Weekend Recap

Time for another recap!

On Saturday Richard and I left for Vegas~ to catch the tail end of the CES Show... in otherwords the last few hours of the show where you run around like mad making offers on the display/sample models.

We flew in around noon on Saturday and went straight to the Bellagio to check in. Unfortunately since the hotel was practically sold out we didn't get our room upgrade as entitled to us if available since I booked the vacation through American Express Platinum Travel. We did, however, get 4 vouchers for breakfast (which turned out well in the end since it was worth $12 each at the patisserie! Yum!) and 2 Spa passes (which we didn't use).

We spent the first day at CES admiring the bigger booths like Samsung (geeeez...), Sony, and other home theater booths. A lot of the electronics are gadgets that I've been keeping up with online so there wasn't anything new and extraordinary, really. The highlight of my day was playing with Sony's two aibos... cuddling, playing fetch... petting.. I gotta get Lulu one of these.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel and walked around the Bellagio shops. A lot of the stores were having sales (yay!) so I made a mental note of "maybe's"... which is my mental list of "things to buy" that I usually make the first day of a vacation in case I don't find anything else the rest of the trip then I can always come back to make these purchases. :) Yes~ shopping is complicated for me.

Then we had dinner with a few friends at the Crustacean @ Aladdin. I was surprised to find that the garlic noodles were actually better in Vegas than in Beverly Hills. Also had the crab out of the shell for the first time which at first didn't seem too appetizing but it was pretty good. Like a lump of crab cake.

After dinner we took a cab to the Mirage and watched Jay Leno perform. Unfortunately Jay performed the same act so it was a waste of $100 per seat but it was still entertaining. Right before Leno came out to perform was my low point of the day, sitting through a long set of Frank Sinatra songs sung by Brian Evans. Don't get me wrong, I love Sinatra... just not Brian Evans.

Back at the Bellagio I tried my luck on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine... went in with $20 and 5 minutes later scored $175. Not bad. :D Then we went back to the room and I took advantage of the hot tub (and one of my Lush bath bombs). Then I fell asleep.

On Sunday, Richard and I had pastries at the Palio Cafe in Bellagio (using the aforementioned vouchers, thanks Amex!) then headed off to CES. This time around we concentrated on the Korean LCD booths, to hunt down a good deal. I scored a 27" LCD flat panel TV that I'm going to give to my parents as a belated Christmas gift. It was seriously, seriously cheap.

After a long 4 hours of waiting for the TV to be ready for pick-up, Richard and I headed over to the MGM Grand to watch a preview of Cirque du Soleil's new show "KA!" I can't even put into words how amazing this show was. The only other Cirque show I've seen was Mystere (which of course is 10 years old) so I guess I didn't have a good basis of comparison but this show was pretty freaking spectacular. The set design was ingenious and the storyline was perfect for all of the special effects and I don't want to ruin anything. Just go watch it. Don't look it up, don't read about it, just go and watch it. Seriously. And make sure you sit within the first 10 rows so you can see up close just how amazing the costumes, make up and acting is. Wow.

After the show we headed to Caesar's Palace for dinner. I got a sneak peek at the new renovations (including spiraling escalators!) but Richard didn't let me shop~ instead we went straight to Joe's Seafood & Steak for the best Dover Sole I've ever eaten, again, seriously. I love, love, love dover sole but this time it was served perfect, just pan seared, fileted at the table, then served with lemon drawn butter. It was fresh, the texture was perfect and auuughhh it was just perfect. I also had stone crab claws for the first time which was very good also. Yum. The original Joe's is a place out in Florida which specializes in Stone Crab Claws.

Okay... After dinner we had 10 minutes left for shopping (yes, it was a conspiracy. Richard timed it so by the time we were done with dinner all the shops were about to close... GRR!!!) We had exactly enough time for me to check out the new Juicy Couture store @ the Forum. It was actually very weird to step into a juicy store... everything from the tables, to the wallpaper, and even to the graphically printed mirrors were incredibly juicy. Stepping in you can't help but feel overwhelmed, to the point where halfway through the store I was pretty sick of Juicy clothing.

Then back to the Bellagio it was, where I decided to try my luck again at the Wheel of Fortune slots and sip through a yummy pina colada (they make them best at the Bellagio you know, virgin) Unfortunately this time I was on a losing streak... but I had to stay at the machine in order to receive my "free" pina colada so that brought me to a total loss of $35 (grrr!) and the girl forgot to make my drink a virgin. (double grrr!)

Originally I reserved Monday for an entire day of shopping. Unfortunately I only got about 3 hours. (Again, conspiracy, Richard.) We woke up late and had a quick breakfast (actually, lunch) at the Palio Cafe. Then we headed over to Fashion Show mall to check out Neiman Marcus. They supposedly spent $1.9 billion & 4 years to do a mall-wide renovation but it looked the same to me. The sale at NM sucked~ even the Seven Jeans were more expensive than NM.com... but I did score a Juicy cord jacket that I'd been eyeing for a while. (I had to avoid having to go back to that awful Juicy store). Then we walked over to Caesar's Forum for more shopping... it was cool to see the new stores that popped up... Chrome Hearts ($650 for a lighter??? uhmm...), Nanette Lepore, Scoop NYC, Agent Provocateur, Kiehl's.... lotsa new shops. Well, cos of my lack of purchases I had to resort back to my "mental notes" and I picked up a pair of killer pumps on sale at Prada and some cool shades.

After we checked out we had a hearty meal at the Bellagio Buffet. We're talking 2 straight hours of eating. I've never had a buffet better than the one at the Bellagio! It never fails to satisfy. Even after eating for 2 hours we still had a few hours to kill before our flight back so we walked around outside and caught a couple of showings of the Bellagio fountain. The fountains are the only "show" in Vegas that I can watch over and over again without getting bored!

Well, that concluded my trip to Vegas. I don't think I'll be going back for a while, not before the Wynn resort opens at least!