Vegas Vacation: Days 3-4

As disappointed as I was for the Grand Canyon trip to get cancelled, sleeping until we woke up was a welcome luxury after waking up so early to be at the Hoover Dam the day before. We did eventually decide we could go without food no longer, so made our way toward the back of the Wynn resort near where the golf course, cabanas and pool are located and were seated at the Terrace Pointe Cafe. Had it been a little warmer and not so breezy, it would have been a beautiful day to be seated out on the restaurant's back patio overlooking the pool. The restaurant was open and bright with tons of sunlight streaming in. It almost felt like summertime! We ordered a pitcher of peach sangria which was a little too sweet to have more than one glass (pitcher = mistake). We each ordered the tomato bisque, and while Sean had the pulled pork sliders, I opted for an Oriental salad (sans mandarin oranges, of course). My meal was light and delicious and I was ready to get out and enjoy the day!

We decided while it was so nice outside, we'd go for a walk down the Strip and see some of the casinos I had not had the opportunity to go inside on my previous work trips to Vegas - in particular, Paris and New York, New York. I thought Paris was SO cute inside, and although I've never been to Paris, I'd like to think the quaint, old-world sort of feel happening in the casino is at least comparable to what the real Paris looks like. One thing I liked about the casino is that all the different clusters of table games were under canopies that had been named - it would be tough for someone to get lost in the casino with each area labeled so clearly. We sat down at the circular bar on the casino floor and had a few drinks before deciding to move along. Next up was New York, New York. This casino was much further down the Strip than I anticipated, and truth be told, now that I've seen the inside of it (nothing special if you ask this semi-New Yorker), it wasn't worth the long hike. The only real thing to do in the casino as far as I could tell was ride the roller coaster, but at this point we were running a little short on time and headed back to the Encore.

The circular bar and cute street scene where we spent a couple hours in Paris:

When the trip to Arizona had to be called off, I was able to make a quick call and set up a couple passes to the sold out Motley Crue show at the Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. This was the last night of the band's 12-night, month-long residency at the casino, making them the first rock band to ever do a residency in Las Vegas. The cab ride from the Encore to the Hard Rock was much further than I remembered it being from my first trip to Vegas, and the traffic was intense. When we finally arrived at the casino, it was swarming with Motley Crue fans! Working with the band, this was pretty exciting to see (and being a normal human being, this was borderline terrifying). We made our way across the casino floor to Pink Taco, where we wanted to grab a quick dinner. There was a 20-30 minute wait for a table, but we were doing okay with time (and Mexican food comes out quickly, so we decided to wait it out). We were seated in 20 or 25 minutes, ordered some margaritas and food and were in and out in less than an hour. When we exited the restaurant, the hallway outside was wall-to-wall people, lined up waiting to get into the show. Yikes! We made our way to the will-call window to pick up our passes, and then headed backstage to say hi to the tour and production managers. With the show about to start, we filled up our cups backstage with complimentary beer and took up our position at the sound board. The show has had a few changes since the last time I saw the band, and although I'm not particularly a fan of the music, there is no denying it is a well-produced, high-energy show.

Motley takes a bow:

When the show ended, we wandered out into the casino to grab a couple drinks and chatted with a few Motley Crue fans who sat down next to us. It had been another long day, so after a while it was time to head back to the Encore and get some sleep. On Monday, we were able to once again sleep until we woke up, checked out, grabbed a quick lunch off the Strip and then did the one final thing I had been wanting to do in Las Vegas - see the Welcome to Las Vegas sign!

Mission accomplished:


It was now time to head to the airport, drop off the rental car and catch my flight back to New York. My trip back was sadly in coach, so it felt much longer. I didn't arrive back at JFK until after midnight on Tuesday morning, but fortunately there was no shortage of cabs at this hour and I was home and sound asleep in my bed within an hour.

