Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Viva Las Vegas

G and I celebrated our 6th anniversary last week. On our actually day, we went for a nice dinner at Roys. Oh man, that place is amazing. Expensive but worth every penny. Yum. To really celebrate though, G had the idea to go to Vegas for a night and go have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants there. He wanted to surprise me and just say "we're going to the airport" but with C, that really wasn't feasible. So on a few days notice and thanks to the "wanna get away" fares at Southwest, we flew up Wednesday night to Las Vegas.

Through a work friend, G was able to arrange a room for us at the MGM Grand. We had reserved a junior suite but the girl who did the arrangements requested an upgrade to the terrace suite, if available. Well, I've never seen Vegas so empty as it was on Wednesday. You could've rolled a bowling ball in the casino and not hit anyone. So yeah, we got the upgrade. So we go up go the 17th floor, walk down an endless hallway and walk into the room. Immediately to our left was a powder room. How many hotel rooms have you been in that have a powder room? There was a wet bar, dining table, living room and oh wait, stairs! We go upstairs to a big bedroom with a walk-in closet (could use some of that at home) and a humongous bathroom including a big spa tub. This is fantastic! We get ourselves together to head out to dinner, and I realize there's a balcony. I find the sliding door and it's not exactly a balcony. They don't call it the "terrace suite" for nothing. It was a *huge* terrace, square footage wise, probably as big as our backyard patio AND it had an outdoor spa tub with a great view of the Las Vegas strip. Yeah baby!! Needless to say, we knew where we were going to be later in the evening.

We took the monorail to Mandalay Bay and went to "Burger Bar" there. Yes, it's casual but oh so yummy. I had a Kobe beef burger with sprouts, avocado and cheese. G had a buffalo burger with pesto, sprouts and something else I can't remember. Great fries and good beer. It was perfect. Then another friend of ours has a vodka locker at Red Square at Mandalay. He offered and arranged for us to go into the locker and have some of his personal stash. Apparently, it's one of those places where you go into the freezer room where there's plexiglass table and you're all bundled up with fur coats (or something crazy warm) and hats. But we went in and gave our name and J's and they gave us some story that the freezer wasn't working that day. It sounded a little cock and bull to us but we weren't going to argue. Too bad. It would've been a fun adventure and very nice of J to even offer.

We made it back to the MGM, gambled and lost $80 bucks pretty quickly. Did you know that they have a huge lion display there? It's this huge plexi enclosure and they have like 30 lions at some other location and they bring them back and forth to the hotel for people to see. It's so darn cool. They're totally relaxed and just like your animal laying on the floor of your living room. The plexi is thick so that they can't smell us humans so that they just veg out. It was really neat and can't wait to show C next time we go. She'll love it.

We went up to the room, filled up that spa on the terrace and even though the jets didn't work. we were out there for about 45 minutes, skinny dipping in front of all of Las Vegas. Temps were in the low 40's but the spa was hot. So with our hotel bathrobes, we had a great time.

Now, you all know that I'm a scrapper and what scrapper doesn't go anywhere without her camera? (waving hands wildly) I, the big dork that I am, didn't have my camera with me. When we got into this fantastic room, I opened my purse and no camera. I (coulda had a V-8) thought I left it on the kitchen table and was just kicking myself. We bought a disposable camera and took a bunch of pictures with old fashioned film. I dropped it off today and will get them back in a few days (need that CD copy of the pix). Man, I'm so spoiled by the world of digital and I know it's been at least 4 years since I used actual 35mm film. I hope some of the pix come out because it was so cool and want to share. As it turned out, I didn't leave my camera at home either. As I literally was walking in the house yesterday, I got a call from one of C's teachers asking if I left my camera at school, which I must've done on Wednesday.

We slept in on Thursday 'til about 9 when we each got cell phone calls. Got organized and headed to the airport. But it was SO nice to get away even if it was only about 18 hours. In C's 4.5 years, we had never left her overnight for something personal. The two other times we left her with grandparents she was under 2 years old and last year when G and I were both working on separate shows. So it was nice to have quiet time together. We were able to do what we wanted, sleep in, not worry about kids in the casino, and just have a good time. It was great and hopefully, we'll get a chance to do it again. Or at least make the overnight an annual anniversary gift to ourselves. We deserve at least that much.

Labels: Las Vegas

posted by Juls @ 11:18 PM