What Happens in Vegas...Gets blogged about?

Our trip to LV started out with disappointment, as our flight was delayed from Friday night to Saturday. This meant that Jake and I had to miss the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. Our friends who went on the trip were good about pretending like they didn't have fun on the helicopter, but I know it was the highlight of the trip for a lot of them... :P

So, Jake and I got in on Saturday morning and I felt that I needed to start drinking to make up for lost time. We hooked up with some friends and got drunk in the mall. Here's me and Tejal with our Fat Tuesday glasses:


We stayed at Bill's Gambling Hall and Saloon, which was actually a pretty good deal for being right on the Strip. Outside the front of Bill's, they constantly played a recording of this guy with a southern accent plugging the steakhouse at Bill's and Bill's 99 cent margaritas. A cab driver we had at one point informed us that Bill's, which used to be owned by Barbary Coast, was recently bought up by Harrah's for a half billion dollars. Apparently Harrah's and MGM own pretty much everything on the Strip.

We went out to the buffet at the Bellagio on Saturday evening. The food was good, but I made myself sick by the amount I tried to eat. I somehow thought I'd be able to make up for the $45 we each spent by stuffing myself full of food. It didn't work. We saw the Wayne Brady show on Saturday night, which was all right. He did pull our friend Tonia up on stage to make sound effects for one skit he did. Our friends all had plans to go out afterward, but Jake and I were utterly exhausted at that point. We went back to our hotel and crashed.

On Sunday, we met up with Zac, who I went to high school with and who now works in LV as a chef at the Wynn. He's getting married in another couple of weeks and is also getting a promotion to work at a higher, more managerial level at the Encore, which is a new casino going up right next to the Wynn. At first, we tried to get together and spend time with Zac and some of our other friends all at once. They were down at Slots O' Fun, but then we went with Zac down there and realized Slots O' Fun sucks as a place to sit down, have a drink, and catch up with an old classmate. So, we went across the street to the Riveria and had one drink, then drove down to New York New York, where we sat in this Irish pub/restaurant and drank some beers. That evening, we met back up with our crew to have dinner at Circo and watched the fountains in front of the Bellagio. Jake and I went to the Rio to see Penn & Teller and we convinced Tej that she should buy a ticket to it as well. It was a good show. I really like P & T. It's more bang for your buck to just watch Bullshit DVDs at home, but the live performance was quite enjoyable. They make me want to do magic... After P&T, we saw a show of floats in the air within the Rio, where these women in their underpants threw us beads.

Monday morning, Jake and I realized that we hadn't even tried to gamble any money. I watched Jake lose money quickly at a blackjack table and then decided to take a free blackjack class to learn more. After the blackjack class, we sat down at a table for about an hour and both wound up breaking even (I'm pretty sure I could have gone up in money if we'd stayed, but Jake wanted to leave to get into a poker tourney to lose some more money...). Monday night, we went out to Tao, which is some hip, pricey restaurant with decor like this:

I thought things were overpriced and our friends showed no qualms about doing things like ordering a $65 dessert for the table or lots of expensive sake. I got kind of annoyed. Dinner took over three hours and I was trying to get out to meet up with Zac again. I thought we were going to go out and meet his fiance.

The bathrooms at Tao were totally confusing...all the doors said were "Yin" and "Yang". I wound up going into the men's bathroom at first and having to turn around. They also had one of those bathroom attendants in there, which makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to have to tip someone to come over and hand me a towel or put soap on my hands. It made Tonia uncomfortable, too. She was like, "Hey, do other people need to use the bathroom? We can all go as a group and I'll tip for all of us..." I went in there alone at one point to wash my hands because they had sauce on them and the attendant woman started speaking to me in Spanish. I didn't catch what she said, but I did notice that she was sitting there reading "The Secret". Ha! Oh, and over the course of the 3 hour dinner, I found out that Tej is a bit into Scientology. What a weirdo...I need to sit down and talk her out of that...

We'd planned to go up the Stratosphere after dinner, but then realized that to meet Zac at Fremont Street, we wouldn't have time. We took the Deuce bus to Fremont, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. It's slow and crowded... However, we got to Fremont and caught the light show right away, which was cool:

I enjoyed Fremont. Cheap, old school Vegas. Yes. We found Zac, but his fiance couldn't make it out because she had some sort of bachelorette party plans. Oh well.

I had a goal of renewing my vows with Elvis while in Vegas, but the closest I got was a picture of Jake and me and an Elvis statue. Drats.