It’s good to be back after a one-year hiatus taken upon the
loss of VirtualTourist.com. My desire to
share the travels in Sin City have overcome my laziness in finding a new
blogging site – fingers crossed that Blogger lasts a little while!
Wednesday, November 14th
The annual trip was upon us, as was my annual ritual of
waking up at 3:30 in order to get to Milwaukee and secure my seat on a Southwest
flight at an ungodly hour. For the most
part, the fates were smiling on me. The snow
had cleared, and despite the very cold temps, we were going to depart on
time. Even with A29, I was able to get
an aisle seat in the exit row (good luck tidbit #1), and after a relatively painless
flight, was in Vegas and waiting for my bag.
It was the second one up the belt (good luck tidbit #2), and I was
quickly on my way to the rental car center.
Through Costco, we were getting a premium rental at a
reasonable rate from Budget, and I was given a choice of a Passat or
Avalon. I took the Avalon, and was signing
my life away when I thought I heard her say “Don’t leave a bunch of cash in the
car.” When I asked if that happens, she
commented about garbage (i.e. trash.) I
told her I thought she said cash, at which point she said someone DID leave
about $7,000 in a brown bag one time.
They returned it to the owner. She also saw fit to let me know that if the
car was stolen, and I still had days left on my rental, that I should give them
a call and they would bring me a new car.
I was rethinking my choice of cars at this time.
But, on I went, with a quick stop at Target for a case of
water and some generic Airborne. The
price rang up at $7.77 (good luck tidbit #3.)
With me flying high, I went over to Del Taco for a quick bite before the
real fun began.
And my good luck started to falter.
I wanted a couple of breakfast rolls (think mini-burritos)
and a soft drink. The guy at the counter
asked me how much I thought that would be since he didn’t usually do breakfast
and wasn’t sure he was getting it right.
I didn’t know, but I should have been clued in that something was wrong
when he quoted me a bill of $9. Still
being half asleep I guess, I paid and learned he ordered two full burritos for
me. I made it through one and a half,
and decided to move along to the first few stops.
While waiting for Greg, I decided to hit a few small local
places to get a slot card for my next wall display. The first stop was Eureka – a stand alone
machine-only place east of SLS. Right
away, security asked me if I needed help – so I asked for the bathroom. Then I made my way to the cage, where I
signed up for the card. The security guy
came over and told me to watch out for the cage lady, and she reciprocated. Naturally, I told them I was terrified that I
needed to watch out for everyone there.
But, I got my card and sat at a VP machine for a while. The credits fluctuated for a bit, but I was a
nickel ahead, so I went to bet my nickel and get back to even and promptly max
bet. Luckily, I won MOST of the bet
back, but it took several iterations to get back to even. I sheepishly cashed out (same cage lady), and
moved on.
Next goal was a Dotty’s, which are everywhere. Most are tiny, but I smartly had looked
online to find the biggest one and hopefully score a card. As I pulled up, I watched what appeared to be
some patrons having an expressive discussion at the front door while a couple
of hillbillies in a pickup gunned into the lot and rushed into the casino. It took a few minutes, but I finally landed
on safety vs the stupid card. Moved on…
The next stop was the Mardi Gras casino and hotel, near the
convention center. I walked in and
realized they had roughly two dozen machines.
However, once there, I was determined to get my card, so I strode over to
the one employee I could see, and he gave me the card and told me after $10, I
would get $15 of free play. I pumped
through my $10 quickly, and tried to count down the free play but got lost and
decided to cash out…at $10.20 (leaving $4.80 on the table.) Worse yet, all machines are hand-pay, so I
had to sit there like an idiot until he came over. He paid me my $10.20, then reset the machine
so I could get the remaining free play.
Needless to say, short of a jackpot, I was not going to have him come
over again.
Knowing that Greg was not a fan of a few other places I
needed the card from, I decided to knock them off the list. First up was the surely-once-it-was-a-glamorous-spot,
the Silver Nugget. I went in, and
learned their card machine was broken.
