Las Vegas
Introduction
For my birthday present, Andrea took me on a trip to Las Vegas for four days and three nights. It was an absolute blast! While many people would go to Vegas just to gamble or see nudie shows, we actually got in quite a bit of sight seeing.
Monday, December 11 (Day 1)
We flew out of Mineta San Jose International Airport at about 9:30am and arrived at McCarran 
International Airport at about 10:40am. We flew on an Airbus A319, one of American Airlines’ newer planes. It was quite nice with the LCD for inflight movies and information. It was a very quick and enjoyable flight on American Airlines. One of the best advantages of flying out a weekday is that there are many seats open and you can practically sit anywhere (except for First Class, unless you pay the extra $50/per person seat upgrade).
We took a shuttle to the Luxor, the cost for two people for the trip was $15 and I left a $3 tip with the driver. The Luxor is practically right across from the airport, but walking is not really an option because the main entrance is located on the opposite side of the airport on Paradise Road. We were able to check-in and rested for a bit. We stayed in the West Tower in one of the Deluxe rooms. We decided to take a little brief tour of the Strip on foot (partly for exercise, but mainly because we didn’t have an obvious destination in mind so we couldn’t really take a taxi or public transportation).
The temperature in Las Vegas at this time of the year is borderline cold. It hovered around mid 50°F to low 60°F. Also keep this in mind when you’re going to Vegas, especially if you have dry skin, you will experience extreme drier skin because Las Vegas is a desert with a humidity of about 52%. In comparison, San Francisco has a humidity of about 72%. Both our skins were dry and cracking. Be sure to pack lots of lotion and drink lots of water.
We didn’t do too much traveling on this first day because we had the Cirque de Soleil: Ka show at 6pm, but we did make good ground.
I highly recommend the Cirque de Soleil: Ka show at the MGM Grand. We both thoroughly enjoyed the amazing acrobatic skills the performers have. Ka is a story about two young prince brothers who are separated after a warring neighbor country kills theirs mother, the Queen, and kidnaps one of the brothers. They go through a perilous journey to find each other while battling against the invading army who has learned to harness fire (or Ka). One of the most standout scenes is the hand puppets…it’s absolutely freakish how life-like it is. The set was incredible! Definitely worth watching. The show has the usual Cirque de Soleil intimacy, not having too many seats where the audience in the nosebleed section can’t make out the details of what’s going on. Another thing I was quite surprised with was that they didn’t super overcharge the beverages. For like $4, you get a 32oz collector’s cup with your choice of soda. Their water of choice: Fiji, also costing $4 for the large. They also have Roederer Estate Brut Champagne for $10.
Afterwards, we grabbed a late dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in the MGM Grand. Andrea and I shared the Leaping Lizzard Lettuce Wrap (which was quite good and somewhat similar to Cheesecake Factory’s Thai Lettuce Wrap) and a Caesar Salad.
Tuesday, December 12 (Day 2)
Started the morning off by trying to go workout, imagine our surprise when we learned that the fitness center at the Luxor was not included in our stay price… It was going to cost $20 per day or a one time fee of $45 for the week, no thank you. So we didn’t workout on day 2, but we did get in a lot of walking.
We decided to do some more exploring. We walked from the Luxor to the Bellagio. Saw the fountain show, quite amazing as always. It starts from 3pm to 7pm every 30 minutes until after 7pm where it starts every 15 minutes. We also walked around the Bellagio checking out the shops and the Christmas decorations. The Bellagio is quite nice! Saw the largest chocolate fountain.
We went over to Caesar’s Palace to check out the Forum shops and explore Caesar’s also. We went inside the Giorgio Armani boutique, Tiffany’s, and browsed Rolex watches. We had a light lunch, Caesar Salad, at the Augustus Cafe. The salad was decent, but the service sucked! If you go to a place and order only an appetizer, the waiter/waitress like write you off completely. We only got 1 water refill and it wasn’t even from our waiter. We also checked out their wedding chapels; quite nice.
We then went on to explore Paris briefly. We spent some time in Bally’s though on the top floor looking out. We saw Wynn tower from there.
