Ballys and Paris Hotels, Las Vegas

The last two days of the trip was a bit more relaxing.

We started the day off walking around Caesars Palace. We then met up with Stephen and we hit up another burger joint before shopping again at the Premium outlet and Fashion Show mall. This time we tried In and out Burger. The burgers were very basic, but I didn’t fancy the fries. I was craving Jack In The Box, so we had to make a detour before hitting the outlets. I had the same burger, but this time I had swiss cheese instead of American. I say American cheese on the sirloin burger tastes better.

Finally arriving at the outlet, we quickly found that the deals were no where close to those of the Columbus day sales and the sizes were all gone by this time.

Moral of the story go shopping before the sales or during the sales and never after.

After shopping we ended up at another buffet. This time we ended up at Todai in Planet Hollywood again. Since it was a dinner buffet and it was a Friday and/or weekend, the price for the buffet was $30 base instead of $28. Although the food was good and they had raw oysters, it was definitely a lot pricier than many of the other buffets. I would recommend eating at other buffets before this one due to it’s price and selection.

After dinner, we ended up at Caesar’s palace and Bellagio. The pussy cat dolls casino was different. They had two cages for dancers and a bunch of tables surrounded it for you to gamble on. They had a bunch of good looking girls in cute pussy cat doll outfits as dealers. What a great marketing scam. I was surprised the tables weren’t all full.

We ended up gambling at the Bellagio and Jeannette fulfilled her own wish of playing poker in a poker room. Although her $40 lasted her 3 hands, she was able to say she played in a poker room. The buy in for her table was $40. Bids were $4 – $8 and blinds were $1-$2. Good job Jeannette. We’ll have to train you up for next time.

The last day went by pretty quickly. With a late checkout at 12pm, a car to return, and a flight to catch by 9pm, we didn’t have too much time to spare.

We started off with lunch at Buca Di Beppo. They had huge servings and the spaghetti was quite good. Very Italian and very traditional.

We headed to the Stratosphere next with anticipation of trying the big shot, but the line to get up to the top was about a 45 minutes wait. We ended up scraping the idea.

The next thing we knew it was time to go home. Although 8days seems to be a long time, it went by pretty quickly.

Thanks to Johnoel, Jeannette, and Amy for being such great travel companions. We’ll have to do it again.

Las Vegas Trip Gallery 8 (Last One!!)

Enjoy!

Brian

Wynn, Las Vegas

Mirage, Las Vegas

The second hotel trip consisted of:

Excalibur -> Luxor -> Mandalay Bay -> Wynn -> Treasure Island -> and Mirage

Knowing how far of a walk New York New York was from the Imperial Palace, we decided to drive to Excalibur and start our hotel tour there.

Excalibur like Circus Circus was disappointing. I can’t believe how dead the midways were again and other than the midways, there isn’t too much else the Excalibur offers.

Luxor was neat as usual with it’s Egyptian theme. Too bad they didn’t have the glass luxor cups no more, I wanted another one since the last one broke.

Mandalay bay is a nice hotel, although far from all the other hotels (at the end of the strip). The front of Mandalay Bay was nice with it’s huge gate and waterfalls. The inside is pretty classy as well with many nice looking restaurants (similar to the MGM). There was a elevator convention and tonnes of people were there for that. There was a shark reef that looked interesting, but you have to pay and it is quite the walk from the tram.

We took the tram back to Excalibur then drove to the Wynn.

The Wynn was a very classy hotel. The Ferrari store was awesome and the ferrari’s in the showroom were mesmerizing. You had to pay $10 to go in to see it. The only ways you get to go in for free are if your purchase at the Ferrari store was over $50 or you are an owner of a Ferrari or a maserati. I didn’t qualify for either one.
The coolest thing about the Wynn was the man made waterfall. They had circular escalators that lead to the entrance of a patio. The patio faces a lake with a huge waterfall. That was quite impressive.

The next hotel we hit was treasure island. The outside decor of treasure island is neat, but the inside I find very plain. We were hoping to watch the Siren show, but due to high winds, they cancelled it.

We ended up walking over to mirage where we watched the volcano show. Apparently there was this sketchy guy who was touching Amy’s butt, but she said she felt nothing and Johnoel called the guy out and he ran away. We ended up having some dessert at the Carnegie Deli. We’re lucky we only had the cheesecakes and not the deli sandwiches as there is like 1.5-2lbs of meat in each sandwich.

Since it was about 11pm and we plan to wake up at 1am to start our drive to the Grand Canyon, we decided to head home and hit the sack.

Las Vegas Trip Gallery 6

Las Vegas Trip Gallery 7

To Be Continued…

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas

Handy GPS With Stratosphere in background

Riviera, Las Vegas

Looking at the number of days we had to spend in Vegas, it looked like we had plenty of time to relax at the pool side.

Spending 8 days and 7 nights in Vegas, it was definitely a lot more hectic than anticipated.

We arrived in Vegas around 9pm and by the time we got the car and checked-in at the time share, it was close to 11-11:30pm. We ended up walking a bit of the strip, eating at Chipolte and Panda Express then checked out the Venetian hotel. The entrance we walked through to get into the hotel was where the TAO night club was. There was a huge line up to get in. Inside the Venetian, the mall was well lit with the blue sky making it seem like day. The gondolas were a nice sight as it reminded me of Venice. There was also a gallery of photos by Peter Lik, his stuff looks amazing. Quite the landscape photographer.

We spent our first two days shopping. The first day we went to the Premium outlet mall. We shopped from 9am till about 6pm. I can’t believe we did so much shopping, but since the Oct 6th weekend was columbus day, there were some massive sales. One of the crazier ones was 70% off the entire FCUK outlet store. We ended the night eating Jack In The Box. They have quite the huge burger and very delicious.

After our tasty dinner at Jack In The Box, we ended up checking out Circus Circus and Rivera. I can’t believe how dead the midways are nowadays. I remember 10 years ago when I went, the midways were always packed. I guess getting there around 10pm didn’t help my cause. As for the Riveria, there isn’t much special inside, just a regular hotel.

The second day we went to Primm’s outlet and we didn’t find much to shop. This may be due to the amount of shopping we did the first day and the fact that there wasn’t many deals at Primm. This was becoming a burger trip as we hit Carl’s Jr for another burger. I think Jack in the Box is still better. Luckily that night we ate at P.F. Changs, where mexicans cook the chinese food and it isn’t fast food. It was a tad on the salty side, but quite delicious and reasonably priced. We also hit up the Hard Rock cafe hotel that night. There were plenty of memorabilia of singers. Quite the collection I must say.

Las Vegas Trip Gallery 1

Las Vegas Trip Gallery 2

To Be Continued….