2-leg sectional sofa, coffee table, TV in a cabinet, a table and 3 chairs and a desk with a printer. The drapes and sheers are operated with a remote control. There is the same minibar and snacks with the same warning that if you touch or move them, you’re buying them so don’t try to use the fridge. This is the most comfortable bed of the trip!

I was so fried that I washed my face, put on my pajamas, put in eye drops and went to bed. I tried to sleep for a couple of hours before we needed to have an early dinner here at the Venetian. I must have been having one of those painless migraines because I was seeing flashing pictures with my eyes closed. I have only had that a couple of times before with bad headaches and I was told it was a migraine symptom with or without pain. I guess the good news was that it was painless. The bad news was that I still didn’t get any rest. I got up after about an hour and half and called it quits. I got dressed for the evening and we headed out.

We had an early dinner at Trattoria Reggiano. I had chicken francese and Clay had an Italian sausage pizza. It was all good. They served very greasy and strong garlic rolls up front. That was a mistake. Clay burped in my face later and I almost vomited. It was repulsive. I was too full for dessert, but I was really craving coffee by now. We decided to go on and drive to Aria where we have tickets for Cirque du Soleil’s Zarkana and get coffee and dessert somewhere there where we could sit and kill time.

We parked at Aria’s self-park and scouted out the theater and found the sugar and chocolate sculpture for Zarkana at Jean Philippe Patisserie. It was impressive. Clay got gelato there and I had another Mocha Latte. It was all as good as the first ones we had at the Bellagio. I wanted to go check out Zarkana’s gift shop as well as the fountains out front. So, we went and sat on a bench in front of the water wall and watched the small fountains shows. Then we moved over to a pair of dove chairs! Very comfortable and finally we went back inside and used the restrooms and went to the gift shop. They had just marked down a bunch of shirts and Clay got a t-shirt for $4.99! We went back outside and sat for a while longer. Then back to the bathrooms and right into the theater. It was a big, beautiful red steeply raked theater with a traditional stage. They started right on time after characters spent some time out in the audience. It was brilliant. We loved it. We had front row seats just to the right of the stage and they were perfect. They did not have speakers in the seats so the sound was never overwhelming. It was in Italian and it was amusing and spectacular. We really enjoyed it. It is amazing that they can come up with all these very different shows and do it so well. Except Criss Angel’s Believe. I still don’t know why Cirque partnered with him. Our tickets tonight were $88 total per person.

We got back to the Venetian before 9pm and Clay wanted to go to the Walgreen’s that is supposed to be attached to the complex to get a big bottle of Diet Coke for his last 2 nights. We wandered for about an hour with a map before finding it. The casino here on Monday night is the most crowded place we have been the whole trip. It was crazy. We got outside on the Strip side and it was still crowded. The Venetian had 3 Celtic Women out there on a stage on the bridge before the white Christmas tree playing Christmas carols on violins. There were masked Venetian characters milling through the crowd for photos and entertainment. The gondolas were giving rides and there was an ice skating rink set up. It was like a warm winter wonderland out there! We got distracted but eventually walked into the busiest Walgreen’s in America! Clay finally got his Diet Coke though. We wandered around the indoor canal of recreated Venice scouting gelato and restaurants for tomorrow. We have a coupon book they gave us on arrival about Winter in Venice that has a 2 for one gondola ride. We have to choose inside or outside. I was thinking outside but it is a ridiculously short little loop. The indoor one looks like a longer ride and at least one of the inside gondoliers was singing! I think Clay also picked a restaurant for our last early pre-show dinner tomorrow night, but I don’t remember the name now. More tomorrow. Good night, fingers crossed for a restful night's sleep.

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Vegas Day 6

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Sunday, November 17, 2013

I woke up close to 7:30am and Clay was snoring. I got up and got started for the day. I asked him if he wanted to go see where the treadmills are for later and he said no he wasn’t going to use them today or tomorrow morning. OK. That will be 4 days without a treadmill session and when his was broken for that long at home, you’d have thought our world was shattered. Go figure.

We went to the Raffles Café for breakfast. It was quiet and uncrowded when we arrived. I had Eggs Benedict with shredded hash browns and coffee. It was swimming in hollandaise sauce, but it was good. Clay had a normal eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast breakfast. He ate it all so it must have been OK. It was about 10am by then.

The Shark Reef opens at 10am. We walked right up and bought tickets ($17 each, no hotel guest discount) and went in through the ubiquitous green screen photo op. It is a predator aquarium and they had a Komodo Dragon and pythons and a crocodile, etc. It was OK. But, we were through pretty quick and that was it. Unlike the Dolphin Habitat you could not go in and out and wander around. It was one time and one way. Our tickets had an extra stub that gave us free same day admission to Score! in Luxor. I Googled it and decided that we would go. We didn’t have anything else planned though we did make plans for tomorrow while on the Internet. We’ll drive to Desert National Wildlife Refuge north of Las Vegas when we check out here tomorrow before we arrive at the Venetian for our last 2 nights in Vegas.

So, we took the tram over to Luxor and went through Score! It was free and that is the best thing I can say about. I am sure people who love and follow sports would have enjoyed it a lot more than us but it was interesting and fun. We walked back to Mandalay Bay through the shops. Clay wanted to stop for a snack and he picked a slice of pizza place. We got a slice of pepperoni and a slice of sausage and 2 cups of water for over $10. The pizza was awful. We both made a face and turned to the other as we each had a first bite. I ate about 3 bites of each slice since it was $5 a slice but I couldn’t make myself eat it as it was just too disgusting. Clay didn’t eat much more than that either.  That brings us back to now. Clay is sleeping until dinner at 5pm. Maybe he will get to see the first showing of Michael Jackson’s One Cirque du Soleil show tonight. More later.