This was definitely the most fun I've had in Vegas - obviously getting to do only fun things as opposed to work things seriously changes my perspective. I still don't think I ever need to go back, but I'm glad I got to have such a fun, relaxing time to at least make me feel a little more love towards Sin City.

My trip:


"Viva Las Vegas with your neon flashin'
And your one armbandits crashin'
All those hopes down the drain
Viva Las Vegas turnin' day into nighttime
Turnin' night into daytime
If you see it once
You'll never be the same again." - Viva Las Vegas, Elvis Presley

Miles Traveled Today: 2,526
Total Miles Traveled: 34,109

Vegas Vacation: Day 2

On Saturday morning, we were up early to get to the Hoover Dam. We ordered breakfast via room service and were then on our way! After reading Yelp reviews online, I had made the executive decision that we would do the pricier "Hoover Dam Tour" (with a price tag of $30/person) rather than just the Powerplant Tour ($8/person). The descriptions provided on the Hoover Dam's website along with the multitude of Yelp reviews convinced me the extras added to the Hoover Dam Tour would be worth it - after all, this is probably a place one only visits once, so why not just do it right the first time?

We were originally thinking we'd just hit the Hoover Dam on the way to the Grand Canyon on Sunday morning (you literally have to drive over it to get to the Grand Canyon), but we wanted to have lots of time at the Grand Canyon (and the 4-5 hour drive would obviously slow us down), so we decided since the Hoover Dam is only about an hour outside of Vegas in Boulder City, it would be best to just do it on its own, since neither of us are gamblers and we'd be looking for something to do on Saturday anyways! Sean had rented a car (a Mustang!) for the weekend at the airport, so we had the flexibility to change up the itinerary a little bit.

While the Powerplant Tour tickets can be purchased online, the full dam tour can only be purchased at the visitor center and are first come, first serve beginning at 9:00am (the first Dam Tour is at 9:30am). The website indicated several hours will be sold out at a time, and reviews all indicated the later in the day you arrived, the longer you'd end up waiting for available tour times, so our goal was to get there right when they opened. Apparently driving an hour the wrong direction upon leaving Vegas is not the best way to make this happen - we were nearly at the California state line before determining we were definitely going the wrong way (ultimately, we blamed the valet at the Encore for not giving us very detailed directions on how to get to the correct highway). The drive out the "wrong" direction of Vegas really accentuated how barren that land is...we joked several times about how many people must be buried out there.

Once we turned around, we were there in no time and were making the loop around Lake Mead (such a scenic view!) and pulling into the parking deck at the Hoover Dam ($7 for parking, a popular complaint in the Yelp reviews) by 10:30am. We went straight to the visitor's center, where there is airport-type security to get in, to buy our tickets - the next available time was 12:45pm - so we had a couple hours to kill before we'd be able to begin the tour. There were some exhibits inside the visitor's center (a la carte admission to the visitor's center is $8) which we looked at quickly, but most of it was very technical about the inner-workings of the generators and pumps, and these exhibits didn't hold my interest for very long. There should be a sign warning "Engineers Only" in that area! We watched the 10-minute film about the history of the dam, which I enjoyed. I must admit, for an official U.S. National Historic Landmark, I didn't really know any of the history about the dam, and it was interesting to learn how many people had been put to work building it during such a depressed time in the country. After the film ended, we headed outside and walked around the dam to take some photos; it was a sunny, warm day and a perfect day to be outside! One of the most striking things about the grounds is the art-deco style all the buildings were designed in.

View of the dam:

There is a cafe just outside the gates of the visitor's center (which meant we'd have to go through security again), so we exited, had a quick lunch and got some souvenirs, and then headed back toward the visitor's center to make sure we had enough time to get through the security line again (which had lengthened considerably since we first arrived two hours ago) and went to the tour meeting point.

