Saturday, November 27, 2010

Missed our flight


So here we are saying goodbye to Barry... we thot we were leaving Vegas... but we missed the cutoff time of the flight... by minutes! The girl at the counter asks us "why are you so late" we said "we aren't" but we thot the flight left 20 minutes later than we planned for, so we asked her "well what do we do?" and she says.... "nothing" LOL!! I guess it's easier to live in the States than we thot, you just have to miss a plane and you are stuck there forever??? anyway, we went to a different counter and she very nicely got us on a later flight, about 6 hours later, and got us a direct flight rather than the Vancouver stop over we originally had. (in spite of the extra money it cost, we found a silver lining... and we hit the Strip for more hours of fun!)

we had to check our bags so we went to New York New York, we knew they had storage cause you had to check your bags before you go on the coaster.

one bag wouldn't fit, but it had wheels.... so we trekked on.

we went for lunch and decided to do our part to help the casinos and we gambled.... at the penny slots... and spent 10 bucks! It lasted a loooong time tho' Dean and I traded off, but the best part was, Maddie could be right there, she was just on the other side of the wall in the restaurant part.

here is a better picture of the chocolate fountain

don't leave your child unattended!

we caught the statue show at Caesars

and went into the top of the Eiffel tower at the Paris.

from the tower. That beautiful Blue building ahead may be on the "imploding" block. Yep, that brand new building, it's not even open yet. It is the last building of the City Center group of hotels, but there was a problem in construction so they shortened the building from the original plan of 30 some odd floors, but it still isn't "safe" so it is closed and used as a billboard for the Elvis show right now, it will probably take 2 years in court to figure out what to do... but it sure is pretty!

every time we passed the fountains at Bellagio they were off, so finally Maddie got to see them, and it was quite the view from up top of Paris.

we got to check al lot of things off our list today, in our unexpected extra time! The last stop we got peanut butter covered apples from New York. It took about 30 minutes to eat!! and it was HEAVY! But soooo yummy!

on the plane we got seats as close as we could.... and homeward we went.

leaving Las Vegas, passing a golf course. Then home again, home again, jiggedy jig

Friday, November 26, 2010

Black Friday

Picture this..... it's 11:30 pm when some people are going to bed... the 3 of us.... are going shopping! That's when black Friday started for us.... 11:30pm






Walmart opened at midnight... and we were there for the show! as far as you could see..... people and sale boxes.

we weren't sure where this night would take, the next store wasn't open til 4am... but as we shopped and then stood in a monstrous long line we realized our time line was closing in... making it possible perhaps to keep going without heading home to sleep. All 3 of us are the same when it comes to sleep... we don't like to, and when we do we don't like to wake up... so pulling an all nighter was much more appealing to us than waking up at 4....

this would help....
funny story, when we got to the til, there was a burst of heat, I had to take my jacket off, I was melting and then about 5 minutes later, Maddie turned white as a ghost, and had to sit down, she felt awful all of a sudden, so we sent her to stand outside to cool off, when she came back a couple of minutes later she started to get her color back.... but the funny part was... the guy behind the till, looks at Maddie and says "I like your hair" then he starts to blush and says " I was gonna say something else, but I can't" so he blushes more and says " I was going to say it's sexy... but then I'll get in trouble" haha so even when she doesn't feel well, she's still cute as a button :-) the poor guy stayed red faced until we were gone!

when we got out of Walmart it was 1:55. so we headed to the outlet mall to go to Hot Topic... which opened at 10pm. So here we are walking thru the mall at 2 in the morning and it looks and feels like noon!!

we exit the mall at 3:23 a little early for the 4am Target opening... so .....

leaving the mall we head to....

IHOP for breakfast! We had the sweetest waitress, how was she so perky at 4am?

there was a flashing cop car we weren't sure if we missed an incident or if they were just there for a presence.When we into Target it looked like the line was wrapping itself around the store. We said : we have to really want it to stand in line here" there were al lot of people with 40' flatscreens in their carts, but wasn't an option for us.... so we ended up leaving the few items we picked up and headed to our last destination... Joanne's craft shop and Best Buy....
they were opening at 6am, so we had a few minutes to wait in line... we split up here, Dean went to Best buy, me and Maddie to the craft store....
this was where our major purchases came from... we got a bluray player, a WII, a handful of cricut cartridges and a Cricut Imagine, I won't bore you with all the details of my stuff... but lol I will tell you they were all for scrapbooking.

and here we are at home.... we left in the dark and came home in the daylight... we went directly to bed! Happy Black Friday... uhmm now how do we get all this stuff home???

