More Las Vegas

Now that a couple of weeks have passed since our involuntarily extended Vegas Vacation, some more things have occurred to me. I don't know if any of the people (if any) who read this will be traveling to Vegas, but I'll throw in these observations.

First, some annoying things: The Strip has always been infested by guys who seem to earn their living handing out brochures for what are essentially poorly disguised prostitution operations. There seem to be less of them now or perhaps they are becoming more discreet. Time was if you were a male walking the Strip with a female and clearly a couple, these clowns would still try to press these massage parlor etc. ads into your hand. This seems to have pretty much stopped. They may have finally figured out that handing a flyer to the male half of a couple is a waste - even if the guy were secretly interested, his only option would still be to discard the thing in front of his female companion or face some serious questions.

While being part of a couple now seems to discourage the hooker brochures, it is definitely a liability when dealing with another, and in some ways more annoying scourge of Vegas: the time-share bandidos. Every hotel and casino we went to of any size had people who would come up to you and ask you things like "are you enjoying your stay?" or "where are you folks from?" and other seemingly innocuous questions, all of which are a lead in to get you to come and listen to a time share sales pitch somewhere. Now I have heard that in some cases if you are willing to sit through the pitch and resist the salesmanship 101 that you are subjected to, you can get some freebies. Personally, I have never thought it to be worth it and since I have no intention ever of buying a time share, I find the initial approaches by these people to be nothing but annoying. In fact I think they are more annoying than the hooker brochures. At least the hooker guys don't try to be your friend and engage you in pleasant conversation.

These turkeys seem to be everywhere, from a top of the line hotel like the Venetian to the seedy casinos on Fremont Street. However, there is a secret to avoiding them, discovered by Michelle: don't let these people know you are a couple. Whenever we crossed the lobby in the Luxor and came near the time-share booth, we stayed twenty feet apart and pretended we didn't know each other. It worked like a charm. They are only interested in couples for their pitch so "single" people are ignored.

Now for some not so annoying things. Namely some good places to eat in Vegas. The best food for the money we found was in our new favorite restaurant- a tapas bar called "Firefly". They had awesome tapas including these amazing stuffed dates and "sliders" (essentially White Castle sized hamburgers) made from filet mignon and a whole lot more washed down with Estrella Galicia Spanish beer - mmm. It's located on Paradise Road, just west of the Strip between Flamingo and Sahara. Worth driving to or cabbing if you don't have a car. Another favorite is "Roy's" which is not far away on Flamingo. "Roy" is Roy Yamaguchi who became famous in Hawaii for his Pacific Rim fusion seafood. If that sounds too elitist or something let's just say he does some kick-ass fish. And it's priced for about half of what you pay for similar food in one of the fancy in-casino restaurants on the Strip. Other recommendations: a good breakfast buffet at the Treasure Island - also the "Kahunaville" coffee shop in TI, also, they have good, cheap and plentiful, food in the coffee shop at "Terribles" Casino on Flamingo. New York New York has a fake "streets of New York" area adjacent to their casino which has lots of places to wander and nosh. Other places include "Bahama Breeze" and "McCormick and Schmicks" on Flamingo - both chains but decent food at reasonable prices.

Oh, and one final thing: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas - except for the buffets - they go home on your waistline.

The Accidental Blogger

So anyway, I just set out to post a snide comment on my niece and nephew's blog and Blogspot led me down some sort of twisted path which resulted in my having my own blog. Hmmm. Well, I suppose I could rant about George W.Bush etc. etc. but some huge percentage of the people on line seem to have that covered, so instead I'll rant about airlines in general and Continental in particular. Namely how last weekend (St. Patty's Day actually) Continental stranded Michelle and me in Las Vegas by cancelling our flight to Newark and informing us that they could get us home by Wednesday or possibly Thursday. The annoying thing was that while they said the problem was weather related - and the NY airports were closed Friday and part of Saturday due to a snow/ice storm- our flight wasn't supposed to get to Newark until 9:30 PM Saturday and Newark Airport had opened at noon (needless to say the weather on the Vegas end was perfect). I suspect that the problem in such a case really lies with a lack of back up planes, crews etc. In other words, there is a lack of depth in the airline industry's ability to deal with these situations that causes a one day airport closure to result in a cascading series of flight cancellations that can stretch over days. I'm sure the whole thing has to do with saving money (for the airlines) but the public ends up paying the bill.

Now, granted, there are far worse places to be stranded than Vegas, but it cost us a bunch more money and Michelle two extra vacation days that she had not planned on and couldn't afford to give up. We had to scramble to find another room for three nights since we had already checked out of the Venetian where we had been staying -the Venetian has amazing rooms and a good location but they're not cheap and to stay Sat. night would have been outrageously expensive. Thanks to a call to my sister-in-law in Florida and some fancy footwork by her on the computer, we got a room at the Luxor in the pyramid. Well, I always wanted to stay there, and it was kind of neat to ride an elevator that went sideways, but frankly, the place is not what it used to be.

The upside was that we got to spend St. Patrick's Day night listening to Irish music while playing Blackjack machines outside the fake Irish pub at New York, New York. Since they were charging $25.00 a head cover charge just to get in the pub that night, I think it was less expensive to sit and slowly lose money in the machine. Did I mention that there are walkways from the Luxor to both the Mandalay Bay and the Excalibur? From the Excalibur there is a pedestrian bridge across Tropicana avenue to NY, NY. So anyway that's how we ended up there on St. Patty's day.

We also had to extend the rental car for another four days, but we did get a break in that the weekly rate then kicked in and it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

To add insult to injury, the losing streak we were both on during the time we planned to be in Vegas, continued for our unplanned stay. Yeah, I know we could have stopped gambling, but, c'mon, it's Vegas. What else is there to do?

Well, thanks to some more fancy footwork by Michelle we were finally able to get back home on Tuesday - but the only flight we could get was into LaGuardia via Cleveland. When we changed flights in Cleveland we saw stacks of cots piled in the Continental Terminal where people had obviously spent the weekend (like I say, worse places than Vegas). Fortunately, thanks again to my sister-in-law, we got a limo service to pick us up at LaGuardia and take us to where our vehicle was parked at Newark Airport.

Anyhow, I guess I've bitched enough for my first blog post.