We had a small group of perhaps 12 people, and after a few 'dam jokes' by our tour guide, we were piling into the elevator and heading down into the dam for our 1-hour tour. We first met up with a larger group (who had only paid for the Powerplant Tour) and were led down a tunnel originally drilled in the 1930s for construction and taken into the penstock viewing area, where we got to see the giant, 30-diameter pipes carrying as much as 90,000 gallons every second from Lake Mead to the dam's hydroelectric generators, which are creating electricity that is being sent to not only Las Vegas, but also southern California and Arizona. An interesting fact we learned is that the dam has not only paid for itself thanks to selling the electricity, but that it is the only government project that is actually turning a profit. Another interesting point that was made was that this huge dam not only came in under budget and time (it took only 5 years to construct), but that the more modern (and simple) bypass bridge across the way took seven years to complete and was over budget. My how government projects have changed! After a quick stop at the penstock viewing, we were taken back up in an elevator to a balcony overlooking a large room filled with 17 huge generators and people actually working at the powerplant.

The bypass bridge over the Colorado River:

At this point, the "full dam tour" group was separated from the "powerplant only" tour and taken through a back door and down several long, winding corridors dating back to the 1930s. These are rarely seen areas of the dam (due in no small part to the high price tag, I'm sure!) We clambered into a much smaller elevator and were taken much further into the dam - at this point I think we were near the base - and started walking down more long corridors. One of the interesting things our guide pointed out to us were the screws and bars that had been placed every 50 feet or so in the corridors. They were placed right next to each other so that if the structural integrity of the dam began to fail, you'd be able to see the screws were no longer aligned with each other and the walls were shifting. Our guide did note that while this would be a very bad sign, he has no idea what the plan is to fix it...ha! Some other cool markings that were pointed out to us were where black chalk had traced over cracks and then dated (60-70 years old!), so that workers could monitor cracks and know if they were getting bigger.

Probably the highlight of being in the Hoover Dam was being taken into a small tunnel that serves as a vent. We were allowed to walk all the way to the vent and look out - we could see the river, Black Canyon and the Dam Bypass Bridge straight ahead. We were literally inside the downstream face of the dam!

The photo I took when I stuck my camera out of the vent and turned it up - the steep wall of the dam towering over us:


The last stop on the tour was down a dark corridor where we were shown a set of stairs that went down as far as the eye could see, and then turning around and seeing stairs that literally looked like they had no end. Definitely made me glad I don't work in this part of the dam...that would be a stairmaster exercise like none other!

The never-ending stairs:


At this point, we were lead back up to the visitor's center, and the tour was over. We got back in the car and drove approximately a mile to the entrance of the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, also known as the Hoover Dam Bypass. The bridge was completed in 2010 to alleviate the bottle-necking into the Hoover Dam and give non-tourists a way to get around the dam quickly. Sean had been to the Hoover Dam prior to the bypass being built, and was amazed at what a difference it made. It was much windier on the bridge so we didn't stay long, but we were provided an awesome view of the Hoover Dam:

At this point our Hoover Dam adventure was over, so we hopped in the car and headed back to Vegas. We went straight to the Mirage Resort & Casino to pick up our tickets for the Beatles LOVE show later that night so we wouldn't have to deal with the will-call line at showtime (which did turn out to be monstrous...this was a smart decision!). After fetching the tickets and making a quick stop in the Beatles souvenir store (so much Beatles merchandise...I had to pull myself out of there!), we sat down at Rhumbar across from the hotel's check-in area, which was a cool Caribbean-inspired lounge, and had a few fruity drinks before going back to the Encore to get ready for dinner.

We left our hotel at 6:00pm to head over to the Palazzo for dinner at Mario Batali's Carnevino restaurant, where we had a 6:30pm reservation. We allowed extra time because we decided we were in walking distance, and with it being a little chilly now that the sun had gone down, it was pretty easy to stay indoors almost the entire way, walking through the Venetian along the cute indoor canal where people were taking gondola rides.

