Monday: Monday morning started with