Amazing Food

We've been here for a few days now and the thing that stands out most is the food. We knew that was one of our main reasons for coming but we're still amazed at how many choices there are. Dinner on our first night was at Jaleo, a Spanish tapas restaurant by Jose Andres. He is someone we've watched on tv often and we had planned to visit his restaurants in Washington DC at some point. Our dinner consisted of 6 types of tapas and some great Spanish beer. 
First we had these really tasty jamon croquettas made with iberico ham. 

Next we had what was called a tuna salad sandwich. Sounds boring but it was made with preserved tuna of some sort and hard boiled eggs and mayo. Incredible flavours!

Then we had a home made sausage and mushroom stew called butifarra that, again, sounds simple but had amazing flavours. 

On Monday morning, we were up fairly early and went out looking for coffee and tea. It was overcast and quite a bit cooler than Sunday. We found the streets almost deserted at first. This first picture is on a walkway near our hotel. It's near a shopping area called The Crystals which looks amazingly like the new ROM building. It wasn't designed by Frank Gehry but I'll post some pictures and you can decide if they've stolen a few ideas or not. In any case this first shot reminded me of school because of the eraser!

We were walking around the strip and saw this next picture happening which should go into the Only In Vegas category. There are more like it. In this one we see Captain America having a chat with a couple of the ever present street guys.

Next, we went down to Mandalay Bay to check out the shark exhibit and find lunch. The shark exhibit is not overly large but has a good display of fish and you end up in a viewing area where the fish can swim all around you. This first shot, although it suffered a bit because of the glass, gives an interesting perspective of one of the sharks.

The jelly fish were Marilyn's favourites. You wonder how they can be so flimsy looking and survive in the ocean.

We ended up having lunch at Border Grill, a Mexican restaurant owned by another chef we've seen on Food TV and the Master Chef show. We sat on a patio (there are apparently no annoying wasps in Vegas) overlooking the beach and waterplay area of Mandalay Bay. We had the quesadillas and taquitos shown below. Again, lots of great flavours that were accentuated by a couple of Mexican beers that we'd never tried before.

Later that day, we walked all the way from Aria to The Palazzo where we had dinner at Lagasse's Stadium, a giant sports bar. It had one 12 foot tv and endless other flatscreens showing all the games of the day. On the way there we saw this guy with his family and pet. Again, only in Vegas?

On the way home after dinner, we stopped briefly to attempt to watch the volcano show at the Mirage but, for some reason, we both got ants all over us. I think they were on some sticky stuff near where we were standing but it was dark and all I could feel was them crawling on me. So, we spent the next 5 minutes getting them off me and then we saw that they were also on Marilyn so we got her cleaned off as well. Needless to say, we didn't hang around for more of that. The last couple of pictures are night shots of the Strip. 

We're now just taking a break after this morning's buffet and our time at the pool. At 4 we'll pick up our rental car and go off to find 1. The Vegas sign for tacky photos, 2. The Premium Outlet Mall to see if it's like all the other outlet malls, 3. The Gun Store where one can shoot all sorts of interesting guns (mostly my idea) and 4. Fremont Street where we'll eat and watch the light show. Back later...