Vegas Vacation

Greg in front of the Fountains at Bellagio

We are fresh back from our trip to Las Vegas.  Are we glad that we went to celebrate our friends’ wedding?  Of course.  Are we glad to have had the “Vegas experience” so we don’t feel like we’re missing anything?  Uh, sure.  Will we be voluntarily returning to Las Vegas?  Not at all likely.  It certainly is a unique experience, but just not up our ally.  Why you ask?  Well, I will indulge your curiosity with a compilation of our grievances, in bullet point format, because that’s how I roll.  Oh, and I will also list the things we liked, although it will be a shorter list, centered mainly around food.

Why we were hating on Vegas:

• Our hotel.  The Excaliubur.  If you have ever been to Las Vegas and have seen or been into the Excalibur, you need not read further to know why we hated it so hard.  From the outside, it looks like a ridiculous real-life rendering of a Disney animated movie set, complete with fake castle spires done up in primary colors.  Walking in only makes it worse.  The smell of desperation and cigarette smoke was almost unbareable.  After making our way through a mile of slot machines to the registration desk, Greg and I both said almost simultaneously (true story)- “is it bad that I’m hating this already?”  We are so alike its scary.  Well, our room was no better, although the stench of cigarette smoke was replaced with the slightly more comforting smell of a strong disinfectant.  Needless to say, we spent VERY LITTLE time in our hotel.
• The onslaught of advertising.  It is absolutely everywhere.  It is what my worst idea of the future looks like.  Everywhere your eye turns, there is something flashing and moving and screaming at you to buy something.  And I didn’t want to buy any part of it.
• 6am fireworks.  Seriously.  To kick off the Las Vegas marathon (the same day as our friends’ wedding), they had a 15 minute big-scale fireworks display.  Did I mention it was 6 am and we thought that it was either a freak thunderstorm or perhaps a terrorist attack?  Luckily, Greg could not sleep at all, so he happened to be awake and somewhat aware of our surroundings when the random fireworks were set off.
• Our 4am airport shuttle pick-up this morning.  Waking up at 3:30 am should be against the law.   And we are clearly to old to power through the night and just stay up for it.  4 hours of sleep is better than none in my universe.

This is where we wished we were staying.

OK, enough with the complaining.  Here are some things we liked.

• My friend Erin insisted that if we do nothing else, we must go to see the Fountains at the Bellagio.  Thank you Erin, they were beautiful!

The Fountains at Bellagio

• After the fountains, we officially began our weekend of gluttony at the restaurant Olives at the Bellagio.  It was delish.  We also had wonderful food at Rumjungle (after the wedding) and The Chocolate Swan (pure dessert heaven).  The food everywhere was beyond tasty, and it was about to push us beyond the limits of our pants.
• While we’re discussing food, cast your eyes upon this little slice of heaven that could only happen in Vegas:

A buffet plate I'm mildly ashamed of.

We enjoyed the brunch at The Mandalay Bay.  It was crazy.  The plate I got     on my (sorry, can’t admit) n’th trip to the buffet consisted of (from top of plate in clockwise order):  Breaded shrimp, pancake with pecan syrup, french toast, bacon, pork pot-sticker and mashed potatoes and gravy.  I could not resist photographing this masterpiece both because of its unique Vegas buffet beauty, and because joking about it made me feel less bad about eating it (which I did, and I liked it).  We stayed at the buffet a long time, because it takes a long time to eat $24 worth of buffet food, in my opinion.

• I also enjoyed our Spa day at the Mandalay Bay.  It was relaxing and awesome and I want to be there everyday for at least 2 hours.

So all in all, we are glad to have gone because weddings are always awesome…but we are happy as hell to get to sleep in our own house with our own cats in our own bed.  Home sweet home.