Having been to Las Vegas before (and watching my fair share of reality tv!), I was somewhat familiar with this particular casino/hotel and knew it was known as one of the nicer ones with an amazing pool area. This is also Hugh Hefner's home in Las Vegas, and he owns the penthouse in the hotel. We were all famished by the time we got checked in so made a quick decision to drop off all our bags and then meet back in the lobby to walk to Palms Place and eat breakfast at the high-end restaurant a few of the guys had been to before called Simon. Palms Place is connected to the main Palms hotel and casino by a very long combination of escalators, elevators and corridors. Palms Place is the residential tower, and I definitely noticed more families in this area. Simon looked out over a small, very quiet pool, much different than most of the wild pool scenes I think of when I think of Las Vegas. Our breakfast was delicious (I had a Belgian waffle with mixed berries). Simon at Palms Place:
By this time it was going on 11:00am, and I was anxious not to miss any rays of sun out by the pool, so I hurried back to my room and changed into my swimsuit. It was at this moment that I had the horrible realization all those items taken out of my bag at the Seattle security checkpoint had not been returned. I was missing my sunscreen, contact solution, and numerous other items I use on a daily basis. This upset me SO much. I had already been upset about going through the entire situation to begin with, but now to discover I had checked my bag for no reason and the TSA employee had not even returned my items back into my bag was just crushing to me. I had just bought that sunscreen, and the other things being essentially stolen from me right under my nose were just a hassle...it's not like there are drugstores inside the casino where I could replenish everything. So with complete disappointment, I headed out to the pool and found a stand where I could buy some over-priced $20 sunscreen, lathered up, and spotted an empty chair in a sea of people who looked like they'd been laying out at this pool all summer. With the temperature making this one of the hottest days of the summer at almost 115 degrees and the complete frustration of my morning, I more than deserved a drink at this point, so I ordered a banana daiquiri from the cocktail waitress. Considering the fact that she looked like a really tan model, she was surprisingly pleasant and attentive, fetching me a drink menu and coming around every 10 minutes or so to make sure I was good. I wasn't able to get a great photo of the pool, so here's one I grabbed off the Palms website:
It really was unbearably hot, and without a cloud in the sky, I was a little concerned that even with all the sunscreen I'd put on, my skin might be roasting away. This was pretty much the first sun my body had seen since last summer, so it's not like I had some great base coat to make me think I wasn't going to burn to death out there. I hopped in the pool to cool off for about an hour, staying mostly in the shade. There were blackjack tables in the water, which I thought was pretty fun. A DJ was also setting up, and the pool was getting more and more crowded. I really just wanted to sleep, but again, I was afraid falling asleep in that scorching sun would be a terrible idea, so after only about two and a half hours by the pool, I decided to call it a day. My skin felt really hot, and I just prayed that I wouldn't wake up with blisters all over my body.
