Got in last night late, plane was delayed an hour into San Jose so we were an hour later to Las Vegas. I think a lot of planes got delayed and all landed at the same time because the baggage claim was full of people and the wait for a taxi line was like Splash Mountain in July...long, looping on itself 4 times.
We are staying at the Embassy Suites again this year. If you read about last year's trip you'll recall that at first I booked us into a place that makes a Turkish Prison look cozy and we moved to Embassy the next day? This time I book us there from day one. Oh, and day 4 is free because I have enough Hilton Honors points. Good thing, I lost the equivalent of one day's stay at slots today.
Anyway, we've got a very nice room right outside of the 3rd floor bar. We got up just in time to grab breakfast before it shut down this morning, ate, stopped at the convienence store next to the hotel for Dayquil for Dawno who thinks she might be coming down with a bit of a cold and then walked a couple blocks to the Monorail station. The Monorail station has been adopted by Nextel. There's an actual Nextel store there. And a wireless lounge. Weird. First stop of the day was the Hilton to check out the day's Star Trek events. Nobody we were dying to see today. Saturday and Sunday we'll be coming back and one of those days we'll visit the merchendise floor.
I decided that today would be a shopping day. We hopped back on the Monorail (Glenn bought 3-day passes for us so we'll be travelling a lot via Monorail) and took it over to the Paris stop and hung a right at the Strip to Aladdin where they have a lovely shopping area. I bought two belts at the Brighton store. My shorts have belt loops and I like tucking in my shirts so I needed belts!
After that we crossed the street and went to Caesar's Forum shops and looked around. Didn't see anything I had to have there. At the Santa Fe shop, where we go every year since we found my turquose and gold (vs. silver which is pretty common) jewelry, I found a very nice Kokopelli paperweight for Glenn. Kokopelli is a symbol I've adopted since I was a flute player when I was younger. Glenn now collects his own Kokopelli stuff as well.
I was getting pretty hungry by the time we finished the Caesar's shops so it was back on the Monorail and back to the Hilton for lunch at Quark's. After that we did a bit of shopping in the Star Trek themed shops (if you're a DS9 fan then calling it the Promenade works, otherwise it's confusing so I spell it out). Didn't buy anything today but probably will before we go home. At least a bottle of Klingon Blood Wine.
Then it's back on the Monorail and time to see if there are any cars to be won. I'm able to get Glenn to sit down at the slots with me if there's a car as the ultimate jackpot. Last year there were cars everywhere. This year they're hard to find. We didn't win a car...yet. We decided to hit the MGM because last year we ran out $20 at the win a car machine for quite some time. Decided it'd be fun to do that again. They still have some win a car slots but not in the same place as before. Last year there was a piano bar, this year they've re-done the area and there are two large Poker rooms full of people playing no limit Texas Hold 'Em.
After losing more $ not winning a car I tell Glenn I think he'd be good at Black Jack (he's the math genius after all) and that I'll stake him. He takes me up on it and we find a table with the nicest gal dealing. Glenn plays my stake for over 2 hours. About midway through (and this is his first ever Black Jack game) he's up around $230. The cards went bad after that, though and he played out the stake till he went bust. I really enjoyed watching him play, the other people at the table were really nice as well. I think we'll give it another try tomorrow or Sunday.
After that we grab some McDonalds, get back on the Monorail and head over to the Imperial Palace stop because that's the last one on that end of the Strip and we want to go see the new Winn property. It's a bit of a walk, well past Treasure Island. It's very nice. No win a car slots there. I decided I didn't want to walk back to the Monorail so I paid for a cab to bring us back to the hotel and here we are.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's day at the con. Should be some interesting talks.
Posted by Dawno at August 12, 2005 10:29 PM