We’re back at 8:50pm. Dinner tonight was another overpriced disappointment. I think we won’t be trying any more “name” and reservations required restaurants here in Las Vegas. We got to Fleur about 15 minutes early before they started seating for dinner at 5pm. Clay ordered a $4 happy hour Bud Light and I had a generous pour of a $14 glass of Hubert Keller’s Pinot Gris. The wine was the best thing I had at dinner! Clay ordered short ribs and I had steak Lyonnais. The waiter gave the requisite warning about ordering well done, which always just chaps my butt. I know you can nicely cook fully done any piece of beef because I do it all the time. Anyway, at some point he came back and said it was taking so long because I had ordered well done. OK. Shortly after that our food was delivered. My meat was burnt crispy on the outside and blood red rare on the inside but worse was that everything on my plate including the plate were between just warm and room temperature cold. Like it had been cooked and then just sat and cooled off. It was fairly disgusting. Clay ate some of the sautéed onions and said they were even colder than the meat and potatoes. His pureed parsnips and Wagyu short ribs had a bone in the pot in which they were served and he said that his wasn’t real hot, but it wasn’t cold like mine.  Anyway, we were trying to eat fast so we just let it go and didn’t complain about it. We had ordered dessert up front since I wanted the chocolate soufflé and we were pressed to get to the early show. Clay had mint chocolate chip profiteroles and they were fine. They were made with ice cream so he was happy. The soufflé was another disappointment. It wasn’t terribly sweet or chocolaty. It was served with raspberry sauce that tasted primarily of orange juice and neither of us liked that. If we wanted an orange tasting soufflé, we’d order a Grand Marnier one. It also came with what we guess was green tea ice cream. It was tasteless. Clay ate it because it was cold. I had coffee and it was served French Press and was really strong and bitter. So, once again we left underwhelmed, a little hungry and very disappointed with the money spent.

We walked right over to the Michael Jackson One Theater and went right to our seats after using the restrooms. Our tickets had printed on them that everyone should be seated by 6:45pm. We had great seats tonight. We could easily see the entire thing very well and we were on the inside end of a row. The theatre was really well designed and appeared to be a classic proscenium arch design, but the show extended out along the sides of the bottom seating area which made the upper section preferable to me. The show was spectacular if a little macabre considering Michael Jackson is dead. You have to wonder if he approved or collaborated on it before his death or if the whole thing happened after. I mean in my mind, that would make a big difference in how I perceived it. Clay stayed awake tonight. For some reason, I had to pee so bad during the show that I had to go to the restroom about 5 minutes before the show ended. I got back in time to watch the big finale from the aisle next to my seat and leave the theater with Clay. He said all I missed was a lot of hand slaps as the performers ran through the aisles, so that was all good since I don’t like strangers touching me anyway. Clay thought it was the best of the Cirque shows we’ve seen so far. It was really good, if you like MJ’s music at all. The seats had speakers in them again, so the sound could be overwhelmingly loud at times. I think only Criss Angel and “O” did not have speakers in the seats so far. Tickets tonight were $148.50 per person.

Well, it is bedtime. We aren’t in any rush in the morning, but we do have to check out and move. We plan to pack the car and take a day trip of less than 100 miles roundtrip North of Las Vegas to Desert National Wildlife Refuge before checking into The Venetian for our final 2 nights.

Our total hotel bill here with some food and beverage added to the 2 nights stay was $421.41.

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Vegas Day 5

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Saturday, November 16, 2013

We did sleep in and couldn’t seem to get started. Clay has skipped 2 days of using the treadmills now. I finally just got up to leave and told him let's go eat breakfast. We left and he asked if we could go to Carnegie Deli. I said sure (even though we had looked at the menu the day we arrived and I had nixed it). It is small and the breakfast buffet place had not yet opened (I think it opened after 9am) so it was packed, with about 30 people in line outside. I got in line and told Clay we’d wait and see how the line moved. It moved mostly by people dropping out. About 20 to 30 minutes later we were seated inside and ordering. Clay was disappointed by his eggs and corned beef omelet style sandwich. I got a bagel with a schmear of cream cheese. The bagel was the best I can remember having and evidently a schmear is not the smear it sounds like but an inch thick slab. I had to scrape some away. The coffee was just so-so. I was still happy and it was probably our least expensive breakfast yet.

We went back upstairs to brush our teeth, finish packing and get checked out. We dropped the room keycards in a box by the elevator on our way out.  While we were upstairs we got the addresses for the Atomic Testing Museum and an outlet mall so we’d have something to do today until afternoon and checking into Mandalay Bay for 2 nights.

Traffic just keeps getting heavier. We thought it might peak today, Saturday. We were wrong. Tomorrow the Strip is shut down along with a bunch of other streets for Vegas’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. The good news is that we won’t be leaving Mandalay Bay at all tomorrow. Lucky planning for once on our part.

The Atomic Museum was really crowded and we spent an extra $6 for the Area 51 Exhibit. It was a bit of a disappointment. It was just about noon when we left so I set the GPS to the Outlet Mall that Clay had put in thinking to get a snack and wander for a couple of hours. Well, the Atomic Museum is closer to the airport than downtown, but he had programmed in the outlet mall by downtown. So, we spent 2 hours in traffic without ever leaving the car until we were parked at Mandalay Bay. I would advise avoiding the outlet mall near downtown, especially on Saturday. There is inadequate parking and it is designed with only one way in and one way out, so there are a thousand cars just stuck in there waiting for one to move so someone else can enter or exit. It was stupid. Once we realized the lots were closed and full we tried to turn around immediately and get back out but it took an hour because there was no alternate egress! This was after we had driven all the way downtown from near the airport! There is another outlet mall out near the airport, btw. Clay told me he had a reason for picking the downtown one, but I won’t try to repeat it because it made no sense to me.

We got to Mandalay Bay about 3pm. We drove by MGM which is where we are eating at Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House and going to Cirque du Soleil’s KA tonight. I could not see any self-parking or car entrance there. Traffic was horrendous and even pedestrian traffic was a nightmare. I told Clay that we needed to walk there and see if we could take a tram to cover part of the distance. The tram appeared to go right into Mandalay Bay. We asked at check in and she confirmed with the traffic and crowds this weekend for the marathon that we should take the tram to Excalibur and then take the pedestrian bridge over to MGM.  I’ve just Googled it and all but one website say it stops running at 10:30pm, so that will get us there but not back. Clay called the concierge and was told it runs from 9:30am to 12:30am. We shall see if we have to walk all the way back after 10:30pm or not. More later. Yep. They have up signs that say it runs from 9am to 12:30am, so no problems.

