| December 27-30, 2003 - Because they reduced the price of our tickets to
Costa Rica after we had purchased them, we were given the difference in
travel vouchers, to be redeemed within one year. As the date for
redemption got closer, we were stumped on where to go. Where had we
never been, that was close enough to go for a long weekend without the
children? Vegas emerged as the clear choice. Monica's parents
were kind enough to come to our house to watch the girls, and we set off for
Sin City.
We stayed at the Aladdin,
which is a very safe choice for a first-time visitor. It's right in
the center of the strip, and the rooms are very nice and it's not
 that
expensive. Once we arrived, we took a few minutes to get acclimated
and then went down to one of the bars for a warm-up drink. We gave the
casinos close-by a cursory examination, returned to our room to dress for
dinner, and then took a cab to
Mandalay Bay for dinner at
Charlie Palmer's steak.
Dinner was very nice although so filling that we were forced to return to
our room to sleep it off instead of hitting the town. No matter, we
still had three more days in Vegas to see the sights.
We woke up reasonably early the next day, Sunday, and were able to get to
the brunch buffet at Aladdin before there was a line. Such a lot of
different kinds of food to choose from! After brunch we shopped first
at the Desert Passage, which is the giant mall attached to the
Aladdin. It was really well
done, with fake sky and building facades to make it look like an Arabian
marketplace. There's even an area where it "rains" over a reflecting
pool. After Desert Passage, we wandered over past Paris to the
Venetian, and checked out their mall.
Very cute as well, with fake sky and a canal with gondoliers pushing
passengers through it, although all of these malls seem
 to
have the same stores. We then went over to
Treasure
Island to check out the show times there (6:00, 8:00 and 10:00, not
great for us as we were going to be at the other end of the strip at those
times each day). We went back on that side of the street and went into
Caesar's Forum.
More of the same, fake sky, roman
facades, same stores, only this time we got caught in a crowded dead end and
that ate up about 1/2 hour so now we were running really late for our dinner
reservations at Olive's in the
Bellagio. We called when we got back to our room to let them know
we'd be late, and I pumped while changing, a feat never before performed!
We had an excellent dinner there, everything was perfect. Then we went
to see Second
City, a comedy show in the style of Whose Line is it Anyway?. It
was pretty funny, although I think we might have caught them on an off night
(it happens!). After the show we played a few slots and checked out
more of the casinos.
The next day we had a quick breakfast at Starbucks in our hotel, and
grabbed a cab to the
Las Vegas Hilton for the Star
Trek: The Experience. This was $29.95 per person, a heck of a lot
more expensive than I thought it was going
 to
be, and surely outside the budget for most family vacationers, but this is
Vegas and prices are high. Once inside, Mark looked at all the
displays very very thoroughly. We probably took three times the amount
of time as the usual
visitor, but for once I was patient. When a Klingon commander came by,
Mark's face lit up like he was meeting his favorite movie star! The
ride part of it was very well done. After we had seen all of the Star
Trek stuff we had lunch at Quark's Cafe, and then I bought a Star Trek
t-shirt! Who would have thought?! But it was very cute for once.
We headed back to the strip and got dropped off at the
Fashion Show mall for more
shopping. This mall is huge and did have some different stores but we
were really shopped out so we just wandered back to our room. We went
to dinner at
Pietro's in the Tropicana, recommended as an "old school" French
restaurant and they weren't kidding. Service was good but dinner was
very stretched out. I had lobster bisque which was outstanding, but
the rest of the meal was just okay. After dinner we went to
Excalibur, where the
machines ate our money and nobody would help us, and
New York, New
York into their Irish bar which we really liked. That casino
totally appeals to our demographic, the music and everything was cool.
We returned to our nice little hotel room again.
We did video checkout of our hotel and left our bags at the bell station,
had
 breakfast
in the hotel diner, and went to go see a movie because we never get to.
We saw Mona Lisa Smile, which was
very good. After the movie we visited the last of the casinos, the
Luxor, the
Monte Carlo where
I was a big winner of $10.00 worth of quarters, and New York New York again.
Then it was time to fly home to our little children! All was well at
home, except Panino was mad and wouldn't return for a few days.
For more pictures of our trip, click
here.
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