Indoor gondola ride at the Venetian:

We were seated immediately and ordered a bottle of red wine that was one of my favorites I've ever tasted - I'm still trying to remember what it was so will hopefully be able to fill that in at some point! The restaurant was large and the tables were far apart so that you felt like you were the only one in the restaurant. The service was exquisite and our waiter was extremely knowledgeable about the menu and able to make good recommendations, which we did take. We began with the chopped salad that was fresh and delicious with beans, parmesan, peppers and a light vinaigrette; the bowl they brought out was for the table to share and we couldn't even finish it between the two of us. For our entree, we had the dry aged bone-in ribeye for two, which was perhaps the largest cut of meat I'd ever seen at 32 oz. It was brought out to our table on a tray and carved in front of us. The bone was then sat on the table as some sort of monument to the feat we were about to undertake. We also ordered some of the sauteed shiitake mushrooms and asparagus, which proved to just be too much food. SO. MUCH. STEAK. I think the ribeye for 2 could also pass as a ribeye for 3 or 4! By the time dinner was over, I think we both needed to be rolled out of there.

Carnevino:

We then made the short walk over to the Mirage and got in the massive line waiting to get into the theatre for the Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil show. We had been advised that the theatre was a very odd shape so trying to get seats as close to the stage as possible might not be the most advantageous strategy. Our seats were a little further back and upon sitting down didn't seem like they were in a great spot - there were huge nets up splitting the stage into four pieces and one of them seemed to be blocking our view pretty substantially. However, as soon as the show began, the nets dropped and we had a clear view of the entire stage. I don't think getting seats closer to the stage would have been a bad thing, but our seats were a little less expensive and still fantastic. There was a lot of stuff going on way up in the air, so had we been down lower near the stage, our necks may have been a little sore from looking up the whole show. This being my first Cirque show, I wasn't totally sure what to expect but was very excited! The entire show was so beautifully put together - I was already familiar with the soundtrack so knew I would enjoy all the music, and each Beatles song had it's own performance to go along with it. While I am a bit dubious about the over-arching plot of the show as a whole, if you just look at each song as it's own little performance and not worry about trying to piece together the entire story, I think you'll find it much more enjoyable (as I did). There were some really crazy stunts and there was so much going on at all times (just like a circus), that it was so difficult to decide what to watch the entire show! Probably my favorite single moment in the whole show was when they performed "Something." A man was doing some really 'bendy' interpretative dance on the floor, while several women with drapey dresses on would swoop in on trapezes around him. It was gorgeous!

When the show ended, we made our way back out and headed back to the Encore. By this point, we had been checking the weather at the Grand Canyon for Sunday all day and had determined tomorrow was just not going to be a good time to go. It was going to be cold, possibly heavy snowstorms (definitely rain) and extremely gusty winds (40-50 mph). Nothing about that sounded like the Grand Canyon out in the middle of the desert I had pictured, and even if the canyon looked beautiful in the snow, it would be too uncomfortable to stay out and hike around the way I had really envisioned it. There was also some concern the access road to the canyon would be closed because of the weather...it was just too far of a drive to make to not even be able to get in. And despite having hotel reservations in Flagstaff, we decided there wasn't enough to do in Flagstaff to warrant leaving Las Vegas. So that was that...when we got back to the Encore, Sean was able to convince them to let us book our suite for an extra night, and off to bed we went.

Miles Traveled Today: 57
Total Miles Traveled: 31,583

Vegas Vacation: Day 1

With a 3-day weekend for President's Day, this seemed like the perfect weekend to go to Las Vegas for the first time as vacation, as opposed to the two previous times when I had to be there for work. Despite having sworn off Vegas forever after my trip last July, when Sean offered to fly me out for a fun-filled weekend with a show and trips to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon, I couldn't resist - a trip to Vegas with almost no Vegas sounded perfect!