We got room 3331 in Mandalay Bay. We did not request or pay extra for any particular view here as we did at the last 2 hotels. So, we have a view of 3 huge restaurant exhaust fans on the roof of a building. Beyond the fans I can see Border Grill and the Convention Center, so the Beach pool complex must be out there past the exhaust fans but we can’t see it. It doesn’t really matter and I think that is why we didn’t pay extra to book a view room here. We are paying $170 tonight but only $100 Sunday night. I guess that is because of the Rock n Roll Marathon. Though Carlos Santana is performing here at the House of Blues and you would think that would be worth something. Anyway. It is a big and well laid out room. It has the same minibar, snacks vending area as all the other rooms with the same no touching rules and the fridge not being for your personal use, but this time we weren’t told up front. It is a big soft bed. There is lots of comfortable seating and a big desk. The bathroom is the hugest yet. It has 2 sinks, a big tub and a big free standing shower. There is a TV by the sinks on one end of the counter and a magnifying mirror on the other end. The toilet is in a little room alone at the back of the bathroom. The shower floor is like rubber fake rocks. I think they are fake rocks and not real, it feels like it has some give and it is a non-slip surface. I like it. I told Clay that is the shower floor I want when we redo our bathroom. He didn’t notice it. There isn't much privacy in this bathroom though. It has a glass pane over the tub to the entry hall and big swinging, recessed double doors into the room. You have to really think about it or look for them before you think about getting any privacy in the bathroom area. It appears to just be open to the bedroom area.

After we got settled in the room, we went over to the Shops at Mandalay Bay and had a light lunch at Hussong's. We had chips and salsas up front. Clay had a bowl of posole that was very tasty. I had an order of queso fundido and we both liked it too. Clay had a beer. Then we just went back to the room where Clay napped and I typed up notes and we changed clothes for the evening ahead.

So, it was quite quick and easy to take the Express Tram back and forth to Excalibur. From there you just walk around to the pedestrian bridge over the Strip to the Tropicana where you do have to take an escalator down and walk about ½ a block around a hedge and the Tropicana driveway to get to the up escalator to the pedestrian bridge that takes you into MGM Grand. Then, of course you have to go across the casino to get to Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House or to the KA Theater. The way back was unpleasant, there were 2 men smoking cigars in a large drunken group of 5 people. We got apace with them in MGM’s casino on the way back to Mandalay Bay and could not escape them by either speeding up or slowing down. No matter what we did, there they were. And these cigars smelled like ass.  They were sickening. It is bad enough that evidently Las Vegas is the only place left on Earth that you can light up anywhere you want. I am sure though that those tram cars were non-smoking. They not only got on, but we were in the furthest car alone when they burst in puffing away just before the tram left. It seemed like less than a minute ride over, but it must have been closer to 3 minutes. Because we couldn’t hold our breath that long and we were both about green by the time the doors opened and we burst out of there. Some people are just nasty.

Before dinner and the show, Clay bought a KA t-shirt. We stopped at a Sugar Factory store because he had seen some big malted milk balls at LICK at the Shoppes of Mandalay at about $15/lb and he balked. At Sugar Factory the prices were listed at 99 cents an ounce, so basically the same price but they didn’t have any big malt balls. They did have chocolate coated ridged potato chips a la Cow Chips. We decided to try some and put what we thought was about 1 to 2 ounces in the little plastic bag and put it on the scale to pay. Evidently the minimum amount they will charge for a sale is .25 pounds (this is not posted anywhere!). Clay was pretty mad and we had some excessively expensive and not so good chocolate covered potato chips.

We were still about 15 minutes early for our reservation at Emeril’s but it looked pretty empty so we went on over and asked if they could take us early and they could. Clay ordered an Abita Amber beer and I had a $10 2 to 3 ounce pour glass of Riesling. It was good wine and the perfectly sized serving for me, but pricey! I had been balking at $15-$16 glasses of wine (plus I hadn’t seen a wine I wanted to drink by the glass) but one hopes they were full wine glasses and not the ¼ glass that I got here. Clay ordered a ½ dozen oysters and they were even smaller than at Circo. He thought Circo’s were really small and about the size of his thumb print. Emeril’s were about the size of my index finger print. He had to cut them out of the shell with his fork as someone had left the job undone. It was not a nice presentation like at Circo either. He says he is done with oysters in Vegas. They have been under his $3 per oyster price point but disappointing. Clay had BBQ salmon and I had chicken under a brick. Both dishes were large servings and very tasty. Mine had 3 colors of fingerling potatoes and green beans and both were really good. The chicken was advertised as a ½ chicken. I couldn’t see that but I did only eat white meat and gave the dark half to Clay. It was good, but $28 for a chicken dinner!? We shared a dessert of peanut butter and chocolate bars with chocolate ice cream. It was an enormous dessert and it was good we were just sharing one!

We walked on over to the KA theater as the first show people were exiting and it wasn’t too long before we were inside. We were at the end of a row finally. But, we were only 4 rows from the front and beside the left side of the stage. This was the largest and most elaborate theater yet. It was not as steeply raked as the others, but most of the action was on moving and steeply raked stage floors floating above the main surface, so it worked out. There was a lot going on over our heads and behind us. We didn’t choose our seats well again. It was hot when we walked in, but the least smoky Cirque Theater so far. As we entered and sat to wait, flames kept shooting up from below the lip of the stage. We were right there and could feel the heat every time. It just kept getting hotter. I told Clay that they can’t shoot those flames once the performance starts so it should cool off once it begins and that was true. It got cold by the time we left the theater. It was a pretty spectacular show and I was not disappointed. Clay said he didn’t like it to well. He said he didn't understand what it was about. Huh? Clay went to sleep before it even started and I would nudge him when it got interesting, but he mostly slept. Probably a world record for priciest nap for him, which is saying something. These tickets were $88 per person. He has been sleeping more than 8 hours a night plus taking 2 to 3 hour naps every afternoon so I don’t know why he is still so tired. We will sleep in again tomorrow with no plans other than visiting the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef aquarium during the day. We have dinner reservations at 5pm at Fleur and tickets to Michael Jackson One first showing.

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Vegas Day 4

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Friday, November 15, 2013

We did sleep in until 8am, even Clay. He could have gone to the fitness room to try for a treadmill after 5am. It is only open 5am to 7pm and is much smaller than Bellagio’s with I would guess fewer than half the treadmills. The guy working there told us yesterday he had 35 people in there between 5 and 7 am on Thursday. I think that may have put Clay off as well.

We putted around and went down to the Roast Bean for breakfast. Clay had a chicken salad sandwich. I had a strawberry yogurt and a chocolate croissant with a mocha latte. I was happy. It still cost about $25!

We came back up to the room and it had been serviced already! Points to The Mirage over Bellagio for maid service, sadly Clay realized when we got back that he hadn’t left a maid tip this morning. We will hope the same person comes tomorrow and gets the tip for our entire stay.

