My parents came to visit me this past weekend, to extend my birthday festivities even more. We had a great time. Golfed at Paiute and visited Lake Las Vegas. The weather was unseasonably warm (mid to upper 90's). Fun was had by all.
Showing posts with label vegas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegas. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Folks Visit Vegas, 4/07
My parents came to visit me this past weekend, to extend my birthday festivities even more. We had a great time. Golfed at Paiute and visited Lake Las Vegas. The weather was unseasonably warm (mid to upper 90's). Fun was had by all.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Just your average weekend in Las Vegas
So I was reflecting on this past weekend and thought I would write a quick post. When I first decided to move to Las Vegas, there were plenty of jokes (like was I going to become a showgirl or blackjack dealer, do I take my laptop and work at the craps table, etc.). But this weekend is a good example of how people have a skewed view of Las Vegas.
Starting with Friday night, I went to a Las Vegas Wranglers Hockey game. They lost (3-2), but it was close and they almost tied late in the third. It's a small arena (Orleans Arena, behind the Orleans hotel) and they do a fairly good job selling the place - more than half full- better than the Washington Capitals used to do.. :). Most of the people are Wrangler's fans- wearing the jersey's of their favorites Wrangler's player. A lot of people, like myself, are just hockey fans looking for local action, wearing the Jersey's of their favorite NHL teams.
Sitting at the game, you would not even realize you were in 'Sin City' (not until you leave the building and see the lights of the strip outside the arena).
Saturday morning I went hiking with a friend at Red Rock. We choose, of the many trails, Pine Creek, which started on a dirt trail and ended up deep in the canyon, scrambling on rocks, near ice box canyon, where waterfalls flowed and trickling streams rolled by. We were out there for about 3 hours.
Saturday night, a friend of mine asked me if I would go see a band (she is friends with the keyboard player). She mentioned they were a country cover band. I am not a fan of country, but I like live music so I decided to go. The bar they were playing at, Gilley's, inside the Frontier, is a country western bar. No- really. There was a mechanical bull, which 2 of my girl friends decided to ride. The dance floor was full of cowboy hat wearing men and ruffly shirt wearing women doing the two step. The band was great, but you seriously felt like you walked through a portal into another world. I would say most of the people there were Vegas locals, but this bar apparently packs in the tourists when the rodeo and the bull riding competitions hit town.
I had a great weekend- didn't drop a coin in a slot or roll a die.. Vegas is so much more than the casinos (even more than the shows and events), obviously much more than the above as well- but just wanted to give a glimpse for y'all. Yee haw.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
Vegas in B&W Day 1
The start of my photo journal, capturing the magnificent city I call home... more to come.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Palms Fantasy Suites
Last weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the premiere party for the Palms Hotel Fantasy Suites (aka the Party-Floor Suites). The Palms Hotel, owned by Sacramento Kings owner George Maloof, opened a second tower earlier this year and last weekend they premiered their fantasy suites. I had been seeing the commercials for these suites for the past couple weeks, and I know beyond this party I will probably never be in one again.
There are 7 basic fantasy suites:
g-Suite
Erotic Suite
Hot Pink Suite
Kingpin Suite
Crib Suite
Celebrity Suite
Director's Suite
The party was done block party style, where each of these themed suites were open and had open bars. The party was packed with celebrities (yes, Paris Hilton was there), but the real stars of this party were the suites.
The Kingpin Suite, for example, has two full size bowling lanes in it (which apparently Avril Lavigne took advantage of at the party- I had already left). From The Palms website: With two full sized bowling lanes, this room is fit for a King-pin. This retro style 4,240 square foot suite features two bedrooms, three bathrooms, LCD and Plasma TVs throughout. It also includes regulation bowling equipment, a pool table, full bar, and theater size projection television with lounge.
The Celebrity Suite is where the party started (or at least where we started). All of the suites had full bars that were fully stocked for the party.
The Cribs Suite is a 2,000 sq ft suite which caters to the demands and the needs of any ultimate crib seeker. Amenities include a DJ booth, back bar, show shower™, pool table, graffiti ceiling, video gaming lounge, “sound seating,” hydraulic bed, a display of hip-hop memorabilia, and an expanded bathroom and dressing area with a saltwater fish tank.
All of the suites had huge glass showers with stripper poles in them. The Erotic Suite features a shadow dancer projection wall, metal show shower™, full bar, and an eight foot round rotating bed with mirrored ceiling.
