Vegas and the Grand Canyon

It's been a while.... time has just flown by. First Jenny and Frankie came to stay, then Tim came into town for 10 days. You'll see the photos below. We had a great trip and got so much done.

Before we left for Vegas we spent the day before in China Town. We wanted to eat Dim Sum and then I wanted to see the Chinese doctor regarding my knee. The funniest thing that happened that day was that I wanted to eat meat...I'd worked out in the morning and I was flipping hungry. So we ordered some dumplings and ribs, and on the menu we saw "beef triple". Sounded fabulous, or so we thought. We had both imagined three different types of beef in a fantastic sauce. We had terrible service problems in this place, but when the food did arrive it was good. Anyway we kept asking about the "beef triple"....something turned up on our table that looked like furry fettucine (tagliatelle). We asked what it was knowing we hadn't ordered anything like that and was told it was "beef tripe"....yes, that's right? cow's stomach. We explained that there was a typo on the menu...ewww it was awful.

Our trip to Vegas was uneventful. We spent the first day getting our bearings - we did it in style and stayed at the Bellagio - you know, the hotel with the fountains outside it. We walked along the strip, did a bit of gambling and then rested. One of the coolest things is that if you're gambling on the slots or at a table then there are waitresses who come round offering drinks....and you don't pay. That's pretty cool. The first evening we saw Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Kevin James (King of Queens, Hitch) doing stand up. They were so good - and very very funny.

Next day we were up for the second day in a row at 5am -just this time it was 2 hours earlier because of the time difference. We slept on the 3 hour coach trip to the Canyon. The day was long, but fabulous. The weather wasn't the best - and it was cold and rainy at times. We keep telling ourselves that we're part of the select few who's been there when it rained:)

The last night we had a fantastic meal and finally plucked up courage to walk up to a table and play blackjack. None of us are experts so it was a little intimidating but we found an empty table with a nice looking dealer. We all put $100 down. We thought we'd be done in 20 minutes but we held our own, even when weird asses joined our table for a time. After about 2.5 hours I decided that if I made it to $500 then I was walking away. You'll find the picture with my single $500 chip.

Vegas and the Grand Canyon

We had a riot!

When we were back home we also took in a Cirque de Soleil show at Madison Square Garden. It was awesome. See my pics here....taken only with the little camera, but given we were at the back they came out pretty good.

11-12-08 Cirque de Soleil

The rest of the week was shopping and hanging out. What a great trip!

Work was crazy this week -more on that later.