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving day

Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends!! This morning we woke up and refused breakfast! Lol Shiela said we were wrecking her "B&B" status. We didn't want anything to spoil our Thanksgiving dinner, so we were going to wait to eat.

Barry had to check his lemon tree first thing, their was frost warning last night, yep I said frost. Dang cold weather, this is Vegas!

another thing on our list of "must do's" was the Las Vegas sign, It's almost impossible to miss, but we did last time??? Are you asking yourself, "what the heck DID they do last time"? lots of stuff, we just happened to miss huge landmarks!

there was a mob at the sign and you had to wait to take your picture, but their were some official sign people there to help you out, it almost looks like we're the only ones there in our photo! and that's without photoshop.

when we were in Rachel we bought a book about area 51. In the book it said that there were 8 airplanes designated to flying employees to and from the "area" they were white, with red stripes.... so? are these the area 51 planes?? there is a big warning sign on the fence?
After we went to the Outlet mall, we heard some stores were open today? We got a sneak peak on some sale stuff, and some things were on sale already at an even better deal than tomorrow! Me and Maddie found one store, EVERYthing was 50% off. I asked what the exclusions were.... NONE, I got a cute jacket for 15 bucks, and Dean got Levi jeans for 25.00 each. The one store that we actually went to the mall for... Hot Topic, wasn't open until 10PM. So we'll just have to go back :-)

Thanksgiving dinner! There are 10 of us.... you can't see Gram behind Brian. It was a feast fit for a king and the Macy's day parade on pause to watch in between football in the background. A wonderful day to be thankful for.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Checkin out...

Today we checked out of the Luxor... and checked into Chateau Bloomfield! On our way out of the lobby, the shoe shine girl was just finishing up a customer, so I hopped up and got my Fluevogs shined :-)

now they are all shiny again :-) yay Happy shoes!

still on our game chip mission I wanted to get a chip from the Tropicana. After we walked thru 2 years ago, we figured it was close to coming down... but when we walked in today! WOW they have done a complete overhaul on the hotel! It was pretty and bright! Last time it even smelt musty! But apparently they are undergoing a whole new face lift. They actually did implode one of their hotel wings 2 weeks ago! Darn we missed it by days! But good for them if they can bring some life back to an old hotel. ....If these walls could talk!

then onto lunch at Carnegie's. We loved this restaurant in New York when we were there, and this one is exactly the same... Massive sandwiches and so yummmmmy!

we headed to Barry and Sheila's for supper later, "checked in" to the chateau and then had to Head right back out. We almost forgot about taking Maddie to Freemont str. so that was our main mission, and then Dean "just for fun" checked if we could get tickets to KA. And we could so we went to the early show of that. We had seen this last time, but Maddie hadn't, and it is Dean's fave, but you can't get too much Cirque!

and then to the old city lights of downtown. In 1987 when I turned the corner onto this street it took my breath away. The lights were so kewl.. it still has a wow effect, but not the same as before the roof went on. For Maddie tho' this was the first time she had seen it.... so it did take her breath away! I LOVE this street... the locals warn you of this area.... but how can you can you not go to the old Neon!
beyond the canopy, is where the neon musuem is putting their refurbished signs, and lighting them up to join the old strip once again.

here is the original lamp from the Aladdin. I love this lamp. We hunted for it last time, only to find out we just didn't walk far enuff down the street!!!

and of course, last but not least the show on the canopy. We saw the Queen show, and afterwards there was a magic act on the stage. He was pretty awesome, did some kewl tricks! And that ends another busy night.... we headed "home" and hit the pillows!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

