So my grand plan to spend the day sorting through and posting photos ... went about as well as my grand plan to get back on East Coast time immediately. At least this evening we saw a great movie and had a great dinner.
Speaking of great meals, our first meal in Las Vegas was lunch at the Burger Bar. Which was located basically in our hotel (well, in the mall on the walking bridge between our hotel and the next). And serves the best burgers I've ever had. Sorry, Shake Shack. Actually the burger at the Shake Shack is equally good, but smaller, and they don't have nearly as many options as the Burger Bar.
We stayed at Mandalay Bay, normally out of our price range, because we lucked out and two weeks ago got an email announcement that they had had a conference cancellation, and were discounting rooms. It was indeed a nice room. Comfy bed, two closets, a couch and chair, great view, an iPod player, flat screen TV, a compartmentalized bathroom so one person can wash their face while the other... you know.
The only thing wrong with the room was the noisy people in the adjoining room. Who seemed to delight in standing right next to the door between our two rooms, shouting at each other as if they were a football field apart. We could have asked the hotel to move us, and if I had known the noisy people would be there for our entire stay, we would have. Oh well! Their schedules didn't overlap that much with ours so it wasn't too much of a problem. A couple of times when I woke up in the middle of the night from jet lag, they were just coming in from .. wherever it is loud people go late at night on vacation. And once I was reading and wanted to listen to music, but had to put in earplugs to block the noisy people. Pretty minor inconvenience.
We barely gambled on this trip. I lost exact count but definitely spent less than $20 in five days. For my money I got hours of entertainment and several drinks. Seemed like a good bargain to me. The introduction of penny slot machines makes it all so much easier for my gambling-averse sensibilities.
A wise person once advised me that if your goal with gambling is to win, you should stop immediately. I hate risking money so that made perfect sense to me. My goal on slot machines is to entertain myself for as small a budget as possible. I used to play nickel slots and slow the process down by cashing out after every win, keeping my entire stake in the tray, and feeding the coins in for every single spin. Now the casinos have thwarted my strategy by removing cash slot machines. It's all done with a ticket and it goes much faster when you can't drop in the coins each time. Which I'm sure was their goal. I still come out ahead on penny slots, because it costs five times less per spin, and isn't five times faster.
Leave a comment