However, they were under common ownership with another fabulous place,
the Lucky Club. I drove over there,
however misunderstood Siri and turned to early and ended up going the wrong
way. No matter, I got back on track and
got the card. The final stop was Jerry’s
Nugget, where the prize for signing up for the card is a reusable grocery
bag. It was useful later in the trip.
With still an hour until Greg landed, I thought I might give
one of the PT’s to try. Like Dotty’s, PT’s
are sprinkled throughout the Valley, and they have a bonus of their own
beer. I found one near the airport,
waltzed in, and saw a very dark bar with absolutely nobody around…so I of
course hightailed it out of there and decided to just go back to the airport.
Finally, a good move on my part, as Greg was already landing. We waited for his bag (not second off the
plane) and went in search of a little lunch.
We landed on Habit Burger, a solid fast food option that is spreading a
little through the area. Good burger,
great tempura green beans. After that, a
quick stop at the local Total Wine to grab a few beers in case we weren’t
satisfied with our other options.
All this leading to our stop for the night – the Sunset
Station. Part of the choice was the
strategic location about 1.5 miles from the Henderson booze district. No line on a Wednesday afternoon – so we got
a room quickly and dumped our stuff.
Then it was time to hit the casino floor. Our first stop was multi-strike VP – a game I
enjoy playing but never seem to do well at.
The $20 buy-in went quick, but not so quick that the drink lady wasn’t
able to stop by a few times. Licking my wounds
and lips, I felt clearly the way to go on the next round was the Bierhaus
slots. But another fast $20 (with nary
enough time for a waitress to even think about coming by) was clearly an ugly trend
starting. We wandered the grounds some
more, and another stop brought more in losses, but at least another visit from
the waitress.
At this point, I begged Greg to let us head to the booze
district. After some discussion, we
agreed we’d visit one brewery and that would keep the driving safe. We chose Astronomy Aleworks, the new kid on
the block. The
proprietor is extremely friendly and engaged with us on a range of topics, but
is very excited and proud of the beer. He should be. I went with a flight of
four samples. All were very good, but the standouts were the Hawking Hazy Pale
Ale and the Mars Red.
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| Beer Flight at Astronomy |
We may have missed an entrance or two back to Sunset Station, but
we arrived safe and sound and hungry. We
had seen a place inside called the Oyster Bar, and decided to give it a whirl for
dinner. At the time, we were to seat
ourselves, but the only legitimated option was at the bar. Both of us went for the seafood etouffee. It was very good – rich and full of shrimp,
crab, and lobster. Feeling full, it was
time to call it a night.
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| Oyster Bar at Sunset Station |
Day one stats: Lost $45, 3
free drinks, 6 new beers, and 14,163 steps (6.3 miles)
Thursday, November 15th
After a day that I gorged myself, I had no option other than
to attempt to run – I headed out around 6:00 am with the intent of doing a few
laps around the property. I quickly
learned that a lap was around 1.25 miles, but happened to see a path that I
decided to take on lap 2. Unfortunately,
that path led me away from where I wanted to go, so I ended up doing a full
5K. Such is life.
For breakfast, we intended to grab a few quick snacks at
Wal-Mart, but the prices and selection were not as expected, so we backtracked
to a nearby Sprouts and I grabbed an apple, berries, and an Iced tea. The fruit was good, the tea stunk, but we
were soon on the road to downtown. We
parked in the big lot over by Main Street Station and agreed that Four Queens
would be a stop – I was hoping to hit a Silver Strike or two, while Greg had
heard of a lucky machine elsewhere in the building. My $20 buy-in burned out in record time for
downtown for me (I think I got a cherry twice to break up the monotony) while
Greg suffered a similar fate.
We wandered around a little more, but nothing struck our
fancy. We did find an interesting jerky
store in the Plaza – if you are ever looking for clam jerky in Vegas, this is
the place to be! To add one final insult
to injury, parking fees have jumped to $8 for our short time there.