BIG DAY in Vegas

This was my favorite day. This was the day we got to do a few new things, and a few things we were sad we missed last time. First up was going to the Titanic exhibition. They were in the process of moving this from the Tropicana to the Luxor when we were here last, and we were so disappointed... what I didn't know about this particular exhibition that made it different from the one we went to in Florida was... these were REAL artifacts, FROM the Titanic!!! In Florida it's a great staged walk thru with only a deck chair from the great ship, which we thot was so kewl.... at the time.... I was blown away by this turn of events, in fact it caught me off guard. We walked in and the first sign told where on the Ship this piece came from.... I whispered " are they serious??" and then it happened.... a lump caught in my throat, and I was unable to finish my sentence... needless to say the rest of the walk thru was a little harder to read, thru glassy eyes....

this of course isn't real, but somehow my eyes welled up again..sheesh, if you look close my eyes are very glassy lol, silly girl!!


when we turned the corner into this chilled room I actually gasped, (until that also caught in my throat)... this IS the Titanic! It's called "the Big Piece" and when they show you on a picture of the ship where this BIG piece came from you see how truly MASSIVE the Titanic was. They got this piece up after 2 tries, the first try failed and it sunk back to the bottom, but here after 2 years of conditioning it to the air, and unsalting it, it sits for all to see! OMG, talk about a moving moment!
that dark bottle in the center is a Champagne bottle, the cork is badly eaten away... but it is still 3/4 full of champagne!

when you enter you get a ticket with a name on it, and at the end you check if you survived. Maddie and I did.... Dean didn't.... just like on the ship... Women and Children first....

then onto another "graveyard" but a happy one... no people were harmed in this grave! And it is much more colorful! We were denied this exhibit last time too, we didn't hear about it until too late and you have to book in advance, so all we got to do was climb on the wall like a cat... ok, I was the only one to climb, to see what I could over the fence.... so this year, I got to walk amongst all the glorious glass of yesteryear's! The Neon Museum just put up their new sign weeks ago.

my favorite "sign" the Silver Slipper.... In 87 when I was here, we saw a show at that Hotel, now it's just a leveled area awaiting new life. Glad the shoe survived!

and the coolest piece of history here, the Moulin Rouge. It was the only Hotel back in the 50's that was integrated. Sammy Davis jr. would play in Vegas at the Sands or various hotels, but after his show he was whisked out, he wasn't aloud to stay at the hotels he played at. So him and the rest of his Rat Pack would head over to the Moulin Rouge. The Hotel did great business, and had a huge following... but it only lasted 6 months.... something tells me the mob at the time wasn't happy about all the business leaving the strip. So the Hotel sat... for many many years, the hotel had 2 new owners, but the hotel never opened, it also suffered 3 fires... then this year, it had it's final day and burned to the ground. Ending the saga of Moulin Rouge. This sign was removed by the Neon Museum one week before this tragedy. Thankfully the sign will live on.

another cool "sign" the 2nd lamp from the Aladdin Hotel. The first lamp is lit on Freemont street.

Maddie, Dean, me, Shiela and Barry. 2 years later, we got our tour :-)

then over to more Vegas history. The Nevada test site museum. Funny how naive we are at times. Here the gvt. is testing bombs and what do the people of the town do? Why they have a picnic of course and watch the blast! Vegas was filled with bomb paraphernalia at the time, drinks, food, comics, even postcards had atomic names or pictures.

there was even a "Miss Atomic" complete with cloud burst bathing suit!! The museum was pretty interesting.

and another favorite... told you this was my favorite day, the CSI experience. There were 3 different cases you could choose to solve, so we all chose different ones. Maddie's was cool, a car crashed thru a house....

mine had a dead waitress outside a casino....
and Dean's had an uncovered skeleton in the desert....

all very kewl cases, we had to compare finger prints, DNA, test bullets... CSI-ey stuff, it was fun! Then afterwards to top it off, we got to pose in Grissom's office. In the show Grissom has the same camera as us, so we used it as a prop!

and the day isn't over yet. We went to the Coke store, and the M&M store. Pick a color any color of M&M's!

thru more casino's and shopping malls. This was the Aladdin at one time, now Planet Hollywood. When it was the Aladdin this shopping area was called.... yep you guessed it, the Desert passage. This ship still bears the name. Now it is Miracle Mile. This was a great shopping area!!
And that was our day :-)