These suites are a nice addition to the Palms already popular Hardwood Suite, including its own basketball court.
All of the suites offer full glass wall views of the Strip from the 25th and 26th floors of the new tower.
Seriously, these suites are COOL. Prices, you ask? Well...you can't reserve these online, you have to call. And honestly I don't know the prices, but I think it would be safe to say $5-$10k a night is probably on target.... this is Vegas after all...
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Las Vegas moving 'from a circus act to a regular city'
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2006-02-28-lasvegas_x.htm
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
LAS VEGAS —
Ignore the Elvis impersonator mugging for the camera in front of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. Get past the black glass pyramid and faux New York skyline rising out of the Mojave Desert. Look beyond the glitzy neon, gambling and showgirls along the Strip.
Only then will you glimpse a side of Vegas that few of Sin City's 38 million annual visitors see: One of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas is not just growing, but growing up.
For the first time in its brief urban history — Las Vegas is the largest U.S. city born after 1900 — this booming place finally is trying to establish an old-fashioned sense of community. The city has outgrown the chummy world of the 1950s, when Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack ruled, and turned into a full-blown metropolitan area that is attracting families and businesses from other cities.
"It's gone from a circus act to a regular city," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "The experience of Las Vegas now is less Rat Pack and more brats in the car, from Dino (Dean Martin) and his friends and swingers to minivans and shopping malls. It's just a big Western city."
Residents are investing more time and money to diversify Las Vegas' economy and turn it into a place that not only can be a decadent playground for a few days, but also a decent home for a lifetime. Las Vegas still markets itself as an escapist's paradise, but it also competes for doctors, teachers, high-tech talent and others who make a city run.
Philanthropy is on the rise. Medical care is blossoming into a new cancer research center and a $35 million Alzheimer's hospital to be designed by famed architect Frank Gehry. Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, is now taxing rental cars to help fund a performing arts center. The 10-story, 1.3 million-square-foot World Market Center, a furniture showroom and convention center, opened near downtown last summer.
High-rise condos and town centers are springing up. Ethnic neighborhoods are growing — Chinatown has gone from one block to a 1½-mile strip. The education level of a community that relies largely on service workers from hotel maids and waiters to croupiers and doormen is finally inching up as more professionals move in.
They're all signs that people in the Las Vegas area — which has a population of about 1.8 million and is adding an estimated 7,000 residents a month — are seeking deeper and longer-lasting connections with their city.
"Those of us who live here are looking for more opportunity to take our kids to do something in a non-gaming environment," says Myron Martin, president of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation.
"We're going through puberty," says John Restrepo, an economic consultant. "There are a lot of pulls and tugs from business, governmental side and residents: What should we be as we grow up?"
More attractive to employers
In the grand Vegas tradition, the consensus here remains that growth is good. More than 30 major casino-hotels have opened since 1990, adding more than 40,000 hotel rooms. The Strip, a 4.5-mile stretch lined by the world's most lavish casinos and 102,000 hotel rooms, is extending south to meet demand for more. The city is developing 61 acres downtown into a mix of retail, residential and commercial units.
Now, people want more than just buildings sprouting out of the desert. "Families here have wishes and desires no different from people in Omaha," says Keith Schwer, director of The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV).
The Las Vegas area still makes much of its money from gambling and visitors who spend about $33 billion a year.
Despite the city's successful tourism campaign trumpeting Sin City's return to its sinful roots ("What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas"), Las Vegas is maturing.
Biomedical and high-tech companies are moving from California and other states. Educated and well-to-do executives who might have once pooh-poohed Vegas as morally moribund and a cultural wasteland are moving here — with their families.
"It is dramatically easier to recruit" for jobs in Las Vegas, says Brian Sullivan, chairman and CEO of Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm based in New York. "Five or seven years ago, the pool of candidates used to be either the guy was divorced or the guy was desperate. Now, there is a family contingent. ... There are kids."
The percentage of Clark County residents age 25 and up who have graduate or professional degrees is up from less than 6% in 2000 to 7% in 2004, according to the Census Bureau. Raising the area's educational level has been difficult because casino and resort industry service jobs pay so well.
"You can get out of high school, go and valet park and you can make $50,000 to $60,000 a year," Restrepo says. "What's the incentive to go to college?"