The room still smells funky though. We brushed our teeth and used the bathroom then headed down to the Dolphin Habitat and Secret Garden. We paid $17 each. Admission was reduced by $3 pp because we are staying here. The admission charge is good for the entire day. Last admission is at 4pm though. You just have to get a stamp on your wrist before you leave and then you can come and go. We should have checked this out more thoroughly earlier because they had a very cool dolphin painting experience that we would probably have paid the $200 extra for if we had known about it and had a chance to book it in advance. I still don’t understand The Mirage missing that informational and sales opportunity once they have you in your room here. Anyway. I am fairly certain we won’t be back so we didn’t really  learn anything from this. We enjoyed our couple of hours there. We mostly enjoyed the dolphins more than the white lions and tigers even though it was shadier in the cat part and sunnier in the dolphin part. You can go underground and watch the dolphins underwater which was cool too. You are forced to have a green screen photo opportunity to enter the Secret Garden of the big cats at the back of the dolphin habitat. That is annoying and the photos were pretty ridiculous. We didn’t buy any but it was funny watching her move us around like cutout paper dolls to try to convince us to buy some.  We thought about leaving and returning but wound up just sharing a bag of chips and a Coke Icee and watching the dolphins longer instead. We’ll be eating dinner at about 4pm today, so we didn’t want to be too full.  

So, we are at the early Cirque du Soleil show at the Luxor tonight. It is Criss Angel’s BeLIEve. We have to be there at 6:30pm. So, our plan is to walk over to Treasure Island early and get Clay’s Texas-style BBQ fix at Gilley’s there. They do not take reservations and are open from 11am to at least midnight. I think we didn’t think there was anywhere we wanted to eat here or Luxor tonight. Our tickets for tonight's show were purchased online and picked up with the rest at the Bellagio box office. We paid $75 + $7.50 fees for a total ticket price per person of $82.50.

Tomorrow we are moving to Mandalay Bay for 2 nights. Tomorrow night we are going to Cirque du Soleil’s KA at MGM Grand. We have dinner reservations at Emeril’s at MGM. I tried to get us into Wolfgang Puck as our first choice but they had nothing available. I am sure Emeril’s will be fine. I am sure Clay should love it; lots of oysters on the menu.

So, we had dinner early at Gilley’s at Treasure Island. Sirens will restart on Dec. 25^th. There is a little 2 car tram between Mirage and TI. It takes about 6 minutes to walk and 2-6 minutes to take the tram depending on if you have to wait for it. It is very convenient and if we had known about it we could have scheduled Mystere at TI during our 2 nights here at Mirage. Oh, well. Dinner at Gilley’s. We spent half the money we spent on each of our last 2 dinners for twice the food and we really liked it. How can you go wrong with St. Louis ribs and chicken fried steak? I guess we must just be some kind of Philistines. Neither of us finished our meals again, but tonight because we just had more than we could eat, not because it didn’t taste good enough to eat it all. We were too full for dessert. We walked through the TI casino to scout out the location of the Mystere Theater for when we come back. We rode the tram back and asked at the Concierge about 90 minutes being enough time for eating at Fleur on Sunday night. We made that reservation with the assurance that since we already had our tickets and were staying onsite that it wouldn’t be a problem. So, we’ll look forward to that and happy to know it is taken care of. We watched the 5pm volcano show from the Valet station and that was probably the best location. But, it is still a ridiculous thing.  

The drive 2 miles down the Strip to Luxor took much longer than you might expect, but it had to be better than walking. All the pedestrians were probably the reason the cars were so slow. We had an hour and a half to get there so it was fine. We looked around Luxor to find a place to eat dessert while we waited. We found another Blizz. Luxor’s Blizz had $.59/oz. frozen yogurt! Clay had that and I got a S’mores crepe. That flaming volcanic pool just makes me crave marshmallows every time! Again,  it was good food and this time we ate it all. Then we walked straight into the theater for Criss Angel’s BeLIEve. It was exceedingly smoky in there. It was a more traditional proscenium arched stage. It was steeply raked again so all the seats were good. We were in the middle of a row in the middle of a section again. This time near the front and to the right of the stage. It was not a full house again, but our section was almost completely full. I should have gone with my gut on this one and skipped it. When we decided to come to Vegas and see all the Cirque shows, I knew I wasn’t interested in Zumanity and why. I read a lot of negative reviews online and I thought I’d feel the same way. But people were crazy for Criss Angel’s Cirque show, so even though I have seen him on TV and decidedly did not like him, he actually creeps me out, I thought we should give it a chance. Mistake. It was a waste of money to both of us. Didn’t like it, didn’t enjoy it, didn’t appreciate it, can’t understand why Cirque du Soleil would affiliate their brand with it. It wasn’t a great magic show, it wasn’t a good Cirque show. I mean he cuts a woman in half and she dies. Where is the magic in that? Most of the show was pyrotechnics and other loud flashes of light to blind you as Criss Angel moved from one place to another. Where is the magic in that? We know what you’re doing and once would be enough, but that was pretty much his only trick just repeated in variations. At least we got into the early show and didn’t have to stay up late to be disappointed. The only other good news was that instead of over $100 per seat we are only out $82 per seat. I just told Clay that and it didn’t make him feel any better about it!

So, we’ll be in bed before 10pm tonight and happy to get the sleep. The jet lag and late nights have been killers. Also, the moving every 2 nights may have been a bad idea. We can sleep in since we have no firm plans tomorrow except moving to Mandalay Bay for our next 2 nights.

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Vegas Day 3

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Today we were up at 6:20am. Clay got up first and went right into the shower. We were mostly packed and went to Café Bellagio for breakfast. Clay had a traditional breakfast and I had raspberry French toast. I think we were both pleased. We went back up to the room and packed up and left. We settled up at checkout and were on the road before 8:30am.  (Look at Clay's 2 eggs. He says he wants to be able to cook his eggs like this at home. I told him to just not separate them, but he pointed out that he had to flip them as a single entity. He said he would try it at home. Well, on last Sunday, he took his little frying pan over to the sink and flipped his 2 eggs successfully! Yeah!)

