BAFW Vacation 2007 Recap Part II

Monday, Nov 5th - This day started pretty early, at around 6 AM. Not because we had something special planned. No, this was because our internal clocks were still set to wake up at that time so we could get ready to go off to work. We did manage to get ourselves back to sleep for another hour and a half, because at 9 AM we had a Wyndham Vacation Ownership presentation to attend to. They were giving us $100 in chips for the Harrah's and a 2 for 1 buffet special at their buffet place. That, and a free 4 day vacation in 2008, where I'm sure we'll have to attend yet another one of these presentations. But that's the price you have to pay I guess.

That ended at around 11 AM. After that, the only thing on our agenda . . . other than gambling, was at the Mandalay Bay. Heather is crazy about sharks, and they have something there called the "Shark Reef", which is America's only predatory aquarium, or something like that. We headed out there, and got an early lunch before actually going in. Admission was about 30 bucks for the both of us, and we spent nearly an hour and a half in there, taking pictures of sharks, sea turtles, and other marine fauna. It was one of the better things that we did in Las Vegas while we were there, and I wouldn't mind checking it out again sometime in the future.

After that, we headed back to the Grand Desert Resort for some rest and relaxation before we hit the town again. We also realized that we needed groceries, so we ventured out into the not-so-nice areas just east of the strip looking for a grocery store. We found an Albertson's, and bought about 20 bucks worth of food. We had a kitchen, might as well use it. After buying that and getting it back to the resort, we took the shuttle to the Harrah's so we could get some dinner and cash in our $100 in chips that we had gotten at the presentation. We hit up a place called "Ming's Table" for dinner, which was a moderately priced Chinese restaurant. Probably some of the best food we had during our vacation was had here. After that we gambled a little at the Harrah's, walked to the Paris, where Heather discovered that she loved blackjack, and then headed back to the resort to (try) watch a movie. We had brought a couple of DVD's with us, and while we eventually watched "Fido" when we came back from vacation, we fell asleep while watching it the first time. Not because the movie was boring, it's rather good. But because we were pretty freaking exhausted from all the walking around we did that day.

BAFW Vacation 2007 Recap Part I

Sunday 11/04 - This day started with a time change, which totally fucked us up, because we had not been able to sleep at all the night before, and now we were getting an extra hour to sleep, which wasn't going to happen. So, we were up at around 7 AM. We got some coffee, got everything in the car to head out to Las Vegas, got some donuts and gassed up the car. By the time all of that was done, it was just about 9 AM, so we were on schedule. We stopped in Baker en route to Las Vegas for some brunch. We ate at a place called "The Mad Greek" at around 11:30 AM that day. If you've ever traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on the I-15 highway, you've seen the billboards for this place. They advertise fresh strawberry shakes and the best gyros. I had a sampling of both, and I have to say that the shake was too sweet, and the gyro, while good, was just not as good as the ones we get here from our local Greek cafe.

We continued our little journey and arrived in Nevada at around 1:30 PM. Since Heather had never actually been to the Primm outlet stores, we thought it would be a good idea to check that out first. We walked around, Heather bought some stuff in stores that had great outlet prices, and also in stores that had regular prices. I picked up a shirt for 12 bucks that I probably would have paid 30 if I had bought it at a regular location. We also picked up a couple of souvenirs for a friend of ours who is going to have their birthday soon. Just a couple of shot glasses. We hopped back on the freeway at around 2:30 PM and continued our trip to Las Vegas after this little spat of commercialism.

We were not really in a hurry, due to the fact that check-in at the resort we were staying at was not until 4 PM. So, we drove around a little bit once we got to the city. We hit up the Hard Rock Hotel first, because that was the place closest to where we were staying. They had an interesting array of rock and roll photography on the way from the parking structure to the actual hotel/gambling area. But that was pretty much the only thing that caught my attention. Their actual gambling area was dismally small. We played a little bit of slots there, and we took off for our next destination.

After checking out a couple other hotels, it was finally time to check in. We had some great accommodations lined up that we got from my father-in-law. He's an owner of a timeshare through Wyndham Vacation Ownership, so he let us use some of his unused points to book our stay in Las Vegas. The whole time we were there, we only paid $25 for our room. That's not per day, that's from Sunday - Thursday. And we could have stayed until Friday, because they told us that was the actual day that we had opted to stay through. But Heather worked that Friday, so we had the option to check out any time we wanted on Thursday. Our room was great. It was not just a room, but more like a mini-one bedroom apartment. It had a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom, very spacious, and overlooking the pool area. And this was their more modest unit.

We unloaded everything and then took their free shuttle to the Harrah's casino, were we played until about 9 PM. At this time, we were pretty exhausted from not sleeping the day before, and all the driving and walking around, so we took the shuttle back to the resort, where we tried to watch a DVD (Sid & Nancy) but fell asleep a few scenes into it.