Las Vegas

Las Vegas, Nevada: Lazy morning at the parking lot/campground. Mary flew in around noon and Mom, Dad, DT and I took a taxi over to her hotel, The Venetian, to meet her. Steve, Kathy and Woody show up tomorrow.

Venice, "Vegas-style"

We walked around The Venetian - amazing, these huge new hotels. You can take a gondola ride through the hotel, complete with a singing gondolier! This photo is taken INDOORS - the ceilings are painted to make you feel you are outdoors and the sky lightens and darkens during the day! Plus, the “canal” is on the second floor of the hotel! Later, we walked down the strip for a while and caught a taxi to the New York, New York hotel where we had lunch at the Motown Cafe. Of course, it took us hours to do this - there is just too much to see and explore here at this "Disneyland for Adults". We dropped a few coins in slot machines, looked into shops and checked out all the details of the hotels and casinos. After lunch, we took a sky bridge over to the MGM Grand Casino. Here we looked at the pride of lionesses housed in the lobby! The big cats were gnawing away on HUGE rawhide bones (the same type I give my dog). The MGM also has three new cubs, and I must say - they were adorable! Here is a photo of me and Jimmy... this is probably as close as I will ever come to Jimmy Buffett... his concert is April 15th at the Garden Arena in the MGM Grand!

Jimmy and Me!

I hope you can see the "SOLD OUT" notice at the bottom of the poster! (Don't worry, don't worry - we have tickets!) Isn't he cute? I just love middle-aged, balding men (lucky for me, eh?). Mom and Dad are going to Kenny Rogers on Saturday night, while the rest of us go to Jimmy Buffett. (Lisa phoned and we told her "Grandma and Grandpa are going to Kenny Rogers on Saturday night." The poor child is so young; she thought we were sending her Grandparent's off to Kenny Rogers Roasters Restaurant for Grandma's birthday. Lisa had no idea Kenny Rogers was a singer!)
 
We also visited my favorite store in Las Vegas: The M&M Store. Now, you may ask, what is so exciting about M&M's??? Nothing - except at the M&M store in Vegas, you can buy M&M's in about 30 colors! Pink, purple, light blue, silver, gold, white, black, grey and any other color you can dream up! I bought a bunch of blue and gold (for The George Washington University) and had them shipped to our poor starving daughter.  Oh, PLUS - they have peanut M&M's in the same colors now too! Double excitement! We rode the Monorail back towards the Bally Hotel, where we played the slots for a while and then decided to call it a day after finding ourselves back at the Paris Hotel.  I am very confused about how we actually ended up at Paris again... but... anyway, back to Goldie for a rest. I did not mention it, but... our Rest Stop Dawg is spending a few days in a nice kennel here in Vegas... I have given him a $20 per day allowance for the doggie slots... he is being pampered at Doggie Daycare so he does not have to spend his days locked in his crate in the motor home while his owners are out squandering his bone money.

Mom, Dad, DT and I met Mary at the new Mandalay Bay Hotel at 8 p.m. This hotel has a "Burma/Myanmar/Southeast Asian theme. Of course, it is fabulous. We saw huge salt-water aquariums and acres of lush tropical gardens - all in the middle of the desert! The new casino-hotels have tall ceilings and fabulous air conditioning systems, so the casinos are not smoky. We looked at the restaurants and finally settled on a Mexican restaurant at the farthest edge of the hotel.  We don't know if Mexican food just sounded good after reading the menus at the half-dozen or so Asian restaurants, or we were hungry and too tired to walk back from the edges of the earth to eat. We tasted a few interesting menu choices: stuffed plantain empanadas, green chili and cheese quesadillas, and corn tamales... everyone had nice meals and margaritas, etc. After dinner, we went to the casino in the hotel.

The Mandalay Bay Casino was quite happy to give their money to us! DT and I played Blackjack, while Mom and Mary were playing the slot machines. Dad walked back and forth between us, reporting on everyone's progress. It was getting late though and we were ready to go... when... we couldn't find Mom! Keeping Mary in the chosen rendezvous point (she was waiting for the cashier-lady to come by and pay off her big winnings!) we headed out in search of Mom in the sea of slot machines at the Mandalay Bay Casino. Twenty minutes later, we all reported in: NO MOM! Dad was actually getting worried, so we all headed-out again. I finally found her in a far corner of the casino, seated next to a middle-aged man from Chicago. Seems she had sat down to play the slot machine next to him, and he started winning and insisted she stay so as to not ruin his luck! Back to the rendezvous point, re-gathering everyone around Mom, where we stayed a while longer, until Mom's new friend had finally won so much money ($1000) the machine was out of coins and a casino cashier was sent to pay him out. On the way home, we really teased Mom about her new boyfriend. We didn't get home until well after 1:00 am, but we had such a good time, laughing all night and coming home with fatter wallets too.