But jobs that require education are being created in the growing non-gaming sector, which now accounts for half of the area's revenue. And retirees from across the USA are flocking to downtown condos and active-adult communities in the suburbs.
"It has become home to a rapidly growing population that has nothing to do with gaming," says Peter Morrison, demographer at the Rand Corp. "It's becoming increasingly ethnically diverse. It's a new kind of maturity."
Moving beyond gambling
A. Somer Hollingsworth, CEO of the Nevada Development Authority, has lived here since 1953, when Las Vegas was better known for courts that granted quick divorces than gaming, and gambling profits "went out in paper bags back East," he says, referring to the Mafia's ties to early casinos here.
By 2000, Wall Street had embraced big investments in gaming, prompting larger and more lavish resort hotels. World-famous chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse opened restaurants. Casino mogul Steve Wynn brought fine-arts exhibits under the same roof as slot machines. "We had a utopia," Hollingsworth says.
Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Travel and tourism came to a standstill. "Fifteen thousand people lost their jobs just like this, overnight," he says. "It's taken us four years to recover."
The attacks brought home the need for Las Vegas to diversify its economy. The state has been wooing companies aggressively ever since, especially in California — Nevada's larger neighbor and friendly rival. A Nevada billboard towering over Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles shows California's state flag with the bear missing from its logo, a not-so-subtle hint that even the bear fled for Nevada's low insurance rates and zero income tax.
"We now are able to recruit companies that five years ago wouldn't even have stopped to say 'Hi,' " Hollingsworth says.
Another plus: No threats of earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes. The city is the main disaster backup center for many firms.
QUALCOMM, a San Diego-based developer of wireless technology, broke ground last year on a 32-acre facility in North Las Vegas. It's working with UNLV on homeland-security initiatives.
Varian Medical Systems, based in California's Silicon Valley, moved parts of its oncology systems business and all of its cargo screening and security operations to Las Vegas. "The proximity of an international airport, the university, the cost of living and the proximity to Southern California's vendor base" sealed the deal, says Lester Boeh, a Varian vice president.
For employees who had to move, "the initial reaction was trepidation," says James Johnson, general manager of Varian's security and inspection products division. Once here, they were excited. "In California, they were struggling with their schools, taxes. Las Vegas is a much more stable community."
When Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002, he went to Los Angeles to have his prostate gland removed.
Guinn's and other high-profile cases put the spotlight on a void in Las Vegas' medical care. Last September, the Nevada Cancer Institute opened. A month later, the center had 1,000 patient visits.
"I grew up mostly on the East Coast in Baltimore," says Heather Murren, president and CEO of the cancer center. Later, she worked for Merrill Lynch in New York City. "Great education, medicine, the arts were all a given."
When relatives who had moved to Vegas needed cancer treatment, Murren realized that "a lot of the things that we had taken for granted didn't exist."
The community quickly lined up behind the push for a cancer research center. Major industries from resorts and banking to developers raised $70 million and the center obtained a $52 million loan.
Diane Gregory, executive director of physician marketing and support services for St. Rose Dominican Hospitals, a non-profit group, has seen a big shift.
"In the '80s, it was very difficult to recruit physicians to Las Vegas," she says. "... People didn't think there were hospitals. We had physicians ask us, 'Do you live on the Strip?' "
Charitable giving also is growing. The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, the Las Vegas tennis great's outreach program, raises more than $42 million a year for underprivileged and at-risk children. United Way contributions doubled from two years ago.
'Feng shui' comes to Vegas
There is no fourth floor in the Boca Raton luxury condominiums going up near the Strip. That's because under Chinese feng shui principles, "4" represents death, developer Jerry Peterson says.
Here, in the land of cookie-cutter homes, a developer caring about positive life energy and spiritual balance is a sign that urban sensibilities are surfacing. So is the surge of high-rise condos planned downtown and near the Strip.
Housing prices are rising. The median sales price of existing single-family homes topped $300,000 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. The U.S. median is about $216,000.
That's still a bargain for Californians, who face prices of $500,000 or more in big markets. When software provider InfoGenesis moved some of its operations here from Santa Barbara, many executives made six-figure profits on the sale of their homes, says Drew Hulburd, a manager. The job-applicant pool is much larger here, he says, partly because of the low cost of living.
Non-invasive Medical Technologies, which has 13 patents for instruments to quickly evaluate medical conditions on the battlefield or after a terrorist attack and other emergencies, moved from Auburn Hills, Mich. Executives rave about the red-carpet treatment they got in Nevada, along with $200,000 in tax relief. Vendors are eager to do business because the company is near hotels and a major airport, says Ann McCaughan, executive vice president.
