Viva Las Vegas!

We arrived in Las Vegas muddy, wet and tired.

Since parking was via valet, we pulled out the stuff we needed from the back seat of the car (where most of our bags ended up when we searched the trunk for rope during the flash flood incident). With our bags in hand, we proceeded to the hotel lobby.

With our clothes covered in mud, we went to check-in at the hotel. After some negotiation to make sure we got the promised (at the time of booking) $75 food and beverage voucher, internet access and an extra cot to accompany the two queen beds, we proceeded to the elevators that would take us to our room. This involved walking through the middle of the hotel casino, where well-dressed patrons were busy parting with their money. It must have been quite a contrast to see the three of us, dirty and wet and carrying much luggage, going through the fancy casino area.

Our room was on the 22nd floor and was very nice. It was spacious and offered a large bathroom, a bigscreen tv, a fridge stocked with very expensive snacks and beverages and a table ideal for playing card games. The room had large windows allowing us to overlook the hotel pool, some roofs of lower buildings and several other hotels off the strip:

After cleaning ourselves up and changing clothes, we went downstairs to hopefully grab some dinner, as we had not yet eaten that evening. We wandered round and round, checking out the half-a-dozen or so restaurants within the hotel-casino resort. As it was already quite late, many of these - particularly the less luxurious ones - were closed already. Frustrated, we decided to look elsewhere for food. We walked down the strip for some distance, but found nothing of interest and were getting increasingly annoyed at being solicited by strip club promoters at every corner, so we decided to turn back, though we took the other side of the street.

At some point, we were diverted by a man wearing construction-worker clothing to go inside, instead of continuing on the sidewalk, presumably because of the flood. It is still not clear whether his goal was to look out for our safety, or to just get people into the casino. We walked through various twisty passages and halls that made up the casino of that hotel. In many ways, it was very similar, yet in other ways quite different to the casino of our hotel. The difference, in a word, was that hotel was just grungy, whereas ours was fancier - and this reflected both in the setting and in the clientele. Finally, we managed to get out of it and back onto the street. We saw a neon sign for $1.99 foot-long hot dogs - and since we had been looking for food for a while now, as well as being enticed by the novelty of foot-long hot dogs, we decided to try them out. They were everything one would expect - although again, as one would expect, they were not filling enough to substitute for dinner, so we ended up having another meal shortly after at a Denny's we found just beyond the food court with the hot dogs.

The next morning, we woke up a bit late and went to have breakfast at one of the restaurants downstairs. The service was very slow and it was much pricier to what we were used to - though that meal ended up being covered by the food and beverage credit, so at least it was "free". Next was a trip to Caesar's Forum mall to get a new pair of shoes for Chris, whose running shoes got ruined by the flash flood mud.

The mall, which was connected to the Caesar's Palace hotel next door also shared its decor. Roman-style statues and architecture filled the mall and fake-sky ceilings added to the illusionary setting.

Afterwards, we looked at the various shows that were available. Tak decided to see the Cirque du Soleil's performance of the Beatles' LOVE, while Chris and I decided to see the David Copperfield show instead. We bought the tickets at a discount from one of the Tix4Tonight booths.

After acquiring the tickets for later that night, we had some time to waste. We decided to check out the casino downstairs. Tak tried his hand at Texas Hold'em Poker against the dealer, while Chris and I explored some of the slot machines. Both efforts were unsuccessful from a financial point of view.

With our wallets slightly lighter, we decided to leave the casino behind and walk down the strip to a 7-11 to satisfy a craving for some fresh fruits, which turned out to be a longer walk than what we expected. Each street crossing involved using an overpass, where the escalators weren't working (likely due to the previous night's flood). After getting our fix of fruits at the 7-11, with the clerk being quite surprised that our purchase did not involve any alcohol or cigarettes, we decided to take up an offer from Tix4Tonight to eat at a buffet at the Monte-Carlo for half-off (12.99 per person vs. 25.99 normally.)

The buffet hit the spot and it was time for us to split, with Tak heading back to our hotel, where his Beatles show was playing, while Chris and I stayed in the area as the MGM hotel where David Copperfield was performing was nearby. I will end this post with an account of the David Copperfield show and our journey back to the Mirage hotel and Tak's next post will go from there, starting with the show he saw.

Quite frankly, our expectations of David Copperfield weren't too high. We knew his reputation and were familiar with the amazing feats he's done in the past, but we also read some reviews of the show on yelp that complained that half his show was just videos introducing him and showing some of his past performances, rather than live ones. The show we saw ended up nothing like that - David Copperfield performed every act live and they were all amazing, delighting and bewildered us one after another. Not only that, but parts of his show were also quite funny.

He performed over a dozen acts - ranging from small tricks such as picking out a card chosen by an audience member and transforming a piece of paper into a live butterfly, to more grandiose tricks such as making a car appear out of nowhere and making a dozen members of the audience disappear. Even his "simpler" tricks were given some special treatment - for example, the card trick involved a live scorpion picking out the card. Other tricks involved "time travel" or other fancy predictions - such as a one where he picked random members of the audience (by throwing balls into the audience), to choose random numbers ... which were then found locked up in boxes and printed on metal license plates.

In one trick, he incorporated technology - asking members of the audience with smart phones to send an email at the beginning of the show. In the act, after a light show, he announced he had travelled to the future and brought a poster to the past, hanging it up face-away from the audience. Then, a member of the audience picked randomly was asked to answer some personal questions. The audience was told to check that they received an email, but to not yet open it. Finally, the selected person had to choose a  celebrity who was deceased - Michael Jackson was the choice. David Copperfield turned over the poster and asked everyone to open their e-mails. Sure enough, the poster had a picture of Michael Jackson, which also contained the story from the random audience member and the email message also contained a picture of this poster. (Mind you, being savvy with technology, the e-mail part of the trick did not fool me. Still, the whole thing was quite impressive.) I don't think I can give the show enough justice in this post, so I'll leave it here and say that the show was just amazing and I would highly recommend it, if you have a chance to go see it!

Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel to re-unite with Tak. Along the way, we decided to walk through some of the other hotels on the way, such as the Excalibur (a castle-shaped hotel), NY NY Hotel (shaped like the New York City skyline), Monte Carlo, Bellagio and Caesar's Palace - the last two being quite fancy.