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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