Ms. Vanni Goes to Vegas
After a few whirlwind weeks of work, work, vacation and more work, we're back, and snarkier than ever! :P
As promised to Mistress and a few others, this blog is a travelogue of my trip to Las Vegas with Judy. I'll hit all the highlights of the trip, with some pictures I took around the area.
Judy was only able to stay two nights, so I was left to my own devices for about 42 hours. You'll notice there was no structural damage of buildings or known homicides, so I think I did ok on my own.
Sunday, August 7
After packing and making sure the cats had lots of food, water, and the air conditioning on for their maximum comfort, we headed out on the road. Driving to Vegas is a 300 mile, 4-5 hour drive from where I live in the LA Metro Area, so we left at 11 with hopes to be in around 4PM. The trip in and of itself was rather unremarkable, except for the big Pilot Fire in the mountains that we saw coming along Pearblossom Highway to connect to the I-15 North to Vegas. That fire is 100% surrounded and mostly out now. We flew up the I-15 and made it to Vegas in good time, getting in around 4:30PM.
We stayed at the Flamingo Hotel, which is a decent spot. The reasons we like it are 1) it has Margaritaville, 2) it's fairly cheap (got a mini-suite with a seperate bedroom from the small living room for $36 a night on average for four nights, 3) it's central to most of the fun stuff on the strip and 4) it has Margaritaville. Do you sense a theme here?
So after getting to the room and unpacking we went downstairs to....you guessed it...Margaritaville. Being big fans of Jimmy Buffett, we love Margaritaville, so we got a table and ordered two Perfect Margaritas and some "Jamaica Mistaka" boneless chicken wings. I had the Chimmichurri Flat Iron Steak (very rare) and Judy had the Landshark Lager Fish and Chips.
After that we went to the casino for a bit to relax before calling it a night. Margaritaville has its own casino built into the Flamingo, so we spent most of our time there doing some slots and video poker. I went up $30 above what I started with, so I considered it a successful night. After that, it was upstairs, change, clean up and go to bed as we were both tired from the long drive and good food.
Monday, August 8
As I've mentioned before, I always find it hard to sleep away from home the first night away, probably because I'm used to having the four furry masters, aka the cats, jumping all over me and bossing me around for pets and what not. So I got maybe five hours of sleep, which is the minimum I need to be vertical. After getting ready, we headed down to the buffet to get breakfast, and then were about to head out for a bit of a walk, but we got distracted in a fabulous boutique, Flamingo Apparel, that's in the Flamingo with gorgeous clothes and shoes. I got into a ...bit of trouble...walking out with two utterly cute dresses and three pairs of Italian shoes (two of which can be worn to work and I have in fact worn them both already to meetings and to campus for regular duties). The nice thing is that while expensive, they are very comfy and well made and should last a long time.
After that we walked up to the Venetian Hotel and be-bopped around there. The Venetian is a gorgeous place that is modeled after Renaissance Venice. We only gamed a little, but below are some pictures from the place:
After our time walking around the Venetian, we went back to the Flamingo to get ready for dinner. We were celebrating twenty years of being together, so it was a special night for us. We had trips to the salon in the Flamingo booked, so Judy had a pedicure while I had a blowout and my makeup done (I am the far more girly of the two of us). This, as you can imagine, was also at an ridiculous price, but hey, it was worth it! I wore one of my new dresses and we went to the Center Cut Steakhouse in the Flamingo and ate and drank it up. Judy had prime rib, I had pasta with shrimp, a martini and we shared a bottle of wine. By the time we ate and drank we were a bit tired, so we went up to the room to rest...and both passed out on the couch, lol. Some twenty year celebration, us old farts! We came to (as opposed to woke up,) Judy said she was going to bed, but I was NOT going to waste the money on my hair and makeup being done, so I went back down, played a bit more, and then went upstairs and cleaned up, changed and went to bed.
Tuesday, August 9
After waking up and having coffee and muffins, we realized we didn't have that much time left, as she had to be on a taxi to McCarren Airport as she had to be back at work the next day. We had til 2PM, so our adventure together was walking around the Linq Hotel, right next to the Flamingo. The Linq is the old Imperial Palace, a
real dive hotel that the Caesar's Group bought and rennovated into a really nice place. I remember walking around the old Imperial Palace and being less than enthused with it, but I will say the Linq is a top notch place, at least on the gaming floor and with the places to eat and drink. We found an Irish bar, O'Shea's and had a couple Guinnesses while playing some video poker. I put in twenty and after an hour of playing walked out with $10, so that wasn't too bad. I may very well stay at the Linq on our next trip.
