While I loved Vegas it is good to be home and the weather here isn't so bad at 26C. Landed at midnight and by the time I got through customs and in a cab I was home by 1:30am.
Let me start with a little recap of Vegas.
This is a picture of me and P in our white outfits on his birthday.
Thursday:
All my flights were on time and great. When I got to my Vancouver gate I thought I had walked into a Lululemon convention and it turns out there were a couple of Lululemon employees coming back from some sort of conference.
Met P at the airport in Vegas as our planes pretty much came in at the same time. Checked in at Caesars Palace and upgraded to a bigger room for an extra $40 per night. Then we headed over to Margaritaville where I had the taco salad and Havanas Bananas (kind of a banana pin colada). We split a key lime pie that was superb. Then it was off to Ben Shermann where P shopped his little heart out. I wandered around the Miracle Mile Shops in search of a white skirt but no luck. I did discover the Mounds chocolate bar and fell in love. Thank goodness it's not available in Canada or I'd have a problem.
We tried to get tickets to Donnie and Marie but discovered all the performances for the week were cancelled.
Friday:
We had breakfast at McDs where I tried the fruit smoothie (not bad) then we went to the Liberace Museum. I found this a wee depressing. Liberace was obviously full of life, glitz and glam. The museum while trying to maintain his legacy came off as tired. The pianos, cars and costumes are pretty amazing but not kept well. The clothes are faded and the piano keys are yellow.
We then headed to Target where spirits improved found a cheap pair of purple Converse runners for $29.99, and 100 SPF spray sunscreen and I bought a bag of individually wrapped Mounds (which I tossed in the garbage the next day as it's a total trigger food for me). P came across a white skirt which was perfect and $19. After all that we wandered over to Fashion Show Mall and shared a tostada pizza and piece of red velvet cake at California Pizza Kitchen.
We went to a tix4tonight booth to get tickets to something for Saturday. We found they had the best selection. We settled on Cirque's Viva Elvis. We took the cheapest tickets at $61, which would have been $99 if we bought it at Cirque's box office. We then went straight to Aria to hand in our Tix4Tonight tickets for the real tickets (which you have to do).
That night we went to Serendipity's for Oreo frozen hot chocolate, yummy but not worth $11. We then met some of P's twitter friends for drinks.
Saturday:
At around 1am we celebrated the arrival of P's birthday with Hello Kitty sparkling wine. It was alright but way better with ice.
After some hours of sleeping we decided to go the pool at around 10am. Almost every lawn chair was taken as we discovered locals get in free and anyone not staying in the hotel can pay to get in. That was a bit disappointing as it looked like people ran down to the pool to claim a chair and then went off. We looked into renting a smaller cabana and they only rent for full days on the weekend so that's $300 - we passed. We finally found two spots but it was way too hot to sit directly in the sun so we gave up after about half an hour.
We then went for brunch at Mesa Grill in Caesar's and I had the best scrambled eggs I've ever eaten I had the Scrambled Eggs Chiliquiles with Roasted Tomatillo Sauce...sooo amazingly good. P had the Spicy Scrambled Eggs and said it was the best meal he's ever eaten. We shared the toasted coconut cake which was pretty spectacular as well.
We explored at more of the strip and headed back to the hotel for a rest before we had to leave for the show.
We weren't really hungry for the rest of the day so we just grabbed some mixed nuts from the gift shop.
Viva Elvis was entertaining but not on my list of favourite Cirque du Soleil shows. There was far too much singing and dancing and not enough Cirque performances. It was a rather confusing show as so much was going on at once. In the background a giant screen showing images of Elvis' life and there would 3 things happening on stage. You didn't know where to look. By far my favourite is still "O" and I'd really like to see KA.
After the show we headed to the Caesar's food court and had Mexican food and then headed back to the room as we were both pretty tired.
Sunday:
As this was leaving day we dropped off our bags the bell desk and headed to Cheescake Cafe for brunch. We shared a caesar salad and piece of Oreo cheesecake. Then we went off to check out the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. It was neat but crowded with people.
After that we just wandered around and made our way back to Caesar's Palace for some gelato before I had to head to the Airport. Got to McCarran and disovered P's flight was leaving from Terminal 2 and mine from Terminal 1 so we said good bye there. I just read my book until I got on the plane home.
Overall the trip was fun, I seriously wondered if I was going to fit into the shorts I had planned to wear home after all the fabulous food and drink we had. I did and they weren't tight either. The 43C was rather uncomfortable as everytime we left an air conditioned casino and went outside it was like walking into an oven. I achieved my goal of not changing colour -Neutrogena spray 85 SPF rocks.
I keep forgetting I go back in March with different friends for another birthday. I've never been to Vegas in March so that will be interesting. I've been in January before and didn't care for it as it was a little too cool and all the pools are closed. That trip will be quite a bit different. P and I have been friends for almost 20 years. The March trip will be with the birthday girl (my co-worker), her best friend and her sister. There's talk of the 4 of us sharing a room. I'm not so onboard about that and might get my own room but that's many months away.
This morning I woke up at 7:30am on my own but had the alarm set for 8:00am just in case. Physical went well I was told to keep an eye on my heart murmur for any changes as apparently that can happen (I had never heard of that before) and to keep up the vitamins. My doctor said "At my age regular blood work is a good idea". Since I was there I just popped over to the lab to do the tests and get it over with. Then I went grocery shopping loaded up on fruit, veggies and lean protein. My scale and the doctor's scale show me that I gained about 3lbs in Vegas.
From this moment forward it's all about Operation Little Black Dress and goal by Christmas.
P and I had a lot of conversations about life. He's a little wigged out about turning 40 and I'm a little wigged out about facing the same in 2 years. We analyzed our lives and where we are now and where we want to be. I don't think either of us had felt more mortal until now.
I know for me my number one goal is goal weight as this is the shadow that's dogged me for far too long.
So vacation is over and now it's back to work.
Looking forward to catching up on what you all have been up to.
Hugs!!!
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