Las Vegas- Nov.29/07- Surreal.

Next post in progress. At this rate, I'll have the trip fully chronicled by its first anniversary.

Well, after a fitful sleep, we loaded up on Christmas blend and water from Starbuck's and slowly got moving. We both used Len's laptop to check e-mail and other important things.

Stupid Oilers pooped the bed in Colorado. Glad I missed it. Went down to Il Fornaio Panetteria for a croissant and more coffee, then decided to head over to Mandalay Bay to pick up the Mamma Mia tickets, hopefully avoiding undue pressure later in the day.

Walkway to Excalibur and the Luxor/Mandalay Bay tram.
Lynora not happy.

We wandered around for a while, deciding where to go for supper. Checked out the House of Blues, but it was definitely not hopping yet. Lynora took some wildly unflattering photos of me there which I refuse to post.

Got back to NYNY close to 11:00, so we opted to attempt an early lunch at Nine Fine Irishmen. It ended up being an enjoyably bizarre force-feeding. Our waitress was cute, pleasant, and inexplicably dressed in a micro-mini kilt, thigh-high garterless stockings, and a low-cut blouse that parts of her were almost falling out of. L- "The smoked turkey sandwich sounds good". It was ridiculously huge, so she made me take a picture.

That was taken after I had most of her fries on my plate. Me- "Ugh, I'm not very hungry, I'll just have the goat cheese salad". Waitress of the absurd-" OK. How about some calamari? Shepherd's Pie?" WTF? Our favourite server line: "All done? Coffee? Beer? Crème brûlée?" Comedy at 11:30 AM.

We took the monorail back up the Strip to do some more shopping at The Fashion Show mall.


It's an upscale and somewhat snooty place that didn't have too many stores we were actually interested in, but it did have a Macy's and a good electronics store. Lynora wanted to purchase another digital camera, so she asked a few questions and (rather quickly) decided on one to buy.
Of course, she needed a memory stick and a case, so we viewed a few and did a few demo shots. The goofy salesman exclaimed "It's boxy but good!"

Len and I looked at him quizzically, and he explained that it was a line from a movie and quickly You Tubed a clip for us.

He also went on about homoerotic subtext in "Top Gun", with the other employee chiming in- apparently they had been watching it earlier in the day. I think he had us pegged as somewhat hungover tourists and ran with it. Came out in conversation that we were Canadian, one from Edmonton, and proceeded to impress with hockey talk, whereupon Lynora let me take the reins. We spent an inordinate amount of time there, but it was too entertaining not to linger.

Not the most attractive subject for test-driving the new camera.

There were other purchases made in the mall, but none that provided as many laughs. Killed most of the afternoon quite handily. The usual meandering down (or is it up?) the Strip to and from Monorail stations is both mindlessly amusing and time-consuming.

Once again, back to the room for preening- did we maybe sneak in some more of the "Coupling" DVD? Then off to Mandalay Bay for dinner and a show. We ended up going to Lupo, and again, as it was early, spent no time waiting. The calamari (yes, we had to have some after the waitress at 9Fine mentioned it) was super- it was served with some sort of mint tzatsiki sauce that defied description. And the rustic bread with tapenade and white bean dip was incredible. the meal itself was nice and reasonably priced, but I'd have been good with the starters alone.

Off to the show! Mamma Mia starts slowly, but the second act is great. It's just cheesy enough to keep a stupid smile on your face all night. Somewhat anticlimactic after the splendour of Mystere, too bad the nights weren't reversed. But at least we looked good.



Those costumes kill me. Afterwards, back to the hotel. Lynora declined a nightcap, so I went down to the casino, grabbed a to go beer (Sam Adams Amber, another good one), and we sat in the room watching "Coupling". Damn that's a great show. Many fine phrases like "unflushable", "the giggle loop" and "the nudity barrier".