We were at the Hoover Dam before 9:30am hoping to get a full dam tour. You have to drive through a security checkpoint to get to the parking lot. It costs $7 to park in the garage. The website said that there were a limited number of tours and you couldn’t book them online, only in person and to get there early. They opened the ticket line at 9am. We asked and were told we could only take the Power Plant tour. I asked why and she said they didn’t have enough guides to offer the dam tour. She acted like that was a full time state of things and there was no signage up offering the dam tour. Anyway. She sold us 2 Seniors tickets at $9 each. We both think we had done this tour before. Of course it had to be different because there was no bridge and the visitor’s center was also newly built since we were last here. It was good. It was interesting. There is very light traffic over the dam now since every car has to go through a security checkpoint to get there. We walked out on the new bridge to view the dam and the concrete walls on it are so tall that the cars on the bridge would never even know the dam was down there. Sad.

We drove back to Vegas and found the Ethel M Factory. The tour was free and brief because their manufacturing machine was broken. We saw some people covering apples with chocolate and a bunch of engineers tinkering and consulting each other over the machine and got a couple of free samples and that was that. Disappointing. We wandered their cactus garden which was just freaky because the cacti were all wrapped in Christmas lights, with lots of big Christmas lawn inflatables around. It was weird. Clay thought it would be cool to see it at night, but we won’t.

We drove on to The Mirage, our home for the next 2 nights. We easily found the self-park garage here. We had booked a Strip view room. We are in 9025.  I am looking out at Treasure Island and Wynn. Clay is on the bed and can see The Venetian across the street. We will be staying at The Venetian our last 2 nights. We booked this online at $449.12 for the 2 nights. There is a $25 resort fee per day on top of that at all the Vegas hotels. Our final invoice with some drinks, a meal and 2 Dolphin Habitat tickets shows we paid a total of $576.93 for the 2 nights.

The Mirage room is nice but our room smells musty and funky. It is smaller than Bellagio, but it is also less expensive. They have the same rules about not touching the fridge or snacks or being billed, with the same warnings. The bathroom is much smaller and has a shower over the tub. The sink is chest high on me again. What is going on with that? They have a Secret Garden from Siegfried and Roy and a Dolphin Habitat here that you can pay to visit. I think it is $19.95 and we can get a $3 discount with our room key and personal ID. We will plan to do that tomorrow. It looks like the Grand Canyon is about 8 hours roundtrip drive from here, so while Clay is interested in going, I am voting no. He wanted to go get a snack as soon as we got to the room. We went to Blizz, a frozen yogurt place here and had savory crepes. I had pepperoni pizza and Clay had BBQ chicken. They were $12.95 each and we probably should have just picked on and shared. They had $.69 an oz. make your own frozen yogurt sundae and we had small ones each worth $25 which was crazy. It was good though and Clay finished both. Then he wanted to go ahead and tour the garden and dolphins, but I said no, tomorrow. So, he has been sleeping and still is. I have been typing up these notes and watching it get dark and the Strip light up. The Mirage is supposed to have some kind of volcano show out on the Strip, like Bellagio’s fountains and if we’re going to see it we need to go do it before dinner. We just saw part of the 5pm show from our window but it is partially blocked by the glass dome of the lobby atrium. We’ll have to find out where one should go to actually view it. It looks like it is right on the sidewalk of the Strip and it is huge so I can’t imagine where you can nicely view it. It goes off on the hour from 5pm to maybe 11pm according to the website. We have very slow Internet here and there is no substantive hotel information to be found in our room.

In other news, Clay only brought his little pocket camera this trip to save space and for ease of use. It may be broken or just worn out. All the letters are worn off the controls for sure and you have no idea what function is active. Also, it only has a digital viewfinder and it is funky now! I see a new small camera in his future… Actually, he loaded the photo files to the computer and most of them after the funky screen appeared are no good, so it is not just the display. It is trash. He is trying to use his cellphone’s camera to little avail. Oh, well. I have asked him to just wait and get a replacement pocket camera as his big Christmas gift instead of shopping for one here and now. It turns out the poor little Olympus just really died on the trip and was trashed somewhere in Vegas. Clay has a new smallish Olympus he ordered online since he doesn't want to carry a big camera to California in December. Anyway, don't expect much in the way of photos for the rest of this Las Vegas trip report!

We have reservations here at FIN, a Chinese restaurant at 7pm. The doors open on Cirque du Soleil Beatles’ LOVE show at 9pm. The show starts at 9:30pm. I have somehow just discovered here at The Mirage that it is a 360 degree show. I don’t know or understand what that means but it does not sound comfortable again tonight! I hope the show is as good though. More later.

FIN was another overpriced disappointment for me. I don’t really know how well Clay liked it but we didn’t finish either of our meals and they were pretty small portions. We shared 4 potstickers up front that were fine, but ridiculously expensive at $17. Clay had beef brisket with tendon in a clay pot. Kind of disgusting and I didn’t taste it and he didn’t finish it. So… I had Mongolian beef and it was tasty and spicy but the meat was a little gristly. There was nothing we wanted for dessert. Clay had an Anchor Steam beer and I didn’t find anything reasonable on the wine list plus I was really tired so I just drank water. That meant we finished quickly and had over an hour to kill with no free seating available downstairs. Clay wanted to come back to the room, but he had already slept for hours and I knew if I got up here and on the bed I would be out for hours and miss the show. So, we just kept wandering. The casino in The Mirage is much busier than at the Bellagio.

We did wind up watching a couple of volcano shows after the partial view out our room window. We watched from the Strip sidewalk and felt the heat. We watched from the bottom of the exit driveway, so we got a long view without the heat. The only view we have missed is the one from right under the valet entrance at the front entrance. There isn’t much space there and people have been packed in there but it appears to be center stage viewing of the spectacle. It is a little ridiculous. I have yet to figure out what the theming is meant to be here. Is it Polynesian? That would be my best guess.

Looking for other things to do, it looks like Treasure Island has an outdoor show called Sirens, but it is closed through Dec. 20 or Christmas. So, we’ll miss that one.

The Beatles’ LOVE Cirque du Soleil show was incroyable! That’s French for incredible. I found it a bit disconcerting at first since the “stage” was divided in 4ths by see-through curtains that simulated mirrors of the divided space and the seating beyond. I am always disconcerted by what I see in mirrors anyway and knowing it wasn’t a mirror image didn’t help me process. I was really exhausted and cranky and the PD was really jerky and twitchy last night and we were in the seats 10 and 11 of a maybe 25 seat row, about 10 rows from the top and bottom. So, right in the middle. The section 200 wasn’t packed full but our row and immediate area were so I didn’t really have room to be that twitchy and kicky, but what are you going to do. I am sure the guy next to me was as unhappy as I was. Anyway, all that meant I didn’t enjoy it as much as I might have but I did still really enjoy it. It was beyond imagination. And some great, if ear shattering, Beatles’ songs. Loved it. It turns out that this and a couple of other of the Cirque theaters have speakers built into the seats and that is why the sound is so loud. We paid a base price of $104 plus $10.40 for a total of $114.40 each for tickets to this show.