McCaughan, a nature lover, also enjoys her new setting: "I have more wilderness around me. The largest desert wildlife refuge is 30 minutes from here, and the Grand Canyon is in my backyard."
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
LAS VEGAS —
Ignore the Elvis impersonator mugging for the camera in front of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. Get past the black glass pyramid and faux New York skyline rising out of the Mojave Desert. Look beyond the glitzy neon, gambling and showgirls along the Strip.
Only then will you glimpse a side of Vegas that few of Sin City's 38 million annual visitors see: One of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas is not just growing, but growing up.
For the first time in its brief urban history — Las Vegas is the largest U.S. city born after 1900 — this booming place finally is trying to establish an old-fashioned sense of community. The city has outgrown the chummy world of the 1950s, when Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack ruled, and turned into a full-blown metropolitan area that is attracting families and businesses from other cities.
"It's gone from a circus act to a regular city," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "The experience of Las Vegas now is less Rat Pack and more brats in the car, from Dino (Dean Martin) and his friends and swingers to minivans and shopping malls. It's just a big Western city."
Residents are investing more time and money to diversify Las Vegas' economy and turn it into a place that not only can be a decadent playground for a few days, but also a decent home for a lifetime. Las Vegas still markets itself as an escapist's paradise, but it also competes for doctors, teachers, high-tech talent and others who make a city run.
Philanthropy is on the rise. Medical care is blossoming into a new cancer research center and a $35 million Alzheimer's hospital to be designed by famed architect Frank Gehry. Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, is now taxing rental cars to help fund a performing arts center. The 10-story, 1.3 million-square-foot World Market Center, a furniture showroom and convention center, opened near downtown last summer.
High-rise condos and town centers are springing up. Ethnic neighborhoods are growing — Chinatown has gone from one block to a 1½-mile strip. The education level of a community that relies largely on service workers from hotel maids and waiters to croupiers and doormen is finally inching up as more professionals move in.
They're all signs that people in the Las Vegas area — which has a population of about 1.8 million and is adding an estimated 7,000 residents a month — are seeking deeper and longer-lasting connections with their city.
"Those of us who live here are looking for more opportunity to take our kids to do something in a non-gaming environment," says Myron Martin, president of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation.
"We're going through puberty," says John Restrepo, an economic consultant. "There are a lot of pulls and tugs from business, governmental side and residents: What should we be as we grow up?"
More attractive to employers
In the grand Vegas tradition, the consensus here remains that growth is good. More than 30 major casino-hotels have opened since 1990, adding more than 40,000 hotel rooms. The Strip, a 4.5-mile stretch lined by the world's most lavish casinos and 102,000 hotel rooms, is extending south to meet demand for more. The city is developing 61 acres downtown into a mix of retail, residential and commercial units.
Now, people want more than just buildings sprouting out of the desert. "Families here have wishes and desires no different from people in Omaha," says Keith Schwer, director of The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV).
The Las Vegas area still makes much of its money from gambling and visitors who spend about $33 billion a year.
Despite the city's successful tourism campaign trumpeting Sin City's return to its sinful roots ("What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas"), Las Vegas is maturing.
Biomedical and high-tech companies are moving from California and other states. Educated and well-to-do executives who might have once pooh-poohed Vegas as morally moribund and a cultural wasteland are moving here — with their families.
"It is dramatically easier to recruit" for jobs in Las Vegas, says Brian Sullivan, chairman and CEO of Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm based in New York. "Five or seven years ago, the pool of candidates used to be either the guy was divorced or the guy was desperate. Now, there is a family contingent. ... There are kids."
The percentage of Clark County residents age 25 and up who have graduate or professional degrees is up from less than 6% in 2000 to 7% in 2004, according to the Census Bureau. Raising the area's educational level has been difficult because casino and resort industry service jobs pay so well.
"You can get out of high school, go and valet park and you can make $50,000 to $60,000 a year," Restrepo says. "What's the incentive to go to college?"
But jobs that require education are being created in the growing non-gaming sector, which now accounts for half of the area's revenue. And retirees from across the USA are flocking to downtown condos and active-adult communities in the suburbs.