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| Yeah...no. |
Next on the list was to grab a slot club card at the
Rampart. We had stopped by there many
moons ago, but decided to give it another shot (mainly so I could get the free
souvenir.) Tried my luck at a random slot,
and managed to only lose about half my buy in.
Lunch brought another beer-centric stop in Big Dog’s Draft
House, which has been in town for 25 years, but was yet to be visited by
us. We got a seat in the restaurant
side. Big Dog’s has five-beer flights,
and a substantial number of beers to choose from to fill them. I started with the nitro stout and Hefe, which
were both good, then progressed to the pumpkin ale (also good.) At the end, I finished with barrel aged doppelbock
and Belgian Dark ales – both were phenomenal.
In between drinks, I had the turkey burger patty melt, which was also good. The only bad thing was our waitress, who didn’t
seem to give a crap about anything. Ask
her a question about the beer – she doesn’t know. Ask about the onsite gaming, she doesn’t
know. T-shirt? Not her.
Still, not enough to dampen an awesome experience. I took my last sample and a half out to the
bar to work on them…and of course to get their slot card and play a little
video BJ while working on the beers. Finally,
a winning session – took in a cool $4.
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| Glorious! All five were solid. |
Rather than rush back to the strip, we went down the road to
Santa Fe Station and played a little more VP.
The drink lady found us, and apparently the booze from Sunset Station
was all up here – after two strong drinks, we wandered around a bit to get the
blood flowing. Unfortunately, the losses
piled up yet again - $20 more down the drain.
From that point, we made the long, sometimes slow, trek back to our home
base, Luxor.
On the way, though, we did take a side trip to the Gold
Coast. Always a favorite – we played a
few games here and scored one drink – only lost about $7 to do it.
By the time we got to Luxor, check-ins were in full swing,
and we missed the line where MLife MC holders could jump to the front. After a few minutes, we were on our way to
the East Tower. Having stayed already in
the pyramid, we paid a few extra bucks for what are supposed to be the newer,
better rooms. And they are – quite spacious
and still in good shape.
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| Tower room at the Luxor. |
For dinner, Greg had scored a two for one Groupon to the Paris
buffet, so off we went north. We checked
out a few places along the way, but ultimately it was time to eat again. While in line, we were behind an odd group of
guys who clearly were in town for something…and you could tell it was something
nerdy. Turns out the Final Fantasy
convention was in town! And yes, once that
was known, you could tell these guys were gamers. Yikes…
Dinner at Paris is always top notch – I spent a lot of time
at the carvery station (Prime rib and roast beef) and with the crab legs. While some of the other dishes were a bit of
a miss, I was soon stuffed to the gills and had to will myself through my second
dessert.
After another long day, we pretty much packed it in and
headed back to Luxor. Time for some rest
and regrouping…
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| The sweetest type of win at video BJ |
Day two stats: Lost $54, 3
free drinks, 6 new beers, and 24,521 steps (10.9 miles)
Time was starting to fly. After a decent night’s sleep, we started trekking north for the morning. The first destination was the local CVS where I grabbed an iced tea a Milky Way Midnight for breakfast. From there, we continued up to Cosmo. I got the new slot card, and we tried our hand at a few slots. I started strong on a Monopoly machine, but a screwdriver later, and I lost it back to The Price is Right.
Friday, November 16th
Time was starting to fly. After a decent night’s sleep, we started trekking north for the morning. The first destination was the local CVS where I grabbed an iced tea a Milky Way Midnight for breakfast. From there, we continued up to Cosmo. I got the new slot card, and we tried our hand at a few slots. I started strong on a Monopoly machine, but a screwdriver later, and I lost it back to The Price is Right.
The next stop was Bellagio.
Historically, we had parked ourselves at the video BJ and poker machines
near the drink station – to my horror, they are renovating our spot. We eventually did sit down…way out in the middle
of nothing. At this point, I popped my
Mlife card into the machine, knowing I had earned some free play from getting
the Mastercard. Lo and behold, I had
almost $250 worth sitting there! I
played my first $25 and won $22.