We were in bed about midnight again, but have no plans for the morning other than finally sleeping in.

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Vegas Day 2

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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

We both slept OK I guess. We worked at it until 6am anyway then Clay got up and headed to the fitness room and here I am. I need to get in the shower. I don’t think we have any plans today except to take it easy and maybe eat and wander. I’ll report on our activities later. I have studied the Bellagio floor plan again and I think I have found another gelato place for Clay and a couple of casual breakfast places if he wants it when he gets back. He offered to bring me back a coffee, but I declined.  Back later with more. Tonight is Cirque du Soleil’s “O”  ! That sounds like eau, French for water. We’ll see and I’ll let you know.

Clay is back and he found the Gelato Café on his own! He is jazzed and says no more small-league Jean Philippe for him. It must be something.

We headed out around 8 to 8:30am. We made a big mistake and ate breakfast at Gelato Café. It had the same things as Palio Express and Jean Philippe but it was very busy and noisy and worse was that Palio was closed and under re-construction with jack hammers. The entire wing of the building was shaking and the noise was teeth-rattling. We spent over $32 on a mocha latte and 2 breakfast paninis. The waitress we ordered from and Clay harassed to finally get the paninis had forgotten them and charred them in the press. I took mine back and she agreed it was inedible and told me she had started another for each of us. Clay had eaten half of his because it wasn’t as blackened as mine before she brought the fresh one. The coffee was delicious but for about the same money we could have eaten at Café Bellagio with table service in a quiet atmosphere and fork food. Clay did get a small pistachio gelato and enjoyed it. We won’t be back tomorrow though.

Clay got a t-shirt at Tutto, which is Bellagio’s version of a convenience store. Clay will keep it in mind for his Diet Cokes. The shirt was on sale for $12! We dropped it off in the room before heading out for the day. The room had not been serviced yet.

We are headed to M&M’s World which we thought we saw about a block away last night. It felt like a five mile hike later. One of us needs to wear a pedometer. I have no idea how far we walked today but it felt like a lot of miles, not like several blocks. We went in Paris which was very cool. We loved M&M’s World. It is 4 stories. The 2^nd story was under construction though. Clay collected yellow M smashed pennies in there and made some customized M&M’s to take back to the office. That was fun, but it would have been much better if you could see them print on the M&M's instead of having all be behind the big wall. We watched about a 10 minute 3-D movie with special effects. The whole place was very cool and we bought a lot of stuff as Christmas gifts for each other.

After we were tired and thirsty and Clay wanted to sit down with a cold drink, so we went next door to Coca-Cola’s store. We had photos taken with Bob and the animatronic/live person Coca-Cola Polar Bear like we did at Atlanta’s World of Coca-Cola. This time the Polar Bear kissed Bob as he held him. Clay immediately accused the bear of biting Bob. The Polar Bear gasped and when Clay turned his head, the Polar Bear chomped Clay’s head! It was hilarious and the photographer got a great photo of it. Clay said later that it hurt, that the puppet head had a strong bite. Imagine how Bob felt then when he got that bear’s mouth completely closed on him then! It didn’t leave a mark or anything, so I don’t think he really hurt Clay. It was still funny even if it hurt him a little.

We walked across the street to New York, NY and then walked back to Bellagio. On the way we went through a CVS and bought Clay a 6 pack of Diet Cokes. We took everything we had bought straight to the car’s trunk in the parking garage. Clay kept out a single Diet Coke and the extra M&M’s from earlier. We brought them up to the room but it was being serviced around 1:30pm to 2pm. We were on our way to Serendipity 3 at Caesar’s Palace, so we had to drop the bag off. I called into the room and she was not happy about it. I wasn’t happy either, because Clay really wanted to take a nap and now he didn’t have a chance anyway. Clay asked her to just put the sack in the room for us. I told her we don’t need to come in or interrupt your work (we both had actually planned to use the bathroom! But not now!) we just need to drop off this small sack. She said, how do I know this is your room. I gave her my keycard and she tried it and it unlocked the door so she reluctantly and with obvious annoyance took the sack from Clay and we left her to it. Clay was annoyed later when we got back and she had taken her tip. I didn’t begrudge her the tip, but she should dial back the attitude when it takes them more than half the day to provide maid service.

We went on then to Serendipity 3. Clay loves that movie Serendipity so when we saw it over there at Caesar’s this morning, Clay said he wanted to go there for afternoon snack instead of lunch today. I agreed. When we got there, there was a 20 minute wait for outdoor seating and no clean tables inside. There were only 2 people at the bar, so I asked if we could just sit there. She sent us on over and we sat right down and got menus. Clay had a Guinness as we watched her make us a double shared frozen hot chocolate. We should have shared a single! Clay was obsessing about chili dogs in NY, NY. Serendipity 3 had a foot long chili cheese dog with French fries for $18 and I suggested we share that since we were both a little exhausted and flagging. It was enormous! It came in what looked like a specially made dish. The hot dog itself was about as big around as my wrist. It must have been a pound of hot dog. It was crazy. The bun had been toasted and it had shredded cheddar cheese on it. The bad part was the beans in the chili. It was so big I could almost not open my mouth big enough to get a bite. We did not come anywhere close to finishing it. We had almost finished our frozen hot chocolate before it arrived and it was hopeless. Starting with dessert was a good thing!   

We wandered around in Caesar’s Palace for a while and then saw that it was after 3pm and the Bellagio’s Fountain shows had started. We headed over and found a spot out by the sidewalk to get an outdoor view for the 4pm show. It was Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and it was great. The boom of the water cannons was even less obtrusive than in the room because the music was so much louder out there. It was a completely different perspective. Clay thought it was a better view than from upstairs in the room, but I don’t agree. They were both good views, but as with anything else the close view and the distant view are just different. You see things differently closer than further away. One is not really better than the other. We went back to the room and saw a classical piece I didn’t know. A female opera singer I don’t know the song. Then a portion of Rodeo by Aaron Copland.

