Las Vegas...........the Good the Bad and the Very Ugly, 3rd wonderful day (in full)!

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Friday 7th December 2007. Day 3.

I took the wise move of volunteering P to do the tea & coffee run this morning. Although I was wide awake and would have loved something to do, I just couldn’t face the Spanish Inquisition (or were they mainly Mexican?) again at that ungodly hour. P is a very organised person. She approaches everything like an army general planning a war; nothing is missed out or left to chance. So it was no surprise when she returned with three perfect cups of English tea with milk and sugar and perfectly formed coffee for G just how he likes it. She even bought me my favourite daytime tipple of a diet coke.

We had another early start and made our way over to the newly christened Miracle Mile shops. Nothing was open apart from the odd café. But we didn’t want to eat in the odd café, we wanted La Salsa cantina! So we window shopped for half an hour, which is so much cheaper than the real thing especially with Roomy in tow. And at 8 am we hit the canteen of Salsa.
What a bargain. $3.95 for 2 eggs, bacon, some fried spud things and a corn wrap. The Tequila Sunrise did bump the price up a little but I thought it was a very necessary accompaniment to complete the whole Mexican experience. Food was all good if a tadge cold, but well worth the money.
Unfortunately the shops had opened by the time we were full so G & I followed the ladies expecting to repeat our previous days sherpa duties. But the ladies needed the loo so we headed off in the direction of MGM as Kaz wanted to visit M&M World.
Here we found toilets and chocolates……………….a looooot of chocolates. I didn’t realise there was that many different colours in the world let alone that many chocolaty & peanuty nuggets of ecstasy. We stocked up on a few hundredweight and struggled off to see the MGM.

You can consider yourself either lucky or unlucky to be in Vegas during a big Boxing match. I suppose it depends on weather you have a ticket to the fight or not. We booked out trip way back in January so had a nice quiet week in mind. As the year wore on things were announced and we had to decide what we wanted to see. I have always been a fight fan and G is quite partial to a good scrap on the telly. So when the Hatton vs Mayweather tickets went on sale I showed some interest but was completely out priced as $100 tickets changed hands for $1000. We were slightly worried about the estimated 30,000 Brits that would descend on Vegas just to see Hatton but I must admit that when we entered the MGM this morning there was one hell of a buzz in the air. There were Hatton V Mayweather t-shirts everywhere and I am rather partial to a t-shirt, so I set off to purchase one. I asked a Brit where he got his and he told me there was guy in the street selling them for $15 each. Equally partial to a bargain I tried to hunt him down. To no avail though, all I found when I walked across the bridge was a couple of Vegas bike Cops and not a single illegal vendor in site.
The family wanted to see the Lions but we had 45 minutes to wait. That’s when we got the call…………………..

WHEEEEL OF FORTUUUNE………….

We looked to the corner and saw the big wheel. Kaz was off and P followed. Kaz wanted to try this last year but we never got round to it. So we all picked a seat and invested our $20’s.
I don’t know what it is about this machine but within minutes we were all hooked! Before we left the UK, P & G made it quite clear that they were not gamblers. They were pretty sure they were not going to waste money on slots but this one dragged them in, especially P who was really getting into it and was in her element. When that big wheel started spinning we were all mega excited and P went mad. The machine said stand up and she stood up. She cheered out loud when she hit anything on the bonus and cheered just as loud when anyone else hit the bonus.
Over the next few days she developed an acute WOF sensory system. She could hear a large wheel from ½ a mile and could get one in her laser sights from 100 yards. She, like the rest of us developed a lucky seat. Wouldn’t even sit down for a game if she couldn’t sit down on her lucky number. She would sing the WOF tune every time anyone said what should we do next? P became the queen of WOF and would virtually win money at will.
Unfortunately poor old Roomy was on the other side of that golden coin. I don’t recall a single day when the unlucky girl managed to press the cash out button bless her.
The big WOF became our machine of choice for the rest of the week and P set off like an Exocet Missile every time she spotted one.

Over to New York x2 for a bit more shopping. Kaz & I wanted to ride the big roller coaster but due to high winds the thing was closed. Bloody wind!! We had some real beer (Guinness) in 9 Fine Irishmen instead. It was packed with Brit’s so we swiftly moved on. There’s only so much “There’s only one Ricky Hatton” chanting you can listen to.

Into Excalibur where we met the real father Christmas. Yes it really was him. Not sure it was the real Mrs Christmas though as she looked so much younger. They were posing for photos next to a fantastically decorated tree.
Not much more to see here so on to the Luxor.

I had been looking forward to seeing King Tut’s Tomb but what a mistake that turned out to be. I think it cost us about $15 each. From the outside it looked pretty big. We were handed headphones attached to radio things that would supply us with a talking tour. We entered, looked through a couple of windows, turned left, left again and left again then saw the very same man who had just handed us the radios on the way in. I looked at Kaz, she looked at me, we all looked at each other and were gob smacked when we realised that was the end of the exhibit!! I walked back in to make sure I hadn’t missed a door or a couple of rooms, but it was true the end had arrived in about 2 minutes. It’s fair to admit that we didn’t really listen to the guided tour tape, as it was pretty bad. The whole exhibit existed of one room split into four sections with as many windows, containing some very dodgy looking gold coloured replicas from Egypt or maybe they were made in China.