Sean was generous enough to not only get my flight, but he also got me a first-class ticket on Delta...I was pretty excited considering flying first-class is something I have not yet experienced in my 28 years! The price difference is significant, but after doing it once, especially on a cross-country flight like this one, it's hard to imagine ever going back...I've been spoiled! I ordered a car service to take me out to JFK Airport on Friday afternoon; the last time I tried getting a cab outside my office on a Friday afternoon was a total disaster, so I learned my lesson. We hit almost no traffic, and I was heading into the airport less than an hour after I left my office. Jumping to the front of the security line and being the first person to board the plane were only the beginning of the perks I've been missing out on by flying coach all this time. My seat was huge, and there was so much space between me and the guy sitting next to me...it made me wonder how I've lived without this for so long! As soon as we were seated, I was already being hit up with complimentary drinks, which I gladly accepted. I really wanted to nap, but I think I was so excited about the whole first-class 'thing,' or missing the flight attendant come around with another drink, or just looking so forward to actually getting to Vegas, that I never did manage to doze off. I did get plenty of vodka sodas, though. :)

A couple hours into the flight, a tablecloth was put down on my foldout table, and it was set with salt and pepper shakers and real silverware. My drink was also brought out in a glass this time around. So posh! There were a couple options for dinner, and I went with the vegetarian lasagna. It came out with a salad, several rolls of bread and some sort of chocolate pie. I couldn't believe all this has been going on right under my nose all these years! The food was delicious, the way I remember airplane food used to be. This was already an amazing start to the trip.

When I landed in Vegas, Sean was there to fetch me, and we headed back to the Encore at the Wynn, where through his connections he'd been able to upgrade to a beautiful suite in this more upscale wing of the Wynn. We had a beautiful view of Las Vegas from the room, and everything from the curtains to the "Do Not Disturb" light could be controlled from the bed, so it was a pretty amazing suite all around. After getting settled in to the room, we headed downstairs and walked through the Encore and then on to the Wynn. This is such a beautiful hotel! There is a butterfly theme throughout, and all the decorations are so colorful and fun. We went to a small bar that overlooked a terrace where a light show was happening once an hour, so we ended up timing it just right to grab a drink and see the short show before heading to dinner.

One of the pretty walkways in the Wynn on our way to dinner:

We went with a casual option for our first night, the Society Cafe, which turned out to be quite a nice restaurant, and a step above what I would classify as "casual." We ordered the mac 'n cheese bites (amazing - could have gotten four orders of this and just made a meal out of them!) and a shrimp cocktail with some of the biggest shrimp I've ever seen, and then I had the filet sliders as my entree, which were delicious! So it was somewhat "casual fare," but the restaurant was ornate and could have just as easily gotten away with serving a much fancier style of food. By the time we were finished with dinner, the time zones were throwing me off kilter and I was exhausted, so went off to bed - we had plans to be up early Saturday morning to head to the Hoover Dam!

Miles Traveled Today: 2,526
Total Miles Traveled: 31,526

Catching Up

I've done some traveling since my last update, but my trips were to places I've already written about, so I'm going to just do one post to quickly re-cap this most recent mileage!

November 2-6, 2011 | Birmingham and Auburn, AL
On November 2, I flew home to Birmingham to spend a couple days with my family before heading to Auburn for a friend's wedding. On November 3, my mom and I went to the BJCC (Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center) for the annual Christmas Village Festival. Admission to the festival is $10, and there are literally hundreds of booths set up with everything from clothing to candles to Christmas wreaths and anything you can possibly imagine in between. It's pretty overwhelming, but in just a couple hours we were able to check out nearly all the booths. Most of the booths are filled with homemade trinkets, and while some of it can border on a little junky, there were some really great booths with delicious samples of teas and snacks, and I actually did purchase a wonderful scented candle and picked out a pretty handmade scarf that was later gifted to me at Christmas. If you are going in with plans to buy lots of things, this would definitely be an all day event, but we took the more casual approach of just wandering around and looking at the booths without actually purchasing that much. There was also a food court set up on the lower level of the village, so we ate lunch and then headed home.

