What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But how interesting is that? Bah! So here are the facts about what happened in Las Vegas, more or less, pretty much, you know what I mean. And don’t panic, the Grand Canyon part of the trip will be in the next post. And pictures will be here one of these days too.

We flew Our plane flew out of Sacramento fairly early on the morning of the 10th. It was a short and uneventful flight. Our friends Larry and Robin picked us up at the airport. What were they doing there, you ask? Well, since you asked, they were driving a van across country for a relative and hooked up with us for the 4-5 days of this trip. After the warm and fuzzy “hi good to see you” part, we headed to the Original Pancake House (inside a casino of course) for a enormous hearty breakfast. Then after we gambled there for a little while, we headed to the Riviera Casino to pick up our tickets to tonight’s show. We’ll get to that in a few. But now it was time to check into the Worldmark, our hotel for the next two nights. It was a nice, roomy place with two bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen. Of course by then we were hungry again. 😉

So we went to Komol Thai Restaurant, where we had gone on our previous Vegas trip. And it was good this time too. Then it was back to the Riviera for the show, An Evening At La Cage. Yeah, men dressed as famous women: Cher, Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, Celine Dion, and many more. Drag Queens galore. It was wild and a lot of fun with ribald humor and right-on performances. The Joan Rivers (almost) emcee was funny and rude and the show moved fast. We enjoyed it and it didn’t hurt that Petra had gotten us discount tickets too. Afterwards, we gambled for a while and then headed back to the hotel. All of us had burning eyes from the heavy smoke in the casinos. Why do people still smoke anyway? Oh well, it was back to the hotel for some visiting and a night’s rest. In that order of course.

The next day (the 11th) was a really full day. If you only have one full day in Vegas you gotta make the best of it. It helped that we had been there in 2007 and had seen a lot of the tourist stuff. So today we went to Terrible’s (really, that is the real name) for breakfast. Larry and Robin had coupons for a free brunch and, well, you gotta eat! Nicely stuffed, we headed over to Planet Hollywood to pick up the tickets for tonight’s show. Then we headed down the strip to Harrah’s for another show, Mac King’s Comedy and Magic Show. I’m telling you, if you go to Vegas and want to see a good show for a decent price, then see this one. It was great. He is funny and clever and the magic ranges from very good to doing the impossible. Some of the tricks were awesome, you will not believe what you see.

After that, we walked down the strip a bit and ducked into Bill’s Casino, another smoky den of iniquity. We gambed for a bit and took advantage of the free drinks that were offered every time we turned around. Luckily we weren’t turning too quickly! Then it was back to Planet Hollywood for the evening’s show, the Fab Four Live. This show is a Beatles tribute show, and they do a very good job of being The Beatles. Since I’ll never get to see the real Beatles (obviously), this was at least kind of close. After that, we each got a huge frozen drink. It was so cold, it took forever to drink. But we managed because we like a challenge. And challenges must make us hungry too because next we went to the Rio Casino and had some Asian food at Mah Jongs. We also took in the Show In The Sky there, which was free and entertaining.

We gambled for a little while. I mean, it IS Vegas after all. Larry and Robin actually watched a guy lose ten thousand dollars in about ten minutes. We don’t play that. On the way back, we picked up a few groceries for the morning and tomorrow’s trip to the Grand Canyon. More about that soon…