I said to the guy on the exit, “Is that it?” and he just shrugged and collected the headphones with a slightly embarrassed look, like he had been in that spot many times.
We all felt disappointed and a bit cheated, so off I went to the ticket office with a fist full of useless tickets. A few minutes later, after making my complaints to the manager I returned with a full refund. To be fair, there were no questions asked and no fuss. I filled out a short form and they returned our money. We left straight away with rather a sour taste.

Stopped off at the Harley Davidson café on the way back as G is a bit of a bike fan. Quite a good atmos in there with a lot of Brits but I suppose that was to be expected. I had a nice rack of ribs and I’m sure P had a huge mountain of Cheesecake but I can’t remember what kind.
Stopped again at Murder Mile as Roomy hadn’t shopped for at least 2 hours and P wanted a nice top she had spotted earlier so I took the chance to have a quick massage. I indulged in one of those seated jobbies that they have in all the Shopping Malls. It was only $20 for a 15 minute neck and back massage. It was nice and done me good. Kaz enjoyed taking pictures of the dribble that flowed from my chops as I dropped off for the last 5 minutes of the treatment. Only 5 minutes later though the aching back returned so don’t expect any major fix here just a 15 minute relaxation session. Then it was back to the room to shower for tonight’s meal at the Hofbrauhaus.

Friday 7th December 2007. Night 3.

We arrived at the Hofbrauhaus at about 7pm and the party was already in full swing.
We guessed that 90%!o(MISSING)f the occupants of that huge Bavarianesque hall had been drinking all day, as they were clearly pretty drunk. We were showed to our table in the opposite corner of the band, which didn’t matter as the music was blaring over the sound system with more decibels than the Bellagio Fountains.

I lived for 6 months in Germany many moons ago and have very fond memories of the culture and kindness of the people. I also loved the Oompah Bands that would play in many of the bars and restaurants in the beautiful olde worlde towns.
So you can imagine my surprise when we sat down and actually listened to the drivel the band was playing.
This “Authentic Oompah Band” was knocking out traditional German classics such as “Alice, who the F%!$(MISSING)K is Alice”, “Is this the way to Amarillo” and
“Hey Baby…….OOOOOOHHHH AaaaRRHHH” followed by many classics from the internationally renowned Oompah world leading band Status Quo!! This was not really what we had come here to see, entertaining as it may be to the assembled drunken masses.
P & G, Kaz & myself were all pretty full from our rib mountains earlier. Roomy had stayed back at the room, as she was very tired. So we just ordered salads and P had soup. G & I did indulge in the full litre Steins of German beer though, which was nice. It wasn’t long before the music was turned down, they may have spotted the blood trickling from our eardrums…………and some more unusual entertainment followed. A rather strange looking blonde man in traditional German dress showed up with the biggest horn you had ever seen. Wow what an impressive horn that was. He carried it round showing everybody then managed to get a good tune out of it. Standing on a table with his horn, he blew that thing for all he was worth. Then for his finale he lay on his back with the horn to his lips and sticking up like a submarines periscope and belted out that famous German tune “Yellow Submarine”.
Next came the “Stein Holding” competition. He collected around 20 volunteers and lined them up in front of the stage. All were given a full Stein of beer and had to hold it out in front of them with a straight arm at about shoulder height. The person who could hold theirs out the longest won the contest. It went on for a pretty tedious 5 or 6 minutes until the winner was announced. The prize? The Stein the man was holding. WoooHooooo.
The music continued and the beer continued to flow. Sadly many of the people present proved our theory about their drunkenness by emptying the contents of their beer filled stomachs all over the Gents loos. I pitied the poor guy who was trying to mop up!
All that said, the salads were huge and very nice. P said it was the best soup. At least the soup left room for her to devour the huge Apple Strudel and Custard……….

Taxi to the Palms. We needed to pick up tickets for Saturday’s UFC Finale. Kaz had paid for them on her card so had to be there to collect them in person. As the old girls were going to see the Spice Girls at the same time on Saturday, we hoped we could save Kaz the trouble of picking them up tomorrow. To no avail, as the box office was shut. So we changed $100 for a bit of Roulette. As we played and lost incidentally, a guy strolled over and casually threw $500 onto the table for chips. This was a $10 minimum table so it seemed a little strange. He got the croupier to place $100 into a cross with 16 in the middle. The ball whizzed round. Seconds before the “No more bets” command he whacked the $400 on to the middle line. We both lost. $500 more chips were purchased. I was fed up I’d lost $10, I dread to think how he felt. The croupier asked him for his player’s card. He said, “What’s the point? For $1000 I might get a $5 voucher for the buffet. Do you think I need that?”
“Fair comment” said I and slinked back in my chair.
Same cross, same numbers, and then right at the end he whacked his $400 on the last third. Thank god he won. I had never wanted to lose so much as I wasn’t on any of his numbers. He picked up $1200 and I got away quick nursing my $100 loss.
We returned to the Bellagio just in time to watch the Fountains version of Chicago and made our way to bed.

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Photos

Caesars Palace
The scene of a crime to come.............

Fast paced vegas
View across the strip.

Fire in the Sky.
One of the amazing sunsets over the mountains. Shot from our hotel room window in the Bellagio.

Bellagio Fountains
Taken from the patio at Olives restaurant.