I returned to my room (which provided a great view of Las Vegas Boulevard ("The Strip"), took a shower, and passed out in my bed. A few hours later I woke up really wanting to get out to the Strip and maybe find somewhere to eat and explore. Because I had my laptop with me, I was able to do some quick research and discovered the only way to the Strip was a cab that would cost me $20 each way or the Palms shuttle, which was making its last run in about half an hour and would not be making a return trip, so I'd be on my own to get back to the hotel. I also looked up some horseback riding tours outside of Las Vegas I might be able to get to, but discovered I was also too late for any of those. I really could just kick myself - I wish I'd looked at some of those horseback riding tours before I'd gotten to Las Vegas because I absolutely would have spent as much as a couple hundred dollars to take one of those desert horseback rides! I guess that's what I get for not planning out my trip as well as I normally do, but in my defense, I had thought I'd be out by the pool all day. The one productive thing I did get done was I made my car service reservation with Carmel for my JFK arrival. So suffering from complete boredom with nowhere to go, I decided to take a walk through the Palms casino from one end to the other. There really wasn't a whole lot to see, and being a non-gambler, I must say that Las Vegas is perhaps the worst city in the world to be in by myself! The view of the mountains and casinos from my room:
The hotel had provided me with complimentary meals at Bistro Buffet for the duration of my stay, so I finally gave up trying to find anything more appealing and headed to the buffet. I noticed the price on the buffet was pretty outrageous ($20+), so I decided I was getting a pretty good deal and decided to take advantage of this as many times as I could in the next 24 hours. It turned out to be my lucky day because the buffet at the Palms includes free beer and wine. The wine was mediocre at best, but it had been a long, frustrating day and I gladly accepted her multiple refills. Also on the menu at the buffet this Saturday night was shrimp. So I basically gorged on red wine and shrimp cocktails. It didn't really occur to me until well after the fact how disgusting eating seafood in Las Vegas actually is. When I was ready to leave, my waitress filled up a big Styrofoam cup with wine and sent me on my way. Now that's service! It was before 9:00pm and I was feeling particularly lame, especially with this being the Saturday of a holiday weekend (4th of July), and me being in one of the supposedly most exciting, wild cities in the country - and yet here I was, drinking my wine out of a Styrofoam cup and watching a Piers Morgan interview on TV in my room. I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself, so I finished the wine, turned the TV off and went to sleep. Ha! :)
Sunday morning, I was able to sleep until I woke up - much needed! I was also disappointed to see that not only had the color of my skin not changed (I guess there is such a thing as too much sunscreen!), but the sky was overcast and the weather forecast indicated there were going to be some really bad storms rolling through later in the day. Seriously? I got gorgeous, sunny weather in the rainy Pacific Northwest, and now I'm going to get poured on in the middle of the desert? Weird luck, huh? I decided there was only one thing left to do - eat breakfast at the buffet! I stuffed myself (although I wasn't that impressed with the selection and basically made a meal out of hashbrowns and sausage), then came back up to the room to get cleaned up and ready for the show. I headed down to the venue, the Pearl Theater, which was just around the corner from the hotel's elevator bank, before noon to meet with some of the people I'd been emailing and calling for the past few months and do a quick run-through of the venue. Casinos are always so much easier to have shows in - for one, my room is never far away so I don't have to pack a bag of everything I'll need for the entire day! And things just always feel more organized in casinos - room service handles all the backstage catering rather than a third-party company coming in; things like that just make my day and the amount of people I am having to coordinate with infinitely more simple.
After my run-through, I met up with one of the comedians and had a quick salad with him at the 24/7 Cafe in the casino (sorry for ditching you, buffet!). When I headed back down to the venue to finish up some of the prep work, we could all hear the rain pelting what sounded like an aluminum roof above the stage. I headed up stairs to the back entrance of the venue to check out the rain - the wind was blowing hard and the rain was intense - what a rare sight to see in Las Vegas! Fortunately, the rain tapered off before the show started - that would have been incredibly distracting for a comedy show! We had another great show and another late night with me trudging back to my hotel room - that seems to be the norm these days!
This morning, July 4, we all had 7:00am flights back to New York - another early wake up call! I slept like a baby for the duration of the flight except for maybe an hour where I connected to the Delta in-flight wifi and fooled around on my laptop. I landed back at JFK at 2:30pm, and a few minutes later received a call from my driver asking me what I was wearing and that he would be pulling up at the baggage claim doors in about 10 minutes. This sure was less painful than standing in a taxi line that might have taken 30 minutes! We zipped back to my apartment in the city, and I promptly unpacked and went to bed. Another work weekend in the books - and I am leaving with no desire to ever return to Las Vegas!
My trip:
"I'm Leaving Las Vegas
Lights so bright
Palm sweat, blackjack...
Leaving Las Vegas, I'm leaving for good." - Leaving Las Vegas, Sheryl Crow
Miles Traveled Today: 3,656
Total Miles Traveled: 22,655
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