After that we went back upstairs, I did some work believe or not (I was getting pestered by the Dean most of the trip!) and then we got Judy on the taxi back to McCarren. She got home safe and sound and took care of the kitties when she arrived.
So now it's Tuesday afternoon, and I had until Thursday morning all to myself. Mwaahahahaha.
After getting more work done, I went to the fitness room and worked out, then back upstairs to shower, got dolled up and went to the Paris Hotel down the road a bit from the Flamingo. As you might imagine, the Paris is a French styled hotel, where none of the staff actually speaks French, but they do say
"Madame" and "Monsieur" to you. Bally's is between the Flamingo and the Paris, so I ate dinner at the Buca de Beppo Italian place at Bally's, then went to the Paris, where I walked around a bit, gamed at the bar while drinking some Chardonnay, got hit on slightly by some d00d looking for "a companion" for the evening (ha ha ha), then went back to the Flamingo, got cleaned up and went to bed.
Wednesday August 10
I had the whole day to myself, so I decided to do a long walk. I took the Las Vegas Monorail from the Flamingo to the MGM Grand, and then across to the New York, New York Hotel. I gamed a little in each hotel (each one about $10 at most) and then went back up the street to the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Miracle Mile Mall, literally a one mile mall of all kind of stores.
I got back to the Flamingo around 1PM, had a turkey Cheesburger in Paradise at Margaritaville, then did a bit more work. After that another workout in the fitness room, then shower, got ready and decided to hit a Dim Sum place I found at the Paris the night before.
I forgot to mention that apparently every night on the sidewalk between the Flamingo and Bally's, there were a bunch of Jesus maniacs with signs saying "Repent or Go to Hell" and such nifty things. There were a team of guys with the signs, a couple handing out their tracts, and one guy who was literally speaking a mile a minute, with a stream of gibberish like "youmustrepentofyoursinsorjesuswillsendyoutohellandtherewillbenoexitfromyourtorment" with hardly a breath. Just as I was coming down the escalator, two cute but obvious Trans-Women were coming the opposite way, and the guy said in his mile a minute cadance "transgender is sin before almighty God repent now or burn in hell.." They flipped the guy off and those of us around the gals high fived them and a few of us, including yours truly, told the idiots to "f**k off." I was really glad to see the crowd supporting the gals! The guys with the signs are friggin' idiots -- don't they get they're doing far more harm than good to the image of Christianity with that nonsense?
So off to the Yong Kang Street Dim Sum place which is really cool -- although it is sort of funny to find a traditional dim sum joint run by Chinese at the Paris. I guess it's part of the charm of Las Vegas! I ate a big dish of noodles with chicken, dumplings with pork and a thing of chicken dim sum. I didn't realize I was so hungry, but there you go.
After that a bit more gaming at the Paris, then went back to the Linq as I had a credit voucher with $13 that Judy gave me. For those of you that haven't been to Vegas in some time, the machines don't spit out coins anymore, now they all spit out vouchers that you can put into other machines, or bring to a cashout machine to get actual cash.
So I played that voucher and $10, a little more at the Margaritaville casino, and by that time was utterly gamed out. So I went back upstairs, cleaned up, goofed off a little on the Net and then went to bed.
Thursday August 11
Not really much to tell here. I packed up, got everything in the car, checked out and was on the road by 10AM. I wanted to get home by 3PM at the latest as I missed the kitties and didn't want to get stuck in traffic that would be all over the freeways on Thursday after 3PM.
My only stop on the road was at Alien Fresh Jerky, a really cool place in Baker, CA that sells all manner of jerked meats. I bought an Abducted Cow Beef Jerky, a Sweet Pork Jerky, and a Turkey Jerky for us, another Abducted Cow for a friend, and for a friend that likes REALLY hot stuff, a bottle of "Satan's Ghost" hot sauce. I dunno how hot it is, but it's made with Ghost Pepper, so I think it will do well for him.
And that was it. I drove back through the I-15, noticed the Pilot Fire was looking a lot better than a few days before, got home at 3PMish, had the cats ignore me while I unpacked, but after a bit they forgave me for leaving a few days, and all was well.
So a fun time had, which was a good set of days before the semester work started, which it did the very next day! Friday to Tuesday the 16th we had meetings galore, and then the first day of class was Wednesday the 17th. And now everything is back to as crazy as it was. But still, I enjoy Vegas a lot, and I came home with $200 of all the money I had planned to lose, so it wasn't a total wash. Now I just have to pay for those dresses and shoes.......