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What else did you do in Vegas...

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is not a radish
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Oct 23, 2005
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... besides TAM-related events? There was a lot of talk about sites to see and things to do, so let's hear about them!

Our extracurricular activities:

O -- I've never been that big of a Cirque fan, but people kept saying that we just had to see O, that it was the best of the bunch. Well, I guess that might be true, but I still left feeling rather unsatisfied. The acrobatics and staging are genuinely impressive, but all-in-all I still have to give it an "eh" rating. If you're looking for water-based entertainment, we found le Reve (which we saw last year) to be far, far better.

Prince -- We caught the Purple One at his Friday night show and it was quite spectacular. Love him or hate him, it's hard to deny he remains one of top performers in music and he puts on a show like no other -- and watching that show from 10 feet away is amazing. The only thing that sucked was having to stand for a good three hours before he took the stage.

Red Rock Trip -- Awesome scenery. Cold, biting wind. Completely insufficient jacket. Definitely planning to go back in warmer weather.
 
I went looking for meteorites and found fossils. :) But oh my, what a pain adding that weight to my bags already full of book purchases! I tried to pare the rocks down in my room Sun. night, if any of you on the 6th floor heard a lot of pounding. ;)

I also went to a couple of thrift stores looking for treasure, but the store's stock of merchandise was pretty sad. Perhaps in more affluent parts of town there are better finds. That's the story here in the NW USA.
 
skeptigirl said:
I went looking for meteorites and found fossils. :) But oh my, what a pain adding that weight to my bags already full of book purchases! <snip>.
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Why didn't pop into a UPS store and ship them back home? That's what I do when traveling. Last time I went to San Fran, I shipped my purchases home before I left. I arrived home on Sunday. The parcel arrived on Monday.
 
I went to play blackjack at the Monte Carlo (the hotel, not the Riviera tower), with a friend, went fountain watching at the Bellagio, and went to Hugo's Cellar, which is one of the best restaurants I've been to, Hugo's Cellar, which has been voted "best gourmet restaurant" in Las Vegas many times and is on Wine Spectator's top restaurant list. It was wonderful - I had Chilean Sea Bass en Papillote.

It is the basement of a cheesy hotel - the Four Queens (like the Riviera, only MORE loud slot machines) but it was lovely, quiet, and elegant.
 
I am told the Bellagio has an incredible buffet. Need to investigate that next time.
 
Lynn and I watched with a large crowd of spectators a "jumper" on the MGM sign. Did you know people really don't yell "Jump Jump!" but they do check to see how good the zoom is on their camera?

Of course, we were very HAPPY when we later found out the reason the street was blocked off and there were so many cops was that part of the sign had blown down in the wind, and the "jumper" and "policemen talking him down" were just repairmen.

I ate a 99cent shrimp cocktail at the Riviera cafe that had almost all items priced at 99cents. I felt I had overpaid. But I got to see young Elvis, Old Elvis and a Sammy Davis junior (that is if Sammy had been tall, not able to sing, and fat). Mind you, he was black!

Endless DDR. ENDLESS DDR. And everytime I thought, "there is no one here to see me making a fool of myself" there was. And they always had a camera.

Plus I met "Omar". I was asking Kitten2 if she would like a "BIG brownie". I was saying, "Oh, come on, doesn't that big brownie look good? Don't you want to try a big brownie?" Omar came over to us, pulled up his shirt and patted his six pack abs and said, "Ladies, wouldn't you like to try THIS big brownie?" We ended up really enjoying our time with Omar. He showed us his hands to prove he wasn't "married", and even got Kitten2 to call her sister to see if she would come over to meet him.

Omar was one cool guy. (even after he found out Kitten2 was underage).
 
While not all in Las Vegas, on my TAM 5 trip I managed to:
  • visit New York, seeing the Empire State and UN buildings, and dropping by Ground Zero, and see the Museum of Natural History (excellent)
  • See the Spamalot musical on Broadway
  • visit Boston, seeing MIT, getting a tour of a geology lab and a mass spectrometer in action (v. cool)
  • See Penn and Teller in action
  • See Banachek's impossible-to-believe mentalism act
  • ride a rollercoaster for the first time in years
  • see the Atomic Testing Museum
  • blast the hell out of a target with an MP5
  • See, with Patricio and SquishyDave:
    • Zion NP
    • Lake Powell
    • Monument Valley (awesome)
    • Four Corners (waste of time & money)
    • Meteor Crater
    • Lowell Observatory, with the very instrument that discovered Pluto
    • A star party at the last
Somewhere in all of that, I managed to attend TAM as well...
 
Desktop Icon said:
O -- I've never been that big of a Cirque fan, but people kept saying that we just had to see O, that it was the best of the bunch. Well, I guess that might be true, but I still left feeling rather unsatisfied. The acrobatics and staging are genuinely impressive, but all-in-all I still have to give it an "eh" rating. If you're looking for water-based entertainment, we found le Reve (which we saw last year) to be far, far better.
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We saw O last year and I was less than impressed. God, I freakin' hate clowns...

