I love taking vacations, but the older I get the harder it is to recover from them! It seems the longer the time I go away and more deeply I "disconnect" from everything, the longer it takes to get reconnected with all the elements of my life. And now, I'm finally reconnecting with you! : )
Having a 3 hour time change and getting sick after coming back made this vacation hangover particularly grueling and lengthy. I think I got so sick partly because of the insane amount of smoking I got exposed to there. Everywhere we went there cigars and cigarettes being smoked. It was unbelievable how much smoking was going on there. I suppose there is a connection between gambling and smoking. But it was really bad. We couldn't even walk down the street, or wait for a shuttle bus, or even go to the spa or pool at our hotel without suddenly taking in a deep breaths of CIGAR smoke - never mind the cigarettes. It was like they were having some kind of cigar convention there (but they weren't) : )
We were so constantly bombarded with smoke that my lungs were killing me most of the time there. (I am forever grateful to be living in NJ where we finally got a statewide smoking ban passed. There is NO smoking allowed, at ALL, in any indoor facilities, and many outdoor areas as well. As a former smoker, I know how hard it is to quit, but it's a lot easier to quit when you don't have to breathe it in everywhere you go.)
We don't gamble, so I can't review the casinos except to say that they were EXTREMELY smoky, I actually had to cover my mouth to breathe a few times or hold my breath to walk through - because you HAVE to walk through them to get to the shows and the restaurants in most of the hotels on the strip.
OUR PHOTOS
Here are a couple Photo Albums we put up on Google's Picasa web. I don't spend a lot of time doing photo albums, but I wanted to learn this tool so that I could hopefully start sharing more photos (and videos) of my work. I just wish it didn't take up so much time. This is the EASIEST way to do it I've tried so far. I uploaded over 50 photos all at once with no problem. Added Captions in about 10 minutes. The MOST time consuming part was choosing the best photos and renaming the files.
Here is our Las Vegas album - over 50 views taken with my new Olympus Stylus FE-290 7MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom
You might especially like my strategy for not bringing home a lot of clutter...I took photos in the stores of most of the souvenirs I was tempted by! tee hee. I love just being able to see them and not having to find homes for them somewhere in the house.
p.s. Photos were resized and some were auto corrected with Microsoft Office 2003's Photo Manager. Love that for quick and dirty edits.
Here is our Leaving Las Vegas album showing some amazing aerial views from the plane.
TRIP HIGHLIGHTS
More nice things about Las Vegas: The weather was gorgeous! Sunny and in the low 70s every day. : )
RESTAURANTS
The food was amazing, I now understand why Top Chef did one of their seasons from Las Vegas. We had a beautiful traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Lawry's Prime Rib. FABULOUS. I wish there was a Lawry's in New York City.
We had a delicious but very expensive meal at the The Mix restaurant which is in the THE hotel at Mandalay Bay. We were seated on the outdoor balcony of the 64th Floor and the view of the city was stunning. Good thing we don't drink or the meal would have been really outrageous! It was fun, but the whole environment seemed rather pretentious to me.
Our overall favorite though was Wolfgang Puck's Postrio Cafe at St. Mark's Square in the Venetian Hotel. The food was 5 star, the service was just as fabulous and the atmosphere was far more relaxed and inviting.
Another favorite was the Harley Davidson Cafe. They have a bunch of REAL motorcycles on a track suspended from the ceiling that actually move all through the restaurant. It's like being in Disneyland. Check out their virtual ride through the restaurant and their photo gallery...way cool.
SHOWS
We enjoyed the shows, especially:
Mama Mia at the Mandalay - My FAVORITE!! Loved it. The ABBA music made be feel 17 again! I was actually 17 when Dancing Queen came out and I danced to it on my 17th birthday.
