Las Vegas - Baby! (and homeward bound)

After spending more time at Arches National Park, and visiting Canyonlands NP, we drove all the way from Southern Utah to Las Vegas, and arrived late that night at the Luxor hotel. Despite our request for a non-smoking room, we were given a smoking room because that was all they had left, and to add insult to injury, they gave us a room on the first floor...next to the slot machines.

They were kind enough to move us up to a non-smoking room on the 20th floor the next morning (and to charge us $2 a day for the telephone...not because we used it, but because we had the privilege of HAVING it in our room. Corey won the argument with the front desk lady over that one. To say the least, Luxor is not our favorite hotel on this trip).

Here is a picture of the inside on our non-smoking room at Luxor...in case you haven't seen it, Luxor is the hotel shaped like a big black pyramid with a spotlight that shoots the brightest beam of light in the world. This explains the weird slanted wall our window is on.



After eating a heartily enjoyed lunch at In-n-Out, we spent the rest of the day walking a bit of the strip, shopping for new sunglasses for Corey, and napping. We then ate dinner at the Bayside Buffet at the Mandalay Bay hotel. It was excellent for $27, and they had both hot steamed snow crab legs and chilled king crab legs. As my lab-mates (and now Corey) knows, I don't waste my time on "entrees"...I ate crab, and only crab, rounding off my meal with a fit of dessert-mania, so much so that the guy manning the dessert station commented to me "Back for some more huh?". This comment was not appreciated, but failed in deterring me from my mission- tiramisu and cheesecake. Oh, and in case my lab-mates were wondering...there was no "incident" with the waiter this time.

After dinner, we walked to the Bellagio to see Cirque du Soleil "O". I had seen it once before, but Corey hadn't. Like the first time, it was wonderful. There are just too many amazing things going on at once, it's like your brain can't keep up.

Here is a picture of the Bellagio lobby with the beautiful Chihuly glass flowers, and a picture of the Eiffel tower at the Paris hotel.



The next morning, we woke up early, checked out of our hotel, and ate at Le Village Buffet at the Paris hotel. For $15 you get made-to-order crepes and omelets, all the breakfast fixin's including eggs benedict and an assortment of sausages, pancakes, waffles, and pastries.

While I filled out a postcard to send to my old lab, Corey did our one bit of gambling our whole time in Vegas- he started with $1 at the nickel slots, and ended up with $2. How many people can say that they doubled their money in Vegas? Y'all can see where our priorities are.

We drove the whole day and past sunset to arrive in Alamo, CA where my mom had dinner waiting for us as we walked through the door. It is good to be home.




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