Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

We had made plans earlier in the week to get together with Juli, Roy, Nicolas, and Gavin, Josh’s sister and family. We met them at TI for breakfast at 10am. Juli and Roy live in Las Vegas and every Sunday they have breakfast at one of the casino buffets. They make their rounds and have gotten to know which are better than others, but still have quite a few to go! Juli told us that TI has a good buffet and she was right. They have all the breakfast items you could possibly think of and then if you pick your time right, they bring out sushi along with the lunch menu! While not trying the sushi and lunch items and only sticking to breakfast items we were very pleased with the service and overall experience at this buffet. It was great to see Juli and her family and we hope next time we are in Las Vegas to spend some more time with them!

Since Josh fell in love he just couldn’t bring himself to part with “Baby Girl #2”, yes the Mercedes. He tried to convince Roy over breakfast that keeping the car for a second day was well worth it. Being that we had plans that night. It would cost so much to take taxis everywhere, so why not keep the car for a second day and valet it! Perfect sense right? Well you don’t mess with a guy and his car, so we did end up keeping “Baby Girl #2” for a second day.

We really didn’t have anything planned until later in the evening, so we decided to take some time away from the strip and pick a point and drive… this was lots of fun! Oh and Josh finally did give in and permit Megan to get behind the wheel. Picking a point was rather easy because on one of the “mountains” there was a figure in the shape of a “B”, so we drove towards that “B” as far was we could go. We managed to get rather close, but not close enough to figure out what it was. We did however come across many water filtration areas.

We decided to have a little more fun and walk through a brand new house, why not! It was interesting to see how the style of houses are much different in the west where it is hot then here in the east. The houses are mostly built all on one level and the shingles on the roofs are not what we are used to here, they are lighter in color. The sales lady who spoke with us when entering the first demo house, really tried to impress us with the fact that their houses are all built on a 1/3 of an acre. We tried not to laugh because well a 1/3 of an acre isn’t much to those of us here in the east, but the people living in Vegas a 1/3 of an acre is a lot of land for most houses are built right on top of each other, literally like you are living on the streets of Philadelphia, you look out your window and you can see your neighbor next door cooking dinner.

That night we had a evening at The Wynn, the newest hotel on the strip. This hotel cost 3 billion dollars to build. We had 7:30pm dinner reservations, but being that we made such impeccable time, not having to stand around and wait for a cab nor having to take that time to hand over another $20, we had a cocktail at a lounge on the casino floor. We then made our way to Bartolottas for dinner. Arriving a few minutes before 7:30 we planned on getting a second cocktail at the bar of the restaurant, the hostess however said she could seat us. We asked if there was any outside seating available, for when we made the reservation online, the outside part of this restaurant is one of the reasons we wanted to eat there. Seated right next to the 1/2 moon pond, we were greeted by a school of koi. It was so funny that they all swam over to us as we sat down at our table. The unique thing about the pond is it had silver balls, yes silver balls floating on the top of the water. When the light hit the balls just right they really sparkled and provided us with a perfect atmosphere. After our drink order was taken the second of our two wait staff arrived at our table with an arrangement of fresh fish, one of the fish was actually still alive and was bouncing around on the plate as the waiter was giving his demonstration. We found it very odd that at this Italian restaurant fish was such a big part of the presentation. When opening our menus we were in for an even bigger surprise as there were 2 whole pages of Appetizers and one small section on Entrees, along with a section devoted solely to fish. Is something wrong here, we were expecting Italian!?!?! Ordering an Appetizer to share, we started to filter through the menu for something, remember Josh doesn’t care for that much fish. Josh ended up ordering a veal dish, so he was happy. Megan, decided to go with fish. Taking our order our waiter informed Megan that fish is only prepared for two, so she ends up going with an Appetizer. You could take any Appetizer and turn it into an Entree. In the end our dinner was really good, we were just expecting Italian and ended up at a Fish served for Two restaurant, not really our thing.

With a little time to spare prior to our show we both ordered a Long Island Ice Tea at the Center Lounge. The Wynn is known for there many waterfalls. There is one waterfall that you can see from the Center Lounge and at night the waterfall changes colors, so we lucked out in seeing something out of the ordinary and something we knew nothing about. After our cocktail we made our way to the theater.

We were well aware that we had awesome seats for this show, we were even aware that we could get wet, but when handed a towel we began to wonder just what we had gotten ourselves into. Front row seats and right in front of us a gigantic pool of water. Yes, Le Reve takes place in water. While we have thought long and hard just how to describe this show, it is something that isn’t easily done. So if you are in the mood for a really good show, mesmerizing and nonstop entertainment, please take our word when we say, this is a show for you! The entire show is acrobatics done on and within stages, ropes, moving scenery, and let us not forget water!

Off to the Rio we go….we did not give up hope in making it to the Voodoo Lounge, even though it was 12:30am, we were going! We arrive at the Valet to hear the famous words “are you a guest here” meaning are you staying here. We found that a lot of the Valet lots fill up quickly and some of the casinos need to close valet parking and will only permit you to valet your car if you are a guest of that hotel. Being that we were not staying at Rio one would think we would have to Self Park our car, wrong, we had that special little blue card with little stars… so we pulled that baby out and our car was given nothing but special treatment while we enjoyed the Rio.

Locating the VooDoo Lounge was easy however we weren’t so sure how easy it would be to follow through with our Friday night “Star Story”?!?! No problems, right up we go to the 54th floor, known as the VooDoo Lounge, no lines for us! Once inside the lounge we make our way to the outside area and head to the bar. This bartender sure knew how to make a good drink! Taking in our surroundings we noticed a roped off area where couches and small tables outlined the parameter of the deck, hmmm how does one get one of those couches? Josh nicely asks one of the Bouncers and he politely answers that the area was for groups and they had to buy at least one bottle, or do you have a Diamond Card and Josh replies “well what about this” and don’t you know “Stars” came through again! We received our own couch, our own waitress and all had to do was sit and enjoy the site of Las Vegas lights all around us. We did feel a little bad for we did kick some people off the couch, guess they didn’t have “Stars”!