More Vegas!
I left you in the most extortionately overpriced internet machine I have ever used. $1 per minute was a lot and meant I could only do a half arsed Blog and not even check for more abuse on Facebook.
Vegas has once again killed me during the five nights we have spent there, I explained in the previous offering that we managed to pull a 24 hour day on the first night but due to jet lag this was necessary; nobody really expected us to do something similar on the second evening but the wonderful night in Hard Rock on Paulie’s birthday saw us through and has been unanimously voted as the best night so far.
As I said, the day kicked off with each couple doing their own thing. Karen & I started off with a trip to Caesars Palace, a hotel I’ve always been keen on as it’s massive and very central. Inside Caesars is a huge shopping complex and we had a wander though there as I needed a new shirt (all the ones I got in the summer seem to have shrunk). After a stroll through more of the Strip’s landmarks we decided to take advantage of the Vegas sun and dropped anchor by the pool for a few hours.
We had all arranged a 6pm meet at Rouge Bar in the MGM Grand for a drink before we walked to the Venetian for or meal at Tao (the oe Stuoobs & Cazzie harped on about). It was extremely tasty and worth the harping on but by the end of it our body clocks we beginning to knock on the door and we knew it was important we got out of the hot restaurant and got some booze inside us. We decided to give the Venetian a chance and stumbled across a bar that had a stage with a keybard, drums and a guitar set up so we ordered drinks and waited for the band to resume playing. We left before the end of their second song because they were either mentally retarded or purposely camp – had it been a different hotel to the lavish Venetian then we may have let them off the hook.
One of my favourite live music bars from last year was the Big apple in NYNY. It was a decent size, adjacent to the casino and always had a good rock & roll cover band on show. NYNY have ripped it out for a High Roller lounge, this can only be for money and I suppose that’s why all these hotels are stuck out in the desert but it’s a real shame. Without knowing much at all about decent bars outside NYNY we drew inspiration from the best film of the last 12 months, ‘21′, and hailed a cab to the Hard Rock Hotel. Set just off the Strip it’s not one of the iconic or largest hotels but it will forever be remembered by us. I thought we’d find a good live music bar knocking around but that wasn’t the case so we found a backjack table and got to work. The girls were tired of seeing the backs of our heads and went to the bar. As is the case in places like Vegas, three women in a bar on their own will not have to put their hands in their pockets too often and we were more than happy to have scores of blokes getting our women pissed. We really did lose track of time; I love blackjack as not only is it a game you can master it’s also a very social game – we had a great table and we were all egging each other on to hit blackjack and take the casino’s money. We had such a good time that we had no idea we’d gambled for seven hours straight. What was even more worrying was that the girls had been drinking for just as long (as had we but our drinks were complimentary). By the time we’d finished we were all completely mashed and thanks to some good card playing and massive amounts of luck I walked out of the hotel with $1000 more than when I went in. The others didn’t have quite the same amount of luck but even to come out $200 down you can still walk out knowing that you’ve had seven hours of laughs and all the free gin they can throw at you.
The cocktail waitresses (or ‘Gin Fairies’as we call them) are employed by the casino to keep you sat at the table. With table minimums of $10 a hand a free drink every twenty minutes is nothing to them. The Gin Fairies walk around and offer you drinks, I’m not sure if they get paid by the casino but they will do very well out of the operation as they get tipped $1 per drink. Assuming they work a six-hour shift and wait on twelve tables of six players each drinking every 30 minutes that’s a wedge of over $400 a night and that’s just with tight-arses like us tipping a buck, on the higher limit tables expect to see $25-$100 tips knocking about. However all of the Gin Fairies have bobbie jobs and bar far and away my favourite cocktail waitress fact is that the cost of these enhancements are TAX DEDUCTIBLE as a business expense, how good is that?
We were genuinely surprised that it was light outside but after our Hard Rock-a-thon the taxi driver dropped us off at the MGM Casino entrance instead of the Signature entrance and this meant that we had to negotiate the casino, not an easy job when smashed and Karen, Stuoobs, Cazzie & I pulled up some chairs at a table and got going. It’s safe to assume we were not at the top of our game so the dealer and pit boss were both keeping a close eye on us. Poor Cazzie dropped a chip and in stretching out over three chairs to retrieve it managed to convince the pit boss that she was passing out and Stuoobs was ordered to take her to bed. This was all the reason Pezza needed to start referring to the pit boss as ‘dad’, to which ‘dad’told Pezza that she’s be next!
Now, as I’ve said many times Vegas will do anything to get you in the casino; that is why it is one of the biggest cities in terms of convention hosting. At any one time there will be many convetions in the hotels with heavilly discounted rooms and five star hosting facilities. Therefore when Karen & I were walking back through the MGM towards the Signature we walked passed a Starbucks line full of people in suits who were all essentially on their way to work. Paulie says that this night was the best birthday he has ever experienced, I think it’s probably the best I’ve ever experienced too and meant that for two days running we were up for over 24 hours (if you get my meaning).
All of this meant that Thursday was a little quieter, so much so that I’m struggling to remember what we did. I know I’ve missed a day somewhere down the line and Thursday was probably it. Hang on, got it now….
