Las Vegas Trip

Monday, December 5, 2005 - Las Vegas, Nevada

Greetings from Las Vegas.  Thus far our trip has been pleasant, but long.  We left the children behind with Marla yesterday about 3pm, and went our way to St. Louis.  We were eating at the Olive Garden on Manchester at 5pm.  You may not realize it, but I do.  That was where we went on one of our first dates.  I guess it wasn't the first, because we went to the Pasta House on Euclid for that, but. . . Oooooh.  Never Mind. I think that we went there about 12-2-94.  That's probably what I'm thinking of.
     So, excellent supper, then our trip over to the airport.   I just can't get over how cold it was in Cape and St. Louis.  32° in Cape and 28° in St. Louis.  We chose to park at the "SuperPark Express", which will be $8 per day.  The bus ride to the airport is not one I prefer to repeat, since the driver seemed confused that she was driving a bus with other people in it and not a little sports car.  Anyway, we arrived at the airport unscathed.
     As far as our airport and flight experience, I don't have too much to say.  They gave us an in-flight movie- so that was a new experience for me, (Wallace & Gromit- Curse of the Were-Rabbit), and I used my PDA in flight for playing solitaire and listening to some tunes.  The wait went by quickly on the ground, and our flight in a Boeing 757 went on very smoothly.
     Our landing as well was nice.  We flew in from the North, so as we landed we were able to see all of the Strip.  As for the Las Vegas airport, I couldn't believe how busy it was!  People were everywhere, especially at the baggage claim.  I picked up two garment bags before I found my own.  
     Now for our hotel, all I can say is wow.  This place is immaculate.  We are staying at "THE hotel at Mandalay Bay".  On our previous trip, I found Mandalay Bay to be my favorite (with my primary point of reference being the public restrooms). Plus the House of Blues is here as well.  
     Our hotel is somewhat separate from Mandalay Bay, but it's all connected.  The lobby is covered entirely by black & white tile, with ceilings at least 30 feet tall.
     Our room is awesome.  Two rooms, with 1.5 baths, a king bed, large screen plasma TV, plus a tv in the bedroom and yes, bathroom.  The bathroom has dual sinks, a separate toilet room, large bathtub, and stand-up shower.  Marble.  We also have a wet bar with snacks, but get a hefty charge with those.  Very large room, and only $149 per night.
     As for the moment, Shannon is very much ready to go, so we'll be off.  

Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - Las Vegas, Nevada

Greetings.  I had planned on writing more, but you can see how far I managed that venture.  I've just been so busy, and tired.  We aren't used to walking so much, which is a requirement in Las Vegas, since you can't get anywhere without walking through a casino, and every casino is several acres.
     Monday was an enjoyable day; we got going pretty late, and ended up arriving at our convention about 10:30 (and the CE's all started at 8:00).  It was a precent that stuck, since we got there at 11:00 on Tuesday and about 11:15 today.
     We've found we can get there from our hotel by walking from our room to the tram.  We take the tram to the Excalibur, then walk across to New York New York, then walk through the MGM grand to the monorail station.  It takes from 45 minutes to an hour depending on how you hit the times of trams & monorails.  We also realized we could take the bus, which gets us from the convention to New York New York, where we can walk to Excalibur to the tram to our hotel. (Tonight we skipped the tram and walked through Excalibur through the Luxor to Mandalay Bay.  Whew.
     Our convention has been pretty awesome.  I've done some good CE's, including 2005 Update on Handling Hazardous Drugs, Clinical Pearls 2005, and Are Diabetic Patients with Heart Failure in Danger When They are on Insulin Sensitizers?  Or something like that.  I've gotten a whole bunch of free stuff, including two personalized laser-pen pointers, a laser engraved spatula, a personalized journal (with my signature), more than a couple insulated coffee mugs, three USB memory drives, six bags (which I collected to give to The Girls), an insulated lunchbox, a leather PDA case.  Shannon got a stuffed giraffe.  And now she is ready to go, so I will have to write some more later.
     Aaaaaand, it's later.  So, how's the gambling going?  It isn't!  I haven't spent any money doing any gambling.  I plan to do $20 tomorrow, but I may choose to not.  Shannon has done some, but bless her heart, she just can't keep from spending it all until it's gone.  When I do it, I get to a certain point and stop.  So for example, if I choose to play $20, I may play until I get down to $10 and stop when I get to either $10 or more than $20.  Although the casinos are starting to do this thing where they don't give you coins, but they do give you a ticket with a barcode.  It sucks, because when I play, I set up the machine to give me coins as I go.  But I can't do that- although I don't know where that may be.  It seemed to work at the Las Vegas Hilton this afternoon, but not at Excalibur.  
     What else?  How about the food?  How about a little chart? (For the entire week, though).     