LOVE by Cirque de Soleil at the Mirage - It was a gorgeous show and the music was amazing. I've Cirque before and was expeciting more acrobatics, it has a little, but this show is NOT about the acrobatics...be forewarned : )
Blue Man Group at the Venetian - My husband LOVED this one best. I liked it, but it's really a guy's show. They spray the audience with colored paint and stuff like that. It got very gross at times - like when they squirt what looks like vomit out of their outfits and then eat it. eeewww. not my thing. But at times it was very insightful too. Overall, it's a fun show, glad I went, glad we didn't pay half price. : )
ICE at the Riviera by a skating acrobatics ensemble from Russia. It was nice, but DON'T pay full price. The stage is too small and is not in the round so they don't have room to do anything too spectacular, though from what they did do, it was clear they are very talented. One cool thing about the show was that they have a thin ice track that weaved through the audience so that they could skate through now and then.
The Fountains of Bellagio were my favorite. We saw several different shows set to various kinds of music. Check out my video clip of - the entire Singing in the Rain show below. I took this clip with my new Olympus Stylus FE-290 7MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom
BOTTOM LINE
I'm glad we went, but I would not go back. There are many more places I'd rather go, but I'm glad to have been there once in my life.
Well that's all for now. This post and getting all the photos and video clip together has taken nearly all day!
But meanwhile I was also playing with my early Christmas Gift, an HP iPaq PDA - it's basically a handheld mobile computer with enough features to compel me to try using an electronic calendar again! For one I can handwrite entries!!! It also allows me to connect to the internet and email via WI-FI and cell phone. Plus it's an MP3 Player, a note recorder and much more. I'll wrote more about that eventually : ) For now check it out on Amazon here - It has great reviews! HP iPAQ 111 Classic Handheld
Till the next time,
Welcome back! I've only been to Vegas once about 9 years ago so I'm sure it's changed a lot. I'd like to go back sometime. I enjoyed the shows and all the lights! I'd have to agree the smoke is bad though for sure.
Posted by: Laura | December 09, 2007 at 01:30 AM
DH and I LOVE Las Vegas and go about four times a year. Believe me, it's less smoky than it used to be before the new laws got passed.
Thanks for the scoop about "Love" at the Mirage. We've been on the fence about seeing it, since we have friends who didn't like it (some others did, though).
We're taking our annual Vegas Christmas trip next week. Can't wait!
Posted by: devil | December 10, 2007 at 02:23 PM
Thanks for the welcome back! Hard to imagine it even smokier! Sheesh!
LOve is great if you LOVE the music...it's more of a dance show & visual spectacle though, with a few acrobatic stunts thrown in one - our favorite was probably the skateboarders. Even the dancing though was not much more than you would see in any nightclub. It was good, it just didn't match up with the expectation I had of Cirque...and for the very high price of the tickets. Thanks for leaving me a note!
Posted by: Ariane Benefit, Neat & Simple Living | December 11, 2007 at 07:36 AM
Hi, could not find your "car" category, but I wanted to let you know about a neat new product. I am a writer who writes on all things automobiles, and I thought you would like to know about a product I recently incorporated into a recent article on Car Show Preparation I wrote, and it is about the Spectamax sticker holder. This is a box that you suction cup to your windshield and it holds 8 stickers that you would normally attach to your windshield. You can easily switch to whatever sticker you need to show at a particular time. As a judge for car shows, I judge based on appearance of the car, and an organized car scores more points. This includes stickers any kind, aftermarket, or OEM) and how they have been placed. The Spectamax sticker holder takes this out of my equation because the car owner can put the stickers away for the show. Not to mention the privacy concerns with showing all the spectators that you have a parking permit for "Lakeview Court" and allowing a thief to know where you keep the car.
Great site! Thanks~!
Posted by: Matt Tori | December 13, 2007 at 03:02 PM
I've been using an HP iPAQ h1940 since 2004. It has been VERY useful, but I sometimes miss my paper planner!
Posted by: Janet | December 18, 2007 at 05:36 PM
How fun! I hear ya about the smoke in Vegas - that was my least favorite thing about it there. But, like you said, the food it outstanding there! Glad you had a good time, and hope you are recovering from jet lag and "vacation lag". :)
Posted by: Brandie Kajino | December 19, 2007 at 03:05 AM