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Week 14: Ending 2/16/2003
 
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Ron
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Joined: 05 Nov 2002
Posts: 95

PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2003 3:48 am    Post subject: Week 14: Ending 2/16/2003 Reply with quote

Week 14: Ending February 16, 2003

Monday
Ron, Rita and Joan window shop at the Venetian for half a day prior to dinner at Emeril Lagasse’s Delmonico Steakhouse. The food, the service and the presentation are all superb. Rita plays travel guide as she points out various re-creations of Venice throughout the expansive hotel, including singing gondoliers.

Tuesday:
Ron awakens the damsels in his life at 5am to partake in an early bird steak & egg special: $3.00 before 6am. We sleepwalk into the truck and drive down the block to the Riviera. The special is not on the menu but the hostess assures us this is the place. Rita ordered All You Can Eat Flapjacks and Coffee for $2.95. Ron & Joan both order the Steak & Eggs. Unfortunately, the special was not $3, but $3.50 off! We went home to sleep.
Rita and Joan visited Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. It was educational as well as entertaining. Although we would both like to attend their magic show at night, neither of us are willing to give them a hundred bucks for the privilege. The cost of shows in Las Vegas is out of control. $70 to see Penn & Teller, or Jay Leno? Outrageous.

Window shopping at The Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace is next on the agenda. Entertainment here includes talking roman statues and a laser light show and a floor-to-ceiling salt-water aquarium. Rita treats us to dinner at the Stage Deli. We walk around the Forum enough to make room for dessert at The Cheesecake Factory. Yum!

Click here to see some pictures of Las Vegas!

Wednesday:
Rita has a 6:20am flight. We have run Rita all over Las Vegas, so we go back to bed after the airport. Our friends, Mike and Amy and their children, Matthew and Jesse are arriving later today from Massachusetts. Mike is feeling poorly and the kids are tired, so they head up to their hotel room. We join Amy for some slot machine action. Amy comes out ahead after an hour and we bid goodnight.

Thursday:
Liberace’s Museum beckons us. In addition to viewing his collections of costumes, jewels and furniture, we also meet Dave Lomascola, a Liberace Foundation scholar. He is planning to tour the country in a motorhome so we have nice discussion about RVing.

The kids want to see Treasure Island’s battle and the volcanic eruption at the Mirage so we make a caravan to the center of the Strip. Dinner at Denny’s gave us front row seats to view the volcano across the street without getting singed. We head over to Caesar’s where the Battle for Atlantis occurs hourly. The flames and heat are so intense that the adults feel it on their foreheads and the boys retreat from the front to the very back. The aquarium has a welcome calming effect on everyone.

Friday:
A day or so of neon seems to give us Northerners the itch to see some of Mother Nature’s wonders. The weather is warm and sunny, so we caravan out to Red Rock Canyon again. No flat tire this time.
After trekking around the desert for a couple of hours, the kids yearn for civilization again. We return to CircusCircus and agree to meet for dinner at the buffet. (Groan.) Company is great, food is the same - fair.

The men and women pair off and take turns with the kids at the Midway games. Uncle Ronny helps the boys in their quest for prizes by earning almost 500 tickets, while the kids earn another 700 or so. (Here’s a trick you should know if you frequent arcades that redeem tickets for merchandise: Lightly wet the tickets if they weigh them instead of manually count them. You wet them by carefully folding the tickets, and then placing the edge in A LITTLE BIT of water. Make sure you don’t soak the tickets… you’re sure to be noticed. Don’t get caught! Seems to me that aside from the embarrassment, the legal penalties could be harsh.)

Mike has great luck with the $1 slot machines. Amy has good luck with the nickel slots and we win maybe $0.50 in the quarter slots (after spending $5!). Even Rita came out ahead better than us: she won $2.25 above what she bet! The slots are not our friends!
We bid farewell to our friends and wish them a safe journey to Phoenix, their next destination. We encourage them to visit the Grand Canyon on their way back to Vegas.

Saturday
We tour the Aladdin casino and Desert Passage mall. Saturday night is much warmer than previous evenings so we watch the Bellagio fountain shows for a long time. It is very relaxing, romantic and a little sad. By now it is past midnight and we are both a little hungry. We decide to find In & Out burgers, of which we have heard plenty of praise. All of it is warranted: tasty burgers with real cheese, yummy homemade buns and plain hand cut French fries. Good honest food well worth the calories.

Sunday:
Our friend and Las Vegas guru, Reese, has reminded us again to partake in the MGM Grand’s Breakfast Buffet. On Saturday and Sunday, it is a champagne brunch. It is very tastefully prepared and presented, and quite a bargain at $15. Afterwards, we happen upon the lions’ habitat and stand watching two young males for a good half hour. For most of our stay, they slept, awaking to play with a ball or toss a rawhide chew.

Next stop: the town of Henderson to view a diamond exhibit at the new Ritz-Carlton hotel. We did not realize exactly how far away the Ritz was from the Strip. We finally arrived and found the entire exhibit to be contained in a room less than 12 x 12. Not exactly what we had expected. Afterwards, we viewed exhibits from local artists and listened to Classical music played by Italian musicians dressed in colonial American garb. Interesting. Once the Ritz completes the finishing touches on their newest location, it will be quite a beautiful resort, literally around the corner from Lake Mead. The Lake, however, did not hold any interest for us since laundry chores and journal entries awaited us at home. And, we have to figure out where exactly we traveling to once we leave Las Vegas tomorrow. For now, everyone is in suspense, including us!
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TJ
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2003 11:37 am    Post subject: Time Warp Reply with quote

It's March 25th and you're posting information about the week of Feb 16?
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Ron
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Joined: 05 Nov 2002
Posts: 95

PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2003 9:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, we are a little bit behind. Embarassed

Trying to catsup now. The photo gallery was slightly redesigned to make it easier to navigate, pictures for Vegas were put up.

Joan has authored several weeks of trip logs, and I will be publishing those along with necessary photos ASAPossible.

We are in Alabama at the motorhome factory now. We expect to be here for another week or two, so we should have some down time to do some "work".

Hope that Spring is Springing up north -- it sure is pretty around Birmingham this time of year (It's cherry blossom season here!)

-Ron.
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