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 2nd 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!
Photos
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!
Photos