I was hoping to get another chance to sit out on Hyde’s terrace bar and see a song or two from the fountain shows before going to dinner at Circo at 7:30pm. But, Clay is snoring asleep and I hate to wake him knowing he has to be up past 10pm before the Cirque du Soleil “O” show even starts tonight. Oh well.

I have made dinner reservations tomorrow night at FIN, a Chinese restaurant at The Mirage which will be our home for the next 2 nights starting tomorrow. We check out of Bellagio in the morning, put the luggage in the trunk and we'll drive to Hoover Dam in the morning and take a tour. On the way back we plan to do the Ethel M chocolates factory tour and see their cactus garden. Then we'll check in to The Mirage. It might be overly ambitious so we’ll have to see. I’ll let you know. More later. Got to go get cleaned up for the evening’s events.

Six pm and we just had our first repeated song that I know of (I didn’t stay up to midnight last night). One of the 2 country/western songs last night just played again. This Kiss. Clay woke up and I will see if I can get him to go down to Hyde for an hour before dinner for a glass of wine or a beer and some more close up fountain shows. We won’t be back here in the evening for sure.

We did go to Hyde and the concierge was overselling when he called it a rooftop terrace. It was a room with the waist high windows opened so you could see out. We were seated on a loveseat across an aisle from a group seated directly in front of the window. The seat people faced us in the room, so when the overhead loud music stopped and the fountains started, they stood up. We had to stand and cross the aisle to see just part of the fountains. There was no accompanying music audible here. It was our worst view yet of the fountains. WTH? Anyway, we had 2 expensive drinks and now we were stuck there until dinner time.

Circo has windows onto the fountains as well, but again you can only see a piece of them from your seat and there is no music. We had the most expensive, worst meal of our lives without a good bottle of wine pushing up the price. We had booked the room at Bellagio with an early bird booking $100 restaurant credit. Even with that it was very expensive and not very good. Clay had a beer and I just drank water. (The Prosecco I had in Hyde had left a bad taste and it was the most expensive glass I’ve ever had!) Clay ordered a ½ dozen oysters for $18. Since he doesn’t like to eat a course alone, I ordered Caprese salad knowing he would eat the tomatoes. He said they were mushy. The guy next to us ordered this as well and he also didn’t finish and told his wife it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t. It had basil foam instead of leaves and it was gritty. Clay had salmon as his main course and I had gnocchi in pesto. Clay ate his and I guess it was alright or else he was really hungry. My pesto was a really gross mushy texture and the pesto sauce had a very bitter and overwhelming garlic flavor. I literally could not eat it. I ate about ¼ of it and just stopped. The headwaiter came and asked me about it and said they would remove it from the bill, $28 for a little pan of gnocchi, but they didn’t. Since Clay was worried about spending the $100 dollars now, I ordered the Italian doughnuts for dessert with my cappuccino as he was having pistachio ice cream. Again, it was underwhelming and now we were way, way over $100. Anyway, that is over and we won’t be back, so it won’t ever happen again. We were pressed to get over to “O” in time because we had waited about 20 minutes after our reservation time to be seated and then we sat with menus for another 20 minutes after that before ordering. When you’ve allowed 2 hours for dinner and you spend the first 40 minutes just waiting, time gets a little tighter. There was a big long lineup outside the entrance, so I went to the Ladies Room first and when we came back, we flowed right on in.

“O” theater is well designed and steeply raked so there were probably no bad seats. We were on the first row of section 202 row O seats 5 and 6. So, they should have had a great view, but there was a brass rail installed on top of the little dividing wall and I had to sit up on the edge of the seat in order to be able to see over it. I did because it was fascinating and I didn’t want to sit back and miss anything. “O” was just spectacular. The floor was water, then it was sold, then it was both. People were performing in, under, over, above, and on water. It was amazing. We really enjoyed it.  We got back to the room shortly before midnight and saw 2 or 3 more fountain shows before they stopped at midnight. I had watched the sun rise this morning over Paris. Tonight we watched an almost full moon rise over the Eiffel Tower above the Lago di Como fountains. It was pretty great.

Regarding Cirque du Soleil tickets, they are expensive. It looked like it might be possible to buy day of tickets from discounters on the Strip, but I didn't want to take a chance. I mean my whole goal of the trip was to see these Cirque shows. We bought them in September from a variety of websites. In the end we picked them all up (except Mystere which we printed at home) from the "O" box office in Bellagio. We could have picked them up from any MGM or MLife property as it turns out and all except The Venetian were MGM properties! We didn't know that or plan than though. Anyway, our tickets each had a base price of $110.50 with an $11.05 "tax" for a total of $121.55 per ticket for tonight. Still loved the show and glad we spent the money and went. We are still talking about it!

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Vegas!

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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Vegas! We haven’t been since January of 1990 and boy has it changed. It was always over the top but now it is outsized and even further over the top. We didn’t even recognize any part of the airport.

So, we were up at 4am to get to the airport 2 hours in advance of our flight. We took TTA bus 100 to the airport again. We didn’t realize it until the day before departure and too late, but Clay can go get a photo ID with them and ride for free now. We had an expensive breakfast at Carolina Ale House since it was open and in sight of our gate. Clay had pancakes and I had French toast and neither were served as described on the menu. I think they were about $10 each and a disappointment. At least we got glasses of ice water so we could fill my bottle with ice cold water for the day out of it.

We flew American Airlines and had to change planes in DFW. We shared a cup of mini pretzel dogs at Auntie Anne’s in the DFW airport. They were funny, but really good. They were some kind of spicy little brats instead of just hot dogs. American served absolutely no snacks and none were even offered for sale. On both legs as we ordered Cokes, we were just handed a dirty unopened can and a bit later a small plastic cup with ice in it. I guess it is quicker to get through the plane that way. The S80’s we flew should have been identical and we were in 8A & B on the 2 seat side on each leg. On the first leg we were on the bulkhead and on the second leg we were one row back. You figure it out. We didn’t have any problems at all, but it still is just a nightmare for me to fly. We had some turbulence late into the first flight (or I did) and I got nauseous and it took hours to stop. I hate everything about flying except for the speed, I guess. We flew over Hoover Dam. So, it is 7:15pm here in Las Vegas, but after 10pm at home and in my mind! I have been exhausted since 3pm.