Andrea wanted to see Cowboy Vic, so we figured we would utilize public transportation to get to Fremont Experience Blvd. It’s amazing how many local people we asked knew nothing about Cowboy Vic. It took a bit of time to find out that there is a cowboy sign at the Fremont Experience Blvd. We took the Deuce City Bus (beige double decker) from Bally’s to a stop near Fremont and walked about a block to Fremont Experience Blvd. The wait time for the 
bus was quite long, about 30 minutes. And when the bus did finally arrive, it was jammed packed from top to bottom! Apparently everyone was going to Fremont also… The bus system is actually quite easy to learn. All the buses mainly go in a straight line. So all the buses run up and down the Strip and to downtown. Easy.
One kind of cool thing to mention, while Andrea was using the restroom at the Golden Nugget, I decided to play one of the poker slot machines. I stuck in a quarter and hit deal. My dealt hand was crappy, I discarded everything but one Ace. When it re-dealt, I got three other Aces for a four of a kind winning a little over $32 with only a quarter!
We had dinner at the Bellagio’s The Buffet. I wanted to specifically try this place because I heard they had many exotic types of food such as boar, venison, elk, and lamb. Imagine my surprise when we arrived and they had neither. Turns out the exotic foods are only served on Friday and Saturday…doh! The food was good, but not quite near worth the $29.99 per person price. They did have plenty of food choices such as sushi, pasta, pork shoulder, ribs, prime rib, turkey, ham, salad, etc. Andrea had some sugar free pumpkin pie, which was pretty good.
Wednesday, December 13 (Day 3)
Figured we would go to 24 Hour Fitness gym that is about 2.5 miles one way from the Luxor. Walked down the Vegas Strip and turned right on Tropicana and caught a bus at the bus stop in 
front of New York New York and we were at 24 Hour Fitness in about 15 minutes. It’s a sport club, two story, and pretty nice.
We wanted to have breakfast at the Orleans Casino because they had a breakfast buffet for $6.45, but unfortunately they stop serving breakfast at 10am, so we ended up having breakfast at Denny’s nearby.
Since this was the last full day we would have in Las Vegas, we had quite a bit of activities planned. We knew we weren’t going to be able to get everything in, but we wanted to: go to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets downtown, do the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton, go to the top of Paris’ Casino’s Eiffel tower, check out Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, take a picture of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, tour the King Tut’s Tomb at the Luxor, check out the Liberace museum, and a few other things. We did manage to get quite a lot of what we wanted done.
After taking a shower and getting ready, we went to do the King Tut’s Tomb first since it was inside the Luxor. The cost was $10 per person and includes audio tour. The tour is rather surprisingly quick. The audio tour, voiced by Howard Carter (the British archaeologist that discovered King Tut’s tomb), is about 15 minutes self guided. All the objects are replicas. Pictures here.
We then took the city bus, CAT aka Citizens Area Transit (the CAT and Deux are both city buses, difference is that one is a double decker and the other is a single), about a half mile south from the Luxor. The sign is surprisingly small and dangerous to access if you want to get a dead on straight shot of the sign. You have to jay walk across three lanes of semi busy traffic…
Afterwards we made way to the Venetian to check out the Madame Tussaud’s Wax Mueseum. We used a $4 off coupon per person and got in for $20 per person. Some of the figures were freakishly real looking, others looked faked. We saw figures such as George Clooney, The Rock, Elvis Presley, Johnny Depp, and so on. The self guided tour took some 30 minutes. Pictures here.
Afterwards, we went to the Eiffel Tower view at Paris Las Vegas. I was able to get some great shots of Las Vegas, the Strip, and the Bellagio fountain show. It was a bit chilly and frightening being up so high. The Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower is only half the size of the real Eiffel Tower. The views were amazing. Pictures here.