We picked up and moved through Caesars and cut across thru Harrah’s
to the Casino Royale. CR has been a fun
place over the years, and this day we sat down at a few older Monopoly machines. Luck was not on my side, as I gave back all
the Bellagio winnings…but did score another drink.
It was approaching lunch time, so we meandered through the shops
at the Venetian, but nothing exciting caught our eye. We ended up back at Harrah’s at the Fulton
Street Food Hall – a somewhat glorified food court. There are a number of selections (a burger
station, a sandwich station, salad bar, etc.)
Greg and I both ended up at the Tacos & Burritos station. I went with a burrito (think Chipotle-like). Although it was a bit pricier than your
standard fast casual place. Very filling,
and would have us prepared for the next part of the day.
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| Big ass burrito - $18 w/drink :( |
You guessed it, it was time for us to head back to the booze district. One of the breweries, Crafthaus, was tapping
a limited beer called Pie Time – a blonde ale with coffee, pecan, and bourbon
notes. They promised it would go
quickly, so we arrived a few minutes ahead of opening. No need to rush – we were third and fourth in
line when it opened. The beer was
excellent. Knowing that Crafthaus has a
Saturday tour, we decided to check out the third member of the neighborhood,
Bad Beat. We were the first ones in the
taproom for the day (as far as we could tell) and poured over the dozen beers
on tap. For my flight, I chose two of
the NE IPAs and their two barrel aged offerings (including a great
Marzen.) All four were awesome. Because I was taking them slow with a ride
back to the strip coming, poor Greg kept ordering and made it through at least
half the offerings. All very good stuff!
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| Pie Time! at Crafthaus |
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| Bad Beat flight - Excelllllent |
On the way back to the strip, we decided to detour at Green Valley
Ranch. We only played for a little
(enough to have the waitress stop by more than once – but we had to cut
ourselves off.) Then we made it back to
the Luxor to dump the car and walk over to Mandalay Bay.
I pumped a few dollars into a machine as we waited for our dinner
reservation to come up. One of our
MyVegas rewards choices for the year was a 2-for-1 at Lupo, a Wolfgang Puck joint. We were seated in the “outdoor” seating so we
could watch the world go by. I did make
one fatal mistake here and ordered a beer (I was planning on just sticking with
water, but choked at the last minute.) I
went with the Pappardelle Bolognese and a side of Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries…there
just wasn’t room for the beer. Food was
really good - glad we tried it.
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| Lupo food |
Afterwards, Greg showed me his spot in the Mandalay where it was
near a drink station and we did get a few drinks (unfortunately we hit the time
during a shift change, which hurt.) I
used a chunk more of free play and did decent with it. Stopped at Yogurt In on the walk back to
Luxor, where we played just a bit longer (and yes, got one more drink.) Boozed it up, needed to head to bed…
Day three stats: Won $76, 6
free drinks, 6 new beers (trend here) and 23,143 steps (10.2 miles)
Saturday, November 17th
Unbelievably, the trip was entering its final day. To keep on the exercise schedule, I got up
and took a run to the north up the strip.
Always fun to have drunk a-holes applauding you at 6:30 in the morning,
but hey…Vegas. I got back to the room
and we got ready to face the day.
Decided that a rerun of the CVS breakfast was in order, so that was our
first mission. Afterwards, we wandered
around Park MGM (formerly the Monte Carlo), but it’s in a pretty bad state of
disrepair right now. Not playing anything,
we moved on to NYNY and I sat down at a bank of older slots. Won most of the free play back.
We then returned to Luxor where we cashed in some free play from
the MyVegas app. I turned $25 into a
whopping $13 (Thank the Lord for free play on this trip.) And with that, we had killed enough time to
start back over to Crafthaus.