On November 4, I drove down to Auburn with my friend Mark for a good friend's wedding. It had been two years since I'd been to Auburn, so just wandering around Toomer's Corner, grabbing a drink at Bodega and showing my New York friends around campus was a breath of fresh air! And of course we got giant margaritas at Acapulco's, where so many of my Auburn nights began, before the wedding and went to the War Eagle Supper Club (rated one of the Top 50 CollegeBars by Playboy) after the wedding and reception...there are some things that just can't be missed when I'm in the Loveliest Village! The weather was warm and breezy in Auburn, so everything from the pre-wedding brunch out on the patio of the Johnston's home to the outdoor wedding reception at the Jule Smith Collins Museum was lovely.

The Jule Smith Collins Museum at sunset:


Miles Traveled Today: 2,140 (in black on the map)

December 21, 2011 - January 2,2012 | Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA
On Wednesday, December 21, I flew home to be with my family for the Christmas holiday. While we had a few things planned for our time at home, this was primarily a trip for relaxation and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather down south! On December 22, my mom and I had a fun girl's day that began with a lunchtime tea at the Townhouse Tea Shoppe in Mt. Laurel. It was actually so unseasonably warm on this day that there were tornado warnings all over town - crazy! The restaurant requires reservations, but as we discovered when we arrived, this is not due to overwhelming demand or a lack of seating, but rather so they know how many scones they are making for the day. Although Mt. Laurel is still several miles away even after turning off Highway 280, I thought the tea shoppe was quaint, quiet and exactly the kind of experience you are looking for when you sign up for a traditional English tea and would certainly recommend it for someone looking for an afternoon tea in the Birmingham area. While there were people who arrived after us just ordering a proper lunch (all light fare: salads, soups and sandwiches), we were there for the tea, scones, little sandwiches and sweets!

With our three-tiered tea service:


On December 23, my best friend Tiffany came down from Huntsville for our annual reunion which always consists of Mexican food (this year we went with Superior Grill) and then decided to try out a relatively new (at least to us) "girl's night out" activity called Sips 'n' Strokes. Because we had to be at S&S at 7pm, dinner was an early affair this year, and we just happened to luck into 2-for-1 margarita happy hour...just what we needed! When we arrived at Sips 'n' Strokes, we chose the painting each of us would be doing, were instructed on how many 'squirts' of each color of paint to put on our cardboard, got an apron and some tips on how to start and then got to work! The uncorking of the bottle of wine we brought was in there somewhere. :) There are these sort of painting classes all over the country (none in New York of course), but I would recommend it to anyone! I don't consider myself even remotely artistic, and I was thrilled with how well my angel turned out...getting to down a bottle of red with my friend while painting made it all the more enjoyable:


On December 26, I decided to make a quick drive over to Atlanta to see some friends who would not be in town when I came back for New Year's Eve. I stayed with my best friend Nicole, who recently moved into a house right next to Piedmont Park in midtown (read: close to everything!). We first made the short drive to Decatur for dinner at the Iberian Pig, which was a delicious Spanish tapas restaurant. I had never been to Decatur before, but it is such a cute little town! It is very young and reminds me a lot of Hoboken with the music venues and trendy restaurants and bars on quiet sidewalks. We ordered pitchers of sangria and tons of food for the table to share - it was a delicious meal in a beautiful restaurant...perfect for girls' night out! We then walked a couple doors down to the Square Pub for a few drinks, where one of Nicole's friends was having a beer tapping for Free Spirit, a beer created in honor of his sister who was murdered this past summer. Bars close at 2am in Atlanta (never thought I'd miss that!), so it was a relatively early night.