We then made way to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, which is very easy to get to. Get on a Deux bus on the Strip and ride it to the St. Louis stop and catch the 108 directly to the Outlets. We didn’t check out the entire Outlet only a few shops we specifically wanted such as the Armani Exchange, Coach Outlet, and the Dolce & Gabbana store. Originally we wanted to check out all three of the outlets in the area: Las Vegas Premium Outlets, Las Vegas Outlet Center, and Primm’s Fashion Outlet Center. We were told by a hotel bell hop that Primm’s Fashion Outlet Center 
was small (although we had heard it had some of the higher end brands), and given the distance from where we were (~38 miles), we decided we wouldn’t have time to do it. Las Vegas Outlet Center is practically identical to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, so we decided against going to the Las Vegas Outlet Center also.
By the time we were done at the outlets, it was about 7pm and we wanted to do the Star Trek Experience as the last thing, but we were both getting extremely tired and hungry. We ended up deciding to get some little trinkets and souvenirs at some of the little shops around the Strip.
Dinner was at the Round Table Buffet at the Excalibur. This place was absolutely terrible. Everything was either fried or heavily breaded. It’s generally a bad sign when you can’t even cut the meat with the knife. The prime rib tasted dry and old. The worst buffet, food for that matter, ever. Avoid at all cost. Speaking of cost, it was $11.99 per person.
Thursday, December 12 (Day 4)
We woke up, got ready and took some last few pictures of the Luxor and things around the Luxor and took a cab to the airport. The cost of the trip was about $9, tipped the guy $3 and we were off to check-in.
One thing worth noting is that while this airport is definitely much bigger than Mineta San Jose International Airport, there isn’t very much food selection either. There is a Burger King, a Taco Bell, Starbucks, TCBY, a sports cafe, and a few small kiosks.
The flight back wasn’t nearly as enjoyable. We were on a Boeing 737 and it was more packed with passengers, 
although there were some empty seats. This was definitely an older plane; it didn’t even have directional overhead air ducts. The restrooms were extremely crapped, according to Andrea. The whole flight, the “Do not remove your seatbelts” sign remained on, not sure if the pilots forgot or if there was a glitch.
We both had extreme fun in Las Vegas despite the lower humidity, the air quality, and the constant smoking both indoors and out. We spoke to the taxi driver about the best time to come to Vegas and he indicated that near the end of November would be good. December definitely is too cold. Average temperature in March is around 70s. So we’re thinking next year, we’ll go around late November or sometime in February.
Important Things
Here is a list of tips to consider when planning a trip to Las Vegas:
- Pack lotion/moisturizer and use it. The low humidity (~50%) wreaks havoc on people’s skin, especially people who have dry skin (like me) to begin with.
- A centrally located Casino to stay at would be New York New York, Bellagio, Monte Carlo, Flamingo, and Bally’s. That will put you roughly in the middle of the Strip so you could easily walk most of the places (if you’re a walking kind of person).
- January and February are probably the coldest months, by March the temperature starts heating up to the 70s. By June to August, the temperature will be over the 100s. September to mid-November is still pretty warm, about the 70s-80s. December starts dipping down to low 60s. Best times are probably late February and late November to early December.
- Expect to pay for internet access if you stay in anything other than a Player’s Room at any of the Casinos.
- Be expected to be bombarded by people giving you “free” or dramatically reduced price shows by telling you all you have to do is go to a 3-4 hour time share meeting.
- Be expected to be handed pornography flyers ever 10 feet you walk.
- There are half-price tickets booths located at various spots where you can score a relatively good deal on most, if not all, the Vegas shows. These are last minute tickets, so don’t expect to be able to buy a show more than 1 day at most in advance.
- Drink lots of water.
- If you’re from California or another state that bans indoor smoking, expect to get a lifetime of second-hand smoke at all the Casinos, most restaurants, and restrooms.
- Take public transportation if you can (CAT and Deux city buses), but realize what you save in cost you pay in time. Most of the buses (especially when it gets real busy on The Strip and near holidays) are extremely delayed and are packed when they arrive. Also buy the 24-hour pass, if you plan to do a lot of traveling. It’s actually good for a full 24 hour period!
- Pack lots of $1 bills, there will be a lot of tipping to be done.
- The Monorail system is convenient, but expensive. Consider the bus system if you have some time.