"It has become home to a rapidly growing population that has nothing to do with gaming," says Peter Morrison, demographer at the Rand Corp. "It's becoming increasingly ethnically diverse. It's a new kind of maturity."
Moving beyond gambling
A. Somer Hollingsworth, CEO of the Nevada Development Authority, has lived here since 1953, when Las Vegas was better known for courts that granted quick divorces than gaming, and gambling profits "went out in paper bags back East," he says, referring to the Mafia's ties to early casinos here.
By 2000, Wall Street had embraced big investments in gaming, prompting larger and more lavish resort hotels. World-famous chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse opened restaurants. Casino mogul Steve Wynn brought fine-arts exhibits under the same roof as slot machines. "We had a utopia," Hollingsworth says.
Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Travel and tourism came to a standstill. "Fifteen thousand people lost their jobs just like this, overnight," he says. "It's taken us four years to recover."
The attacks brought home the need for Las Vegas to diversify its economy. The state has been wooing companies aggressively ever since, especially in California — Nevada's larger neighbor and friendly rival. A Nevada billboard towering over Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles shows California's state flag with the bear missing from its logo, a not-so-subtle hint that even the bear fled for Nevada's low insurance rates and zero income tax.
"We now are able to recruit companies that five years ago wouldn't even have stopped to say 'Hi,' " Hollingsworth says.
Another plus: No threats of earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes. The city is the main disaster backup center for many firms.
QUALCOMM, a San Diego-based developer of wireless technology, broke ground last year on a 32-acre facility in North Las Vegas. It's working with UNLV on homeland-security initiatives.
Varian Medical Systems, based in California's Silicon Valley, moved parts of its oncology systems business and all of its cargo screening and security operations to Las Vegas. "The proximity of an international airport, the university, the cost of living and the proximity to Southern California's vendor base" sealed the deal, says Lester Boeh, a Varian vice president.
For employees who had to move, "the initial reaction was trepidation," says James Johnson, general manager of Varian's security and inspection products division. Once here, they were excited. "In California, they were struggling with their schools, taxes. Las Vegas is a much more stable community."
When Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002, he went to Los Angeles to have his prostate gland removed.
Guinn's and other high-profile cases put the spotlight on a void in Las Vegas' medical care. Last September, the Nevada Cancer Institute opened. A month later, the center had 1,000 patient visits.
"I grew up mostly on the East Coast in Baltimore," says Heather Murren, president and CEO of the cancer center. Later, she worked for Merrill Lynch in New York City. "Great education, medicine, the arts were all a given."
When relatives who had moved to Vegas needed cancer treatment, Murren realized that "a lot of the things that we had taken for granted didn't exist."
The community quickly lined up behind the push for a cancer research center. Major industries from resorts and banking to developers raised $70 million and the center obtained a $52 million loan.
Diane Gregory, executive director of physician marketing and support services for St. Rose Dominican Hospitals, a non-profit group, has seen a big shift.
"In the '80s, it was very difficult to recruit physicians to Las Vegas," she says. "... People didn't think there were hospitals. We had physicians ask us, 'Do you live on the Strip?' "
Charitable giving also is growing. The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, the Las Vegas tennis great's outreach program, raises more than $42 million a year for underprivileged and at-risk children. United Way contributions doubled from two years ago.
'Feng shui' comes to Vegas
There is no fourth floor in the Boca Raton luxury condominiums going up near the Strip. That's because under Chinese feng shui principles, "4" represents death, developer Jerry Peterson says.
Here, in the land of cookie-cutter homes, a developer caring about positive life energy and spiritual balance is a sign that urban sensibilities are surfacing. So is the surge of high-rise condos planned downtown and near the Strip.
Housing prices are rising. The median sales price of existing single-family homes topped $300,000 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. The U.S. median is about $216,000.
That's still a bargain for Californians, who face prices of $500,000 or more in big markets. When software provider InfoGenesis moved some of its operations here from Santa Barbara, many executives made six-figure profits on the sale of their homes, says Drew Hulburd, a manager. The job-applicant pool is much larger here, he says, partly because of the low cost of living.
Non-invasive Medical Technologies, which has 13 patents for instruments to quickly evaluate medical conditions on the battlefield or after a terrorist attack and other emergencies, moved from Auburn Hills, Mich. Executives rave about the red-carpet treatment they got in Nevada, along with $200,000 in tax relief. Vendors are eager to do business because the company is near hotels and a major airport, says Ann McCaughan, executive vice president.
