Viva Las Vegas

We are back, after our short but sweet mini-trip to Vegas. Not a long trip, but we sure made the most of our time!

We flew down Thursday morning, arriving around noon. After waiting forever for our luggage in baggage claim, we caught a shuttle over to the Las Vegas Hilton, our home for the next few days. A quick check in, and we were whisked off to the 17th floor, roon 1728 with a view of the local mountains and a crappy golf course to the east. We could also see the Stratosphere if we looked to our right.

After getting situated, it was off to the buffet for some much needed food (we hadn't eaten at all that day). We overdid it. WAY too much food. They were having a Thanksgiving feast, and we sure feasted! We ended up going back up to the room for a couple hours to alleviate our massive stomach discomfort with some rest and relaxation. After an episode of CSI-Miami, we were back in business. We picked up some brochures at the box office (they were closed), then headed down to Quarks, the Star Trek Restaurant/Bar. Over an appetizer and some foaming drinks (they use dry ice..), we decided on our course of action. We headed up to the room and made some reservations--the Comedy Stop at the Tropicana for that night.

We bought some 10-trip passes on the monorail, then headed down to the end of the line and into the comedy club. A thoroughly entertaining show. We did some more wandering around, looking at all the sights and sounds. A nice evening.

Friday, we were up bright and early (around 1030am), and decided to head down the strip to pick up the tickets for the other shows we had booked Thursday evening. We brunched at the Mirage after waiting in line for 45 minutes. The food was so good, it was ALMOST worth it.......we are not wait-in-line people. A bit more wandering around and seeing the sights, then back to our room to regroup. We decided that *this* was the day to Trek-out. We headed down to Star Trek: The Experience. I forgot how much fun this is!! There is a Star Trek museum of sorts, with a huge timeline of things that happened in the Star Trek world, lots of props from the shows, costumes, etc. Then there are two rides. We chose to do the Klingon encounter first--the story is that you are abducted by some Klingons from the future because you are an ancestor of John Luc Picard, and taking you out will make him never have been born (does that make sense??). Then you get into a transport shuttle and it is one of those rides where you see this massive curved screen in front of you, and a movie plays on it and the shuttle you are sitting in moves as if you really are in the movie. Anyway, makes you a bit seasick, but very cool. We are saved and returned to Vegas.

The second ride in the Star Trek Experience is the Borg invasion. In this one, we are transported to a ship millions of miles away to take part in some sort of experiment, and in the middle of our debriefing, the Borg attack and start taking over and assimilating everyone. We are moved to a massive shuttle, given 3D glasses, and the Borg queen taunts us and tries to assimilate us. It is really cool--when things like a giant space bug get blown up right in front of you, you get sprayed with a teeny bit of water, and when they inject you with nanoprobes to take over your body, the chair you are sitting in pokes things out into your back and freaks you out. Very cool.

So, we Trekked out. We finished the rides, then went to Quarks for dinner--we got two free dinners as a part of the package we were booked under. I had a really good chef salad, and we split a Quesadilla and had bananas Foster for dessert (french vanilla ice cream with marinated bananas served over flaming caramel sauce), and of course we each had a Warp Core Breach to drink. A very nice dinner.

Later that evening, we headed over to the Mirage to see Wayne Brady--he was in town for only 2 nights and we were thrilled that there were still some seats available. What a good show!! He asks for input/suggestions from the crowd, and totally uses that to do the show. He is great (the guy from Whose line is it anyway).

More wandering the strip, lots of entertainment.....

Saturday, I will admit.....we slept in. Got up late, headed down to the Flamingo, where we had a champagne brunch in their buffet. Excellent omelettes made to order, and I made my champagne into a Mimosa. We spent a lot of time wandering the strip--lots of cool new things in Cesaer's Palace to see, the entire new building of the Forum Shoppes, the colosseum. Ethan saw some definite similarities to things he saw in Rome, we took pictures to compare later. We also headed over to Harrahs and got some margaritas by the yard (I had a strawberry dacquiri), then walked up to the new Wynn casino. I had heard that their bathrooms were very fancy, so we checked them out, took pictures of these cool parachute looking light thingies. I will post pictures, they are too hard to describe. I thought the whole casino looked very nice, elegant and cool.

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our tickets for that evenings entertainment--Toni Braxton! Some of you may know that Toni is one of Ethan's most favorite singers of all time. We thoroughly enjoyed this concert, it was a really good show. Afterwards, we went over to Harrahs and caught the Improve comedy show, featuring the tall bald guy from Living Single (I can't remember his name). Another great show.

We were out and about until the wee hours wandering the strip, had sandwiches at a diner, received a disturbing phone call from home and were generally upset and pissed off the rest of the night. Went back to the room and slept around 3am.

Woke up Sunday morning, packed up everything and headed to the airport around noon for our 4pm flight--we were told it would be mayhem there since it was the Sunday after thanksgiving. It was not actually that bad, we ended up sitting in a sports bar watching the NFL games for FOREVER. Our plane was quite delayed because of the storm in the Pacific NW, so we didn't even board the plane until 5pm, then there was a delay in getting our baggage onboard because the 1pm flight to Seattle left just before us, and their baggage took priority since they were 4 hours late to our 1 hour.

We were flying first class, which was cool. We had teeny bottles of water waiting for us, then we had some glasses of wine in real wine glasses, and a fancy schmancy chipotle dip with crackers and breadsticks. The steward even addressed us by name! Once we got to Seattle, it was all backed up here, so many flights had been delayed, and they were now de-iceing all the planes before they could take off. So...we sat in the plane and drove in loops around the terminal for over an hour waiting for a spot to open up for us to pull in to and unload. After an eternity, we got off and headed to the massively overcrowded baggage claim area, then to the extremely long taxi line. All in all, we were home LATE!! It was supposed to be a 7pm arrival, but we got home after 11pm!!

Still, a great trip. I will put up pictures tomorrow afternoon.....