Thursday was a tough one. We started the day one man short as Cazzie was incapeable of getting out of bed for anything other than poos. We decided to have a wander down to Hotel Planet Hollywood (which is closer to our hotel than the MGM, bizarley). We had one idea that is central to BOTT and that was that the only way we were going to get through the day would be to accompany breakfast with alcohol, we felt atrocious. Personally, my favourite way to start such a day is a Bloody Mary, the combination of the anti-oxident giving tomato juice and the kick of the spices help kick start your body into gear for the day. The huge shot of vodka also helps. After breakfast we lost Pezza but gained a Cazzie as Pezza felt bed was probably the best option for her. We then did what comes naturally and pulled up a pugh at the blackjack table where I met my new favour croupier, Ron from Upstate New York. This guy had been dealing blackjack in vegas for longer than I have been alive and he knew every trick in book and every way of shuffling, stacking and throwing chips. The guy was great fun and kept us entertained for a bit of early evening gambling. The girls went back a little before us and we thought we could get a quick turnaround ready for a 10.30pm start to the night’s festivities. Stuoobs was first to pull the rip cord and say he wasn’t going out. At that point I could have killed him for suggesting staying in whilst in Vegas but we were all asleep within about 30 minutes of this and our bodies thanked us for some rest after the previous two 24-hour abuse sessions.
This meant that we were all at the top of our games on Friday when we met for Breakfast (with orange juice and coffee this time). It was an early start to the day and we took the opporunity to head south down the Strip and visit the hotels at that end such as the appalling Excaliber, the iconic Luxor and the stunning Mandalay Bay. We took in the Bodies exhibition at the Luxor and we were all very glad that we didn’t feel like we had done 24 hours previously as we were looking at skinned testicles and the occasional foetus. I nearly walked out with a new liver but the woman caught me. Spoilsport. It was a great exhibition and I can’t believe we didn’t go and see it during its two year stint in Manchester. The Mandalay Bay was beautiful without being pretentious. True to form we plopped the girls in a bar and we went to work, you can always tell how good a hotel is by the standard of the Gin Fairies and all of these were absolutely top drawer. This took us up to snooze time but I was too busy watching Top Gear on BBC America to get my scheduled hour in. Friday night was a great night; Paulie & Karen had recommended the Top of the World restaurant at the top of the Startosphere Hotel so we asked our concierge to make the booking and made tracks (this is where the last Blog post effectively ends). The restaurant is revolving and takes about 1hr 20mins to revolve. It offers phenomenal views of the Strip and surrounding area and has been firmly installed as number one in the ‘Andy & Pezza Top Views Of All Time’ list, knocking the view from Aqua Restaurant in Hong Kong off the top spot. (Incidentally, the picture at the top was taken from our hotel room, not the Strat!)Aside from the stunning scenery the food was great and our waiter foolishly asked if were celebrating anything which resulted in him making a bit of a fuss of Paulie, which was fun.
The retaurant is several hundred feet high (I’m writing this on a plane and don’t have my usual access to Wikipedia) and the windows slope inwards, this means that we were able to do the Ferris Bueller thing and stand with our heads against the window looking straight down to the ground. I’m usually good with heights but this made me very nervous.
Must dash – seatbelt lights are on and that means we’re approaching Chicago. I’ll pick this up there…
Right, it’s now 9.00am Chicago time the following day. As I was saying we were all feeling a bit nervous following our stare down the Stratosphere tower and that may have had something to do with why we bottled the thrill rides; they consist of a giant ‘Playstation’ (Now called the Ice Blast I think at Blackpool) right at the top and a ride that just shoots you over the edge of the tower, besides this was easilly the windiest day we had in Vegas and it was quite nippy up there and we were in no mood for hanging around so we had a drink in the cocktail lounge above the restaurant and then got a couple of cabs to Old Vegas, where it all began.
Vegas has been compared to Disney Land and you can see why, it’s all fake and lots of gimmicks but when you
hit Old Vegas you get a real feel for the history that’s around there and how it’s struggled to keep up with the Mafia controlled Strip but it was packed and great fun to be at that end of town for a night. We had a couple of hours in the 4 Queens Hotel, named after the poker hand and NOT the kind of clientele it attracts, and enjoyed another successful hour at the tables.
Vegas was starting to fill up as there was a huge UFC fight on at the MGM, rednecks were flocking in from everywhere! It’s one thing I love about Vegas, you get ALL kinds of people here and everyone blends in.
We therefore decided that we had little choice but to drink the evening away back at the Piano Bar in NYNY.
We stayed until around 2.30am and by this time my thoughts were turning to Saturday’s football. Pezza and I had an hour together at the table in MGM and I walked her back to the room and back, by this time it was 4.00am and I knew I only had three hours before the United game kicked off so I pulled through and watched most of our 5-0 drubbing of Stoke. This was therefore another 24 hour session. Bedtime for me was 9.00am and I was woken by Pezza at 4.00pm with a calzone for breakfast. We had tickets to the show at the Wynn and we were looking forward to going back there after our stay last year. The show, Le Reve, is amazing and blew our minds away. None of us really knew what was going on but it’s very ‘Çirque Du Soleil’ and the skills on show were astonishing. After that we ate at oe of the restauarnts in the Wynn and had our last hour of Blackjack before putting Vegas to bed. We had to be out by 9.30am the next day and I’m sure that we’d all felt we’d done Vegas the way the good Lord intended.
Our first night in Chicago was quiet for Pezza & I, after being last couple standing every night in Vegas we were first in Bed on Sunday in Chicago after a hearty meal in the Hard Rock Cafe which, confusingly, isn’t in our Hard Rock Hotel.
The plans for Chicago are quite loose. We have two nights left here and we can see from our window the river and the steakhouse which my old man describes as the best he’s ever had so expect some comments on these issues in due course!
Andy
xxx
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