Summer Flashback: Vegas

In my summer of delicious relaxation, I let some things to on my writing to-do list, so I’m going to revisit some of them in September. This is also known as distracting myself from the fact that some people will experience fall this month and it’s still hot here. BLAH.

So, we went on vacation. We spent five blissful days in Cape Cod, and then we flew from there to Las Vegas. There’s a non-sequitur if ever one existed. We were meeting some of my husband’s friends there, so we tacked on the vacation part of our vacation to this mini-reunion in order to cram it all into one grandparent babysitting extravaganza.

We stayed at the Encore and my review is this: Highly recommend. I really like the Wynn/Encore pair of hotels. I’ve only ever stayed there on a promotion and their promotions are wonderful. They’re standard room rates kind of suck. I just called for a weekend in October and they quoted me somewhere in the neighborhood of $550/night. I love you a little bit less than that, Wynn.

Anyway, these hotels are pretty and the rooms are arranged nicely. At the Encore the standard rooms are mini-suites, which was a huge change from our tiny, albeit precious, room in Cape Cod.

We spent most of our day time at the pool. The pools are beautiful, but there is precious little shade. They have cabanas and other shaded, premium seating options, so they’re trying to sell those of course, but I felt like my skin was going to melt off at any moment.  We spent the majority of the first day under water, trying to avoid staring at the people who were taking the topless optional signs seriously. (Listen, perhaps you’re more mature than I am, but if you’re half-naked in public, I’m going to be a little shocked.)

On our second day there, we had booked a cabana with our friends and it was worth every single penny. A fan, a fridge, plenty of seating and the blessed misters.

At one point, one of the wives and I had had enough of the sun, so we went shopping. The walk from the hotel to the mall was brutal. I do not know how people handle that sort of heat on the regular, but there is something to be said for a dry heat. My hair loves the dry heat.

On our first night there, after a long dinner, and a little gambling, our friends were ready for round two. There was some DJ playing (spinning? I am not cool enough to know what’s right here.) that one of them really wanted to see, so at MIDNIGHT, they went upstairs and changed and went back out. We waved to them from the elevator because HAHA, not happening. Also, we had been awake since 1am to drive from Cape Cod to Rhode Island to catch our flight and I was only upright from a steady flow of giant iced coffees. (Nevermind that caffeine makes me sick. Desperate times.)

On our second, and last, night we got tickets to see Criss Angel Believe. WHOA NELLY. This is under the Cirque du Soleil umbrella, so we figured it couldn’t be that bad. IT WAS THAT BAD.  First of all, Criss Angel is one weird em-effer. I’ve seen his street magic shows and any one of those would have been better than this show. At one point, in the middle of an illusion, the curtain closed, the lights went up and there was an announcement of technical difficulties. They came out a few minutes later and announced that someone had been injured and that they were cutting that piece from the show.

Most of the reviews from the show are mediocre and it seems like all of the original Cirque elements have been cut out, which is fine, this is a magic show, with a mildly annoying magician. (At the end he came out and begged everyone to giving him a standing ovation so he could do an encore trick.) It was just uncomfortable.

This was a really fun two days, and we haven’t seen these friends all at once since our wedding, so it was totally worth it to have some adult time. HOWEVER, if I had to do it all over again, I would tack this piece on to the beginning of our vacation, so we followed up with the extreme relaxation of Cape Cod, rather than coming home barely able to open my eyes from the smokey, overly oxygenated air. 

Tell me, do you love or hate Las Vegas?