The acrobatics were great, but I found the whole thing a bit too pretentious for my taste.

This year, we did the Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur. It was fun, although we have a Medieval Times near our house and the horsework and swordplay is waaay better at MT. The story was less lame at MT as well. I hate jesters almost as much as I hate clowns! But the tumblers were way better at Tournament of Kings. All in all, it was a fun evening.
 
All you need is.....

My non TAM highlight was the Beatles cirque du soleil show at the Mirage. I really enjoyed it. I am not much into circus stuff but I made an exception for this.
I also had a cocktail at Bugsy's Bar at the Flamingo which just like Bugsy, has no character! Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville was better.
I was in Vegas a couple of years ago. My highlights then were the Liberace museum and the lion enclosure at MGM Grand.
 
-Shopped for a pair of pants (this is big for me...I hadn't worn pants for about 8 months prior...I DID however wear shorts for that period of time.)
-Bought sharpies at Wallgreens at 2am so that I could get Skepchicks so sign my calendar at the forum party.
-Walked down the strip.
-Went to the Venetian with the express intent of buying that trick Wiseman showed us (the one with the dots on the card) only to find that they sold out...and then later on to find out the Riviera's magic shop had it...but for around $30.
-Collected "porn" by gathering all those cards and news magazines that contain all the scantily clad women.


Yeah...I really didn't do much. It was my first time in Vegas, so next time I'll plan to do more things.
 
My friend & I arrived Thursday evening and left Sunday during The Presentation Of The Papers (sorry, presenters!), so we didn't have much time for cool stuff like the M&M or gun store. But we did manage the Fremont Street Experience (where she bought me spray-paint art as a pre-birthday present), Penn & Teller (where just after I handed a joke book to a neighbor, Penn said to stop passing them around so he could do his mentalism on them), and Hugo's Cellar (the "small" cut of prime rib was enormous!). Oh, and she won about $150 playing dice & cards.
 
I saw the Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Venetian.

I saw dueling pianos at Treasure Island.

I took a small plane to the rim of the Grand Canyon, rode in the front seat of a helicopter to get down to the bottom, then rode a boat a short ways down the river.

I also went to see my friend front his side project band Black Fag for the final show of Punk Rock Bowling, which was over at Sam's Town Casino the same weekend as TAM.

Then there was the usual walking of the strip. Good times!
 
kittynh said:
Endless DDR. ENDLESS DDR. And everytime I thought, "there is no one here to see me making a fool of myself" there was. And they always had a camera.
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DDR?!! How did I miss DDR?? It's one of the few kinetic games I'm good at.

I was seriously unprepared for Vegas and now I'm making a list of things I must do or see next time I'm there:
• The Star Trek Experience at the Hilton
• P&T's show (I don't much care for extravagant magic/illusionist shows, but I'd like to see this)
• The Atomic Testing museum
• The Natural History Museum
•*Sturman museum
• Also, rent a bike and ride around the city to see the residential areas

Has anyone been to the planetarium in North Las Vegas? Is it any good?
 
Gilmar said:
Oh, and she won about $150 playing dice & cards.
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Actually, I lost $6 playing craps at the Nevada Landing in Jean, where we had breakfast Sunday morning. I won $160 playing blackjack, mostly at the Riv, but a bit of it at Circus Circus. I think my total gambling time was about one hour over three days.

Apparently, you are my blackjack good luck charm.

If I believed in good luck charms.

Don't forget that we got up close and personal with the World's Biggest Thermometer in Baker (not to mention the World's Worst Town Motto, too). I can't post pictures yet - would you be so kind as to post the pic of WWTM? Thanks!

HG
 
I didn't do much outside of TAM, this year, besides another round of watching the Freemont Street Experience 4-block-long-screen show thingy, and doing some walking down part of the strip.

In previous years I've seen Cirque shows (Mystere, "O", and KA. And, I happen to like them all, for some reason); Star Trek: The Experience rides (this year I merely had an appetizer at Quarks and did some light gift shopping there); and longer walks down the strip, partaking in several of the activities (free and fee-based) you can do on its 3-some-odd mile length.

Next year I might see "The Beatles: Love", but I am not terribly enthusiastic for that show, like I was for the others: It's gotten some mixed reviews, a lot of hard-core Beatles fans don't like it (I feel their pain: I had to sit through the HHGG movie 3 times!), and the idea of mixing such Cirque antics with Beatles songs disturbs me lightly, for some reason. Maybe I will defect, and watch La Reve (not a Cirque production, but behaves like one) instead.

Oh, and of course, I have to see Penn & Teller perform again! I got to make up for my wrong-day-ticket-buying accident this year.

And, if I am lucky, a bunch of us could go skydiving: Indoor or outdoor, I just don't care anymore.
 
After the conference, Nancy and I had planned to go to the Atomic Testing Museum, and a few other things...we considered the Red Rocks trip but the wind was up and it was cold so we went back to the room to discuss the options available...then we woke up and went to Penn and Teller. After such a great conference, I think we needed the nap more than anything.
 
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