The girls at Iberian Pig:

The next morning, I took my time getting ready and then met Sean at the Varsity for lunch. The Varsity is a must-see if it's your first time in Atlanta, as it is the world's largest drive-in restaurant. I've been here a few times, and while it's really just a dirty Atlanta diner, it's a fun spot with a lot of energy, especially during the fall, as it's situated right on Georgia Tech's campus. Inside, it's much a sea of total chaos, and you'll want to know what you are ordering before you get up to bat (think Soup Nazi with hot dogs and burgers). My personal favorite is the orange slush drink they serve! Finding seating is no easy task, but if you keep walking all the way to the back of the restaurant, something will usually open up. After lunch, I headed back to Birmingham, which is really more of a 3-hour drive than the 2-hour drive I've long considered it to be now thanks to all the construction on I-20.

On New Year's Eve, I returned to Atlanta once again, this time with my family to watch my Auburn Tigers take on the Virginia Cavaliers in the Chick-fil-A Bowl at the Georgia Dome. After grabbing a quick bite to eat at the Varsity (of course), walking around the fan area outside the Georgia Dome for a while and discovering there were no TVs for my dad to watch the Georgia Tech bowl game (major error on the part of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, we all agreed), we headed to a nearby Taco Mac at the CNN Center where we could get some drinks and watch the other games on TV.

The game was lots of fun, and Auburn came away with a dominating win just before midnight: 43-24. As soon as the game was over, we raced back over to Nicole's house where we'd left the car (knowing parking at the stadium would not only be insanity, but also expensive) on the Marta and got back just in time to countdown to midnight and grab a glass of champagne! I also bid my parents adieu, as they had decided to just make the trip back to Birmingham that night with the complete scarcity of hotels in the area. After a little while, the party began to wind down, so I went back with Sean to the Four Seasons Hotel, which is a truly luxurious hotel situated in midtown Atlanta. The New Year's Eve party was winding down in the hotel bar, so we were able to go in and get a few drinks before heading up to the room and crashing.

Four Seasons lobby:

The next morning, we ordered some room service (I had the Belgian waffle with peaches...delish!), and a few hours later met up with my brother who had stayed with some friends across town. We grabbed a quick lunch with them, and then made the drive back to Birmingham. And the next afternoon, I flew back to the frozen tundra that is New York in January!

Miles Traveled Today: 2,506 (in grey on the map)

January 13-16, 2012 | Atlantic City, NJ
Just like last year, my MLK holiday weekend was once again spent at the Borgata in Atlantic City. And like last year, the bus out of New York on Friday after work was the mode of transportation. We arrived at the hotel a little before 10pm and after our quick VIP check-in to our suite (upgrade from last year!), immediately went on a hunt for dinner. After a quick loop around the casino floor, we settled on Izakaya, which was a delicious Japanese restaurant with dark lighting and a very modern feel. We ordered several rolls for the table as well as some tasty cocktails. The next night we had a sold out shows at the Event Center, so although most of the afternoon was spent getting organized and set up for the show, we did find time to escape away from the Borgata so I could show Sean the boardwalk and grab some drinks at Caesar's Palace. We also tried our luck with the slot machines, but I think at best we came out with net winnings and losses of $0. We also hung around the casino in their sports bar for a bit watching the New York Giants beat up on the Green Bay Packers...and then it was time to head back to the Borgata for the show.

Sunday was a lazy day of sleeping and eating with another sold out show. After the show, the promoter and some of the comics, 'friends of the show' and I went over to the more luxurious hotel on the other side of the Borgata, the Water Club, to the Sunroom lounge right off the lobby. This was actually my favorite part of the Borgata that I've seen. While it is indoors, it gives the illusion of being outside in a lush tropical forest with waterfalls. It was also a welcome reprieve from all the smoking and the loud music in the main casino room, so we had a few drinks here before heading off to bed. We were up very early on Monday morning to take advantage of my boss' offer to drive us to the train station that we could take back to New York. It should come as no surprise that most of that train ride was spent dozing off, and the rest of that day is a little bit of a sleepy-eyed blur.

Sunroom at the Water Club (in the light of day):


Miles Traveled Today: 254 (in red on the map)

My trip(s):


Total Miles Traveled: 29,000