Vegas!
Vegas!
For starters, we left later in the day, in the hopes that we wouldn't be so utterly wiped by 9 o'clock and screw up our entire trip's worth of nightlife. The flight there was a little irritating, as the flight between Philedelphia and Vegas (the longest of the trip) was overbooked and we ended up sitting miles away from each other on a plane for 5 hours. Such is life, though, and we arrived around dinnertime. Went to a downtown brewpub that we'd read about downtown, and enjoyed dinner with delicious, locally-brewed, $4 pints. Then we went back to our hotel (The El Cortez, an older hotel on Fremont, but a little off the main part of Fremont. About as far east as you'd ever want to go at night, frankly.), and crashed by around 10.
Up the next morning at an early, but not unreasonably so, hour, and headed over to the downtown Tix4Tonite location to see what cheap show tickets we could score. Ended up deciding on a burlesque show. Tickets obtained, we hopped the Deuce to go down to th Strip and wandered for most of the rest of the day. We thought about checking out Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, but decided it was too expensive, then thought about checking out the classic cars at the Mirage, but decided they were too expensive, so we mostly just wandered. Checked out Terry Fator's gift shop (The jerkface opens his show on Monday, I believe, which did us no good whatsoever.), and ended up chatting with the lady working there, she said he would be doing book signings for the next three nights after his rehearsals. So we bought a book in case we managed to make it back there at some appropriate time. We didn't end up doing so, but we did learn that his contract is for five years, so unless he tanks horribly, we should still be able to catch his show sometime. Ate dinner at Battista's, which you may remember from last time. It was still utterly delicious, and we were both very pleased to see that Gordie, the world's cutest accordion player EVER is still alive, kicking, and playing the accordion. After that we headed to our burlesque show, which was fun, although, to be honest, I'd have almost preferred it if it were a little... raunchier, or more stripper-like, or something. There's just something ever so slightly surreal about women dancing like everything's completely normal, with their boobs hanging out. They had a stripper pole, but they didn't make very extensive use of it. It was fun, though, and as it was a 10 o'clock show, we actually made it to midnight before going to bed that night.
Wednesday we poked around downtown for a bit after we got up, and then headed down to the Strip again to meet Marci, who we met last time were there, to drive out to the Valley of Fire. It was awesome to see her again, and the drive out was fun. We drove past Meadow Gold (If you don't know what that is, you don't care), and lots of construction, and lots of traffic, and lots of desert. Drove to Arizona first to go through the Virgin River Gorge, which was very pretty, and then turned around and headed back for the Valley of Fire. Which is gorgeous. I can't even begin to describe it, really, and if you check out the pics on Facebook, they don't even begin to do it justice, but the rock formations are just stunning, and the silence is amazing. Up here, if you wander around in the wilderness, you can hear wind in the trees, or animals scuttling around somewhere, or even your own footsteps on the rocks or leaves or whatever. Not in the desert. There are no trees to speak of, the animals are pretty much all nocturnal, and the sand here on the ground was so fine it makes no noise at all when you step on it. It was unreal. You should definitely go. Anyway, after we finished driving through there and checking everything out, we drove back to Vegas on the longest, darkest, most desolate stretch of highway ever. It's a damn good thing the car behaved itself all the way, because there isn't even any cellphone reception out there. It's intense. And then all of a sudden, you come around a corner, and there's Vegas in all its very bright glory, appearing between two mountains. Crazy.
Anyway, after Don recovered from the headache he'd developed, and we ate dinner, we headed out to watch the Queen show on the Fremont Experience screen, then went to Hogs & Heifers because Don wanted to buy a shirt from their gift shop. When we got there, we decided to have a drink, and that's when everything started to get out of control. Hogs and Heifers is the bar that actually inspired Coyote Ugly, if that gives you any idea. It was a Wednesday and it was early, so it wasn't really that busy, but the atmosphere is pretty awesome. When we walked in, the bartenders were ragging on some guy about Minnesota and the size of his package. We sat down and had a drink, and then we ended up with another one on the house, and then we had several more. At one point, one of the highlights of the trip for me occurred, which is that I was invited to climb up and dance on the bar. Sweet! Ever since watching Coyote Ugly, I have totally wanted to dance on a bar. So it really didn't take much encouragement, and up I went. It was awesome, and everything I could have hoped for. Later, I got to do it again, too. :) So Don got his shirt, I got to dance on a bar, and we both got extremely hammered, and were very glad we only had to make it a few blocks to get back to the hotel. Paid for it for much of the night and the morning as well, but it was totally worth it.
We didn't do anything too strenuous right after we got up - just had breakfast at a little local place, and wandered a bit. Headed down to the Strip and did something... until we met Marci and her boyfriend for a late lunch at the Harley Davidson Cafe. After that, Don and I went to the Bellagio to poke around the Botanical Garden there for a while. After that, we went to the MGM Grand and bought our Ka souvenirs before the show, because we're smart that way. Saw Ka, which was awesome. I can't even really explain this show to you. If you've seen a Cirque du Soleil show, it probably wasn't quite like that. This one had slightly less of the holy-crap-humans-can-do-that??? to it, but was no less awe-inspiring for it. Don hit it, I think, when he said it was almost more like a really crazy, elaborate dance show. There was a very distinct story, and some cool tricks, but a lot more dance than some shows. What really brings it over the top, though, is the set. For one thing, it's HUGE. Huge. And to say that it has moving platforms doesn't really even begin to cover it. The main platform (which is probably abut the size of the NAC stage, and probably makes up about half the stage area for this show - not counting the massive scaffolding down the sides of the audience) was almost like another performer in the show, it was that fucking cool. It tilts, it rotates, it spins, it goes up and down... It does everything. It was very very cool.
After that, we pretty much headed back to the hotel and to bed, since we did have to get up pretty early to go to the airport and go home. The flight home we actually got to sit together, so that was good, and aside from that, was pretty dull. Three legs, which sucked and made it very long (We left at 10am PST, and arrived home around 10:30pm EST), but nothing untoward happened, and we made it back just fine. Would have been nice if the buses had been running just one day earlier, but such is life.
So there was Don & Brenda's Trip to Vegas 2.0, and I kind of already can't wait for the next one.