McCaughan, a nature lover, also enjoys her new setting: "I have more wilderness around me. The largest desert wildlife refuge is 30 minutes from here, and the Grand Canyon is in my backyard."
Friday, February 3, 2006
Road Trip Across U.S.A. - Move to Vegas
We stopped at the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest in AZ.
So we made it to Vegas. It took us 3 1/2 days. We left VA Saturday am and arrived in Vegas on Tuesday afternoon. We stopped overnight in Jackson, TN, Amarillo, TX, and Sedona, AZ.
I planned to document the whole trip with photos, but truthfully, other than many churches and giant crosses, there wasn't too much visible from the road through the bulk of the bible belt.
We drove through these major cities during our route: Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque and Sedona.
The cats were ok for about 60% of the trip. The rest they meowed and yelped.
My furniture/stuff won't arrive until mid next week- that is a bummer. Otherwise so far so good from sunny Las Vegas. Enjoy the photos!!
Friday, November 11, 2005
Las Vegas / Red Rock 11/2005
Went to Vegas for vacation this week. Not only did I not find the money I left there in March, but I seemed to have mis-placed some more...
Also went out to Red Rock Canyon which is about 30 minutes out side of the Strip. Met a nice burrow...
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Vegas Birthday Trip
So, just got in this morning from Vegas. Took the red eye so really I should be sleeping now but....
So I flew out to Vegas Wednesday night on America West (in-flight movie: Mona Lisa Smile). Was a non-stop flight (nice) and arrived around 10p Vegas time. I met up with Alecia at the airport (she landed around 10:15p) and we headed to MGM Grand.
As hotel check-ins go, this was fairly seamless. Sometimes there are lines, problems with rooms, etc. Not this time. Checked in fast and were off to the room.
MGM Grand is big. It took a little while to get to the room and we wandered around in the casino a bit.
Minutes after we got in the room a knock at the door- A gift basket of goodies for my b-day from my Aunt Myrna and Uncle Bob. Good way to start the trip!
We decided to go down to the casino and get a start at winning some $$.
I played Craps for about an hour or so. For the rest of the entry I will not be quoting actual amounts of money lost as some people may be offended :). Suffice to say, I didn't win.
Back up to the room, ordered room service (since I hadn't had dinner yet) plus a couple bloody mary's and eventually called it a night.
Thursday am- straight to the pool (uh, except first a 2 hour detour at BlackJack tables- which got us comped dinners at the MGM Buffet). An hour or so at the pool and some frozen margaritas later, we were done.
The rest of the day was a blurred mixture of food, drinks and gambling. Dinner at the buffet was yummy and filling...
Friday was my birthday and it was great. Started with breakfast at Rainforest Cafe. A frog there wished me a happy birthday. Had yummy french toast too.
Then off to Turnberry to meet my Aunt Sandy, Uncle Murray and cousin Lori. Had lunch there at the club (and they sang happy birthday) then were off to the spa for massages. I had the Hot Stone massage and Eric, my masseuse, was awesome. Thanks Mommy and Daddy for the b-day present.
Then back to MGM (via limo- oh yeah!) to get ready for the evening (but first a slight detour at the Craps tables).
Back up to the room, had a bottle of Champagne waiting (thanks Mikey!) and met up with my friend Tom.
After downing the bottle we were off to the Paris Hotel for dinner. We ate at Ah Sin which offered super yummy Asian cuisine while sitting outside across from the Bellagio fountains. A great view and the food was awesome.
Spent a couple hours at the Casino at Paris, then off to Mandalay Bay and the Foundation Room. The Foundation Room is the House of Blues private VIP lounge at the top of Mandalay Bay. Thanks Shari for putting us on the list! We spent some time there enjoying the scenery and the cocktails. But I think 32 was having it's way with me because I was totally wiped out at this point and we eventually headed back to MGM.
Saturday Alecia and I decided to get away from the casino and went to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets where we could actually get something tangible for the money we were spending (versus giving it away at the casino)...
After outlet shopping, back to MGM (detour at Craps table) where we met up with fellow Multiplier, Iceman, at the Zuri Lounge. Had a great time there (and a few more margaritas later)... off to the airport for our 11p flights.
I upgraded to first class on the way home because I figured, I was already down ($) for the trip, may as well go off in style!
Anyway, had a great trip- thanks to everyone who contributed to it and we'll do it again next year!!
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