I get so MAD!

October 15th, 2008 at 06:21am Posted by Bill

Read part one
Read part two
Read part three
Read part four

After the show, we had dinner, checked out a few more casinos, gambled a bit more, then headed back to our suite to wind down.

Kathy woke me up about 6:00 AM the next morning, fully dressed, asking if I wanted to join her down on the casino floor. I politely declined (”Heck, no! Wake me back up at a decent hour!”)

She came back into the room and woke me up at the crack of 9:00, and I showered and got dressed. We had breakfast, then took a relaxing walk through the botanical garden at Ballagio’s conservatory. It was decorated with a display highlighting “Wonders of America” (or something like that.) We then walked through the Paris Las Vegas casino across the street.

We then drove to the Venetian hotel and took a ride on the gondolas through the canals. There are actually two separate gondola rides; one outside, and one inside the Grand Canal Shoppes. We decided to do the indoor ride.

Since the gondolas seat four, we shared ours with another couple. Our gondolier was very obviously faking his italian accent, but was still entertaining. At several points during our trip, he belted out some really loud, operatic songs that seemed to echo through the whole building. He was actually pretty good. He reminded us to kiss as we crossed under each bridge, which he explained is a romantic tradition in Venice, Italy. Is it really a tradition, or was he just playing up the whole “Look at me, I’m a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Italian gondolier” thing? I have no idea; I just know I got to kiss Kathy many, many times.

We also went to the top of the Stratosphere tower. There is an outdoor obervation deck at the very top, with several thrill rides. Just below that level is the indoor observation deck. The windows here are floor-to-ceiling, and they are angled in, so that you can lean out just a bit and see straight down through the glass to the ground 1000 feet below. Kathy doesn’t appreciate heights very much, so she stayed near the interior walls while I awed and got a bunch of pictures.

After that, we took in a Fountains at Bellagio performance, drove toward Hoover Dam (then turned right back around when we saw that traffic was stopped to a crawl with six miles left to the dam), then ate dinner downtown. We then wandered through the amazing Fremont Street Experience for a while. We watched speed painters, browsed a few booths, rocked to an amazing cover band, saw a couple drunk guys come this close to fighting, and then watched the show above us as the canopy of millions of LEDs lit up in animation.

The next morning, we returned the car, caught the shuttle to the airport, and flew back home.

I uploaded a bunch of photos to my flickr page. Go check them out!

Entry Filed under: Fun, Bill, Kathy