We waited patiently until 11:00, when we went into the brewery and
had a nice chat with the owner. She
talked a lot about the history of opening the brewpub and all the licensing and
zoning issues they had to face. We took
a walk around the brewery area, then were treated to a flight of four. While all were good, the Scotch ale (Lowlands Clan) was the clear standout – an excellent beer.
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| Crafthaus flight - Lowlands Clan on the right |
At that point it was lunchtime, and rather than head back to the
strip, we decided to give another try to Fatburger, a local fast casual burger
place. I went with the turkey burger and
fries. A couple of issues – the burger
was a bit on the dry side and the price is simply too high for what you
get. Habit Burger is heads and shoulders
above, with the mild exception that Fatburger offers better pop.
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| Good fries, meh burger for $15 |
I was ready to return back to Luxor, but Greg heroically reminded
me that Skyline now had a players club, and was just minutes away. We went over and they scanned my ID to create
my card – resulting in the biggest butchering of my name I’ve ever seen.
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| You don't even get points for trying when it's this bad |
For signing up, we got $5 in free play, and I was able to make $5
off of that, so success. Plus, next
time, I probably can sign up again.
We got back to the room, and Greg was itching for a nap. Catholic guilt hit me as we were a five-minute
walk from a church that had mass at that hour, so off I went. I stopped at a multi-play VP machine on the
way out and drew three twos on a deuces wild machine, so that win alone doubled
my free play buy in. A drink lady came by,
but I turned her down – almost blurting out something along the lines of “None for me, I’m going to church!” Yikes. Guilt struck again a little later as I walked
out of mass after communion, but I also felt a twinge of positive energy –
which we needed to take us through the home stretch.
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| Drawing three deuces - look at all those pennies! |
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| See, I really went. |
We walked back down to Cosmo so Greg could get his new card. We played slots for a bit, and I was doing
well – up about $15 (this was very dangerous for me to be playing my own money
after all.) A drink came by, and while
milking it, we moved over to another machine to get our cash out to round to an
even dollar amount. On my first spin, I
ended up with 48 free spins, which took my $15 win north of $50. I was practically begging for the drink lady
to come back, but they had switched shifts, so it took a while. Got the drink and cashed out and moved on.
We ended up back across the street at Planet Ho, where we parked
ourselves at the 50/100 play video poker.
We rode those for a while, losing a mere $7 on the way to three more
drinks. Then we decided it was time to
eat. Greg didn’t want anything big (nor
did I) – I tried steering us to the Village Street eateries in NYNY, but as
luck would have it, Zumanity let out right as we walked in. We walked past the food court in Excalibur
and decided to hone in on Tacos and Tequila at the Luxor. We both were expecting just to order a few
tacos, but it really was a full sit down Mexican restaurant. The food was good and we were in and out
relatively quickly (though the prices were a tad higher than I would have
expected.
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| I really just wanted two tacos. Really. |
I still had $60 of free play left, so we sat at a few slots, but
the last session was a bloodbath. I lost
half of the buy in very quickly, and cashed out what was left. Sadly, the trip was coming to a close – way
too fast for the first time in a while.
We never made it past the Venetian, so I definitely could have used at
least another half day. Oh well, guess
we’ll need to go back again.
Day four stats: Won $135, 5
free drinks, 6 new beers (the streak stays intact!) and 13,841 steps (6.1 miles
– weak after you consider 2.5 came during the morning run)
Epilogue – Sunday, November 18th
Got up at 4:00 for my 6:50 flight.
Greg had wisely convinced me to gas up before we got back to the hotel
the day before, but I got the car dropped off painlessly. TSA pre-check came through with a line of
just three people vs the regular line of at least 100 – the drug sniffing dogs
were out (something about a cannabis convention.) Got on board, and was blessed to have seat 12A waiting for me.
Final stats: Won $112, 17 free drinks, 24 new beers (woo-hoo!),
75,668 steps (33.5 miles)
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| Nothing finer than Southwest seat 12A |