Thursday, December 8, 2005 – Las Vegas Nevada

Whew! What an exhausting day!  We woke up at 4:00 am to get to a CE at the Wynn by 6:15.  We took the ASHP shuttle that leaves New York New York at 5:30.  We made it with 15 minutes to spare.  The CE was awesome, and the food was excellent.  But the hotel was the icing on the cake.  Base solely on bathrooms (as I had alluded to earlier), the Wynn wins hands down.  Everything except the fixtures themselves were marble.  The floors, walls (up to about 8’ then it was fabric wallpaper), sinks, and most impressively, the bathroom stalls.  These were about 7’ tall slabs of marble, stretching from about 3” form the floor to the 7’ mark.  Each was about 1.5-2” thick, and made up the three sides of the stall.  Although the door was not marble- that was a solid wood door.
     I’m not sure that I care for the choice of colors there.  I enjoyed the orangish-brown colors, but they have a very bright purple mixed in that doesn’t match.  That being said, their Christmas décor looked absolutely beautiful- though the Bellagio still takes the cake on that one.  
     We chose to walk from the Wynn back to our hotel, which essentially took the entire day- with many stops in between.  From the Wynn we headed to the Treasure Island (now “hipply” called “TI”, which is more hipply “ti”) and the Mirage for a short stop, then onward to Caesar’s Palace.  We roamed the mall there and Shannon found a nice ring for a mere (meer?) $51.  We also enjoyed the animated statues (trust me, that does make sense), but did not stay too long.  We then roamed through the mall portion of the Venetian, where we were once again accosted by people at every turn asking if we were interested in seeing some shows.  It got to be a habit of telling them that we were heading out of town in just a few minutes.  This annoyance was compounded by finding these people throughout the hotels of the Las Vegas Strip, including but not limited to, the Venetian, Aladdin, New York New York, Monte Carlo, MGM Grand, Excalibur, the Luxor, and, well, I’m sure there were more.  We then checked out the Bellagio and actually spent quite a bit of time there.  Though we had planned on eating lunch there, we ultimately chose not to.  I did get to see something that I never had before.
     I went through the art museum there.   Something I’d never even considered before, but before we left I had decided that I would do it.  The gallery gave a basic history of Impressionism (it gave me an impression of it, if you will) “from Carot to Monet”.  And I did get to see original works by Carot, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, and even Van Gogh. Very awesome to say I’ve actually done it.  As for the Bellagio itself, they win in the Christmas decorating  department.  They had a conservatory with a massive Christmas tree (not a holiday tree!!!!!!!!!!), probably 45-50’ tall, I would guess. Surrounding it were dancing fountains that were synchronized with music.  I can’t really describe it other to say it was awesome.  Plus they had a large oblong pond filled with water and cranberries.  My description makes it sound odd, but it was beautiful.  They also had several polar bears made with flowers, complete with snow.  Awesome. Oh, and I almost forgot- on the way to the tram to Monte Carlo, we came across a candy shop with a chocolate Santa and an elaborate glass chocolate fountain.  (Yes, that’s it above at left, looking up- and it went down to the floor.)
     We decided that Monte Carlo had nothing to offer (namely Mexican food), so we resolved ourselves to take the tram back to the Bellagio and walk over to a La Salsa Cantina at the Aladdin. Then we checked out Paris, where I played some nickel slots- $10- and won another $10, so I left with $20.  Granted, Shannon lost her entire ten, so our party broke even, but hey, it was great fun.
     We headed back to our hotel room, got packed up and a might bit rested before we meandered to the Excalibur for a trite more gambling.  I added $5 to my pot (from my funds) and promptly lost $25.  But at that point, I couldn’t speak from a sore throat- I mean, I lost my voice almost entirely- being caused by waking outdoors in cold weather without a jacket and an immense blanket of smoke throughout the casino.  We got back to the hotel and fell asleep after about 10 seconds of hitting the pillows.