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 :-)