Our Final, Long Day In Vegas

We learned a couple of things on this trip. One was that leaving home early the first day gets you a full day when you arrive. Leaving really late on the day that you go home also gives you a full day. But, it's really long because you don't have a room to rest in at some point. In any case, we got a lot of walking and sight seeing in on Friday. We pretty much walked the length of the Strip twice and explored some areas that we hadn't seen before. We started off in Crystals, the shopping/dining complex attached to Aria. It has some amazing architecture and design elements that always caught our attention.  

As you walk down the Strip, you will often see people dressed in all types of costumes who want you do give them money to take pictures. We saw Star Wars characters,showgirls and more Elvises than we could count.

We had decided that we'd had enough fancy food and went to a down home Texas place called Gilley's for lunch. It was really good as you can tell from the pictures below. I had the fried chicken and it was the best I've ever had. Marilyn had a brisket sandwich that was, as you can see, a bit large. 

After lunch, we ended up at the Fashion Show Mall which was had more than just clothes stores. And, as it was Fashion Week, another fashion show broke out! 

Our final activity for this trip was to watch the fountains at the Bellagio one last time. They're never boring, even if you've seen the show many times. 

We really enjoyed the trip even though we both felt a little strange being somewhere else on the first day of school. I'm sure it's something we'll get used to! 

And, that's about it for this trip. When we got home, we made a copy of a dinner that we didn't have at an overly expensive steak house in our hotel. 
The first plate is a version of Caprese Salad that Marilyn made with 14 different types of tomatoes from the garden. 

And the main course was the steak, done in a cast iron pan, mashed potatoes, sautéed mushrooms and creamed spinach. 

Now, we are getting used to being at home instead of at school on a weekday! Part of my brain was yelling that I was late for school this morning at about 8:45. I'll work on fixing that! Thanks for reading about our adventures!

Exploring The Strip

Today was spent mostly walking along the Strip, checking out things we'd missed before. We started with this look at our hotel, Aria, and the shuttle that runs between it and Bellagio. There are a couple of shuttle trains that sure save you time and make it easier when it's really hot. 

We would highly recommend Aria to anyone who is thinking of coming to Vegas. The next few photos are things we saw along the strip. There's also a shot of Marilyn trying to pay for our trip at the penny slots. Didn't happen. We've decided that we are pretty much useless when it comes to gambling. 

We spent some time inside the Venetian/Palazzo complex and it was pretty amazing. It's hard to believe that all those high end stores can make money. 

For lunch, we went to Spago, a Wolfgang Puck place. We found out that Spago was the first celebrity chef restaurant in Vegas, and that it opened in 1992. We had some great food once again. Marilyn had a Melon and Fig Salad appetizer, followed by BBQ Scottish Salmon. I had a Kobe burger. We shared Marilyn's Grape Parfait dessert. 

On our travels, I saw this and seriously considered buying it. However, I figured it would have limited usefulness in non-school settings. 

To finish off our day, we watched a short fashion show. It's some kind of Fashion Week here. I tried my hand at fashion photography and found it wasn't easy. On the way home there were some twin brothers doing acrobatics in front of the Bellagio. I think they tried out for one of the Cirque du Soleil shows and didn't make the cut.

 Tomorrow's our last day and we have to be out of here by 11. However, our flight isn't until 11:20 at night so we'll be busy for the day. I'll finish off the final entry on the weekend.

Red Rock Canyon and Mt. Charleston

We were up at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, very unvacation-like, so that we could get to Red Rock Canyon for photos when the light was still good. As in, I needed to get there early because I like early morning and late afternoon light the best. When we arrived at the canyon, it was just before 7 and the place was deserted. We explored in the car and did 2 hikes into the desert. The scenery was fantastic and we saw lizards, hawks, quail and a rabbit. We also discovered that all desert vegetation is sharp! Every plant or bush we touched scratched or stabbed us. If you know me, I got stabbed a lot! It was amazing to be in a place that is totally silent other than the wind and bird songs. It got hot quickly but we had planned for it and had a good morning. I took a lot of pictures but will post a few of my favourites below. 

After the canyon, we headed over to Mt. Charleston, about 40 minutes away. We saw a lot of Vegas that you don't usually see including trailer park subdivisions, high end homes and desert ranches. Mt. Charleston, surprisingly, is a ski destination in what passes for winter here. So, the mountain has quite a few chalets and the place where we had lunch is a gathering place for skiers. We did consider lunch on the deck overlooking the mountain but, as the sign shows, there was a plague of bees. The food was really good but there was a lot of it! Lots of exercising to do when we get home I think!

It's hard to believe, but we did have dinner as well! It was later and we walked quite a bit and were actually hungry. We were glad that we went as it was our best meal to date at Michael Mina's American Fish. Mina has a bunch of restaurants in Vegas but this is his newest I think. We took  advantage of the Restaurant Week menu that offers a 3 course prix fix meal. Part of the proceeds go to a charity that provides meals for less fortunate people. 
Our appetizers were a cool Caesar salad with whole anchovies and Shrimp and Grits with Jalapeno Cream and Serrano Ham. Both were excellent and I want to try to make the shrimp and grits at home.

Main courses were Marilyn's mixed grill with salmon, scallop, prawn, razor clams, octopus and calamari. I had Mediterranean Branzino (a kind of bass) that was cooked in a salt dome.

We don't usually have dessert but this meal came with it so we had Mascarpone Cheesecake with blueberries and Chocolate Custard with Red Velvet Cake. Last night I was promising myself that I'd run every day when we get home!