We got a Toyota Corolla rental car at Budget by the airport and Clay’s GPS brought us right here without any problems. We are staying at the Bellagio for the first 2 nights. We just drove right into self-parking and it is convenient and free. We have been parking on 2, but I think we have figured out that if we enter the first bay that would be level one and direct entry to the casino floor and hotel registration. We had reserved a fountain view room online at Bellagio’s website. We were assigned a strip view room in the spa tower. We went up there without understanding the layout yet. It was only a partial fountain view as we saw the first show of the day at 3pm. You had to stand right at one side of the window and turn your head to see most of the fountain lake. We wound up being upsold to a full fountain view room in the Bellagio Tower. Our room is 15062. I think it is $50 dollars more, maybe per day. I’m not sure. I will check the paper work after we get home. (I have checked the paperwork and I still don't know. It is impossible to understand. Clay didn't understand it either when we went to check out but he finally agreed to it. Our total bill with one meal and drinks and 2 nights was $708.79.) I think Clay was willing to pay anything not to hear me bellyache about it for 2 days. The first woman who checked us in told us we had a $100 food credit on our room key cards. Now, I guess we’ll see if the $100 stayed after the room change and new keys, etc.  (It did.) The fountains though are amazing. The first song we saw was Elvis’ Viva Las Vegas and it was funny. The best one so far was Time to Say Goodbye.  Next was actually some Christmas song. The early ones were good, but after dark they add lights and even though they are all white it really adds a lot to it. The last song was Singing in the Rain. Adorable! The played 2 or 3 country/western ones. The accompanying music is on channel 22 on the TV. For some reason, you aren’t allowed to type 22 to get to that channel you can type 21 or 23 and arrow to it though. Go figure, since every time you want 22 you are in a hurry. The fountains put on a show Monday thru Friday every 30 minutes at the top and bottom of the hour from 3pm to 7pm, from then to midnight it is every 15 minutes. I wanted to see it from outside to see if it was different without the dirty window and glare from the room lights. Also from the room, it seems like the boom from the water cannons must be overwhelming. You can hear and feel it up on the 15^th floor with the entire Casino between here and there. I asked where of the Concierge and he said they have a bar downstairs off the casino called Hyde that you can go to an outside rooftop terrace and watch it but after 10pm it becomes a nightclub with a cover charge. I wanted to go so Clay could get some photos, but he wanted to eat first and when we came back he didn’t want to go. 

We saw an In-n-Out Burger on the way here and decided to go there for dinner tonight. Clay has been wanting to eat there for years. There has always been some reason when we are near one that he hasn’t and at some point it became a real quest.  Well, now we’ve been and honestly I think I can say we haven’t been missing anything. It was alright. It was probably even good, but after all the hype I think we were both a little let down. The buns are nicely toasted so you get a crisp bite with every bite. (But Steak and Shake does that too and serves on real plates!) The fries were not great though they seemed homemade. Maybe we should have gotten shakes, but they were pouring gallon jugs into the machine as we stood there to order and it just didn’t look appealing to me.

When we got back to Bellagio after eating burgers, we found the fitness center. Open from 6am to 8pm. Clay will pass today but they had about 20 treadmills. Not to mention all the other equipment. You have to go through the spa to get there and it looks like you have to pay to get in there and use it, but it is included with your room. At the $25 a day resort fee that is supposed to cover that, you’d think it would be open 24 hours. Then we looked at Chihuly which was a disappointment after Seattle! Even the Chihuly ceiling at the Reception desk was not as impressive or well-lit as the Chihuly Glass in Seattle. A little bit of a letdown. We had read a lot about the Conservatory garden but it looked like some kind of crazy Halloween harvest village scene and a lot of it looked fake.  (I think maybe a lot of the giant pumpkins were actually real.)

Then we went to Jean Philippe Patisserie and checked out the 11 foot tall 3 chocolate fountain. Crazy! They had a life-sized Grinch as their Christmas decoration. I think it was made of chocolate! Clay wanted dessert so we shared a $10.50 chocolate crepe with a $2 scoop of dulce de leche gelato. It was good. Clay says he has to go back tomorrow to get Pistachio. Of course he does. Tomorrow we have a reservation at 7:30pm at Circo here in Bellagio. We have picked up all of our Cirque du Soleil tickets at the Bellagio’s O box office. So, we have nothing before us but 7 nights of Cirque shows and changing hotels every 2 nights. We don’t have any firm plans beyond that.

Clay has already gone to bed at 8pm here. I am waiting for one more fountain show and then lights out for me too.

Bellagio’s hotel rooms in both towers are similar in size and appearance and layout. We are in 15062 in the Bellagio Tower with a full fountain view, whatever they call it. The bathrooms are huge. The king size bed is a little hard for my tastes. But it is a very nice room. There is a lighted magnifying mirror on the bathroom wall as well as a bathroom scale under the one sink. The cabinet holding the one sink comes up to my torso and I can barely reach the sink to brush my teeth. What is up with that? There are drawers in it and one holds a full size hair dryer for those who need it. There is a large bathtub as well as a free standing walk-in shower. The toilet has some kind of jet flush which is effective but a little scary every time. There is no nightlight but there is a double electrical outlet right by the toilet so bring one with you! It is very dark in the room once you push the button to close the drapes. I think there is too much Strip light if you just close the sheers with the buttons and besides if you get up in the night it is usually to the bathroom and no light from the window would help you out there. You need a nightlight. There is a minifridge, but it is a minibar and we were warned that if we lifted and even looked at anything in there that we’d be charged for it and so it not try to put our own stuff in there or we’d incur charges. That doesn’t seem very resortish. It does explain the fact that we haven’t found a pantry or convenience type store here onsite I guess. We do have an ice bucket and there is an ice machine near the elevators, but with a fridge to put the bucket in, well… points off. More points off for no in room coffee machines, but I guess they don’t want you in your room and not shedding cash. Too bad because the room is very quiet and has the great fountain view. I will say the furniture is not laid out for fountain viewing. We moved the chairs so we could sit in front of the window and watch and when we came back from dinner, there had been turn down service (points for that nice touch, by the way) and the chairs had been moved. We looked for a safe to put our $1000 worth of Cirque tickets in and couldn’t find one. We were thinking points off to Bellagio for that. Then I was looking all over the room on every surface and checking every drawer not believing that they did not have any of their restaurants’ menu, but they didn’t. That was when I found the safe in the drawer of one of the bedside tables. We used it, but neither of us feel it is too “safe” as it looks like someone could just take the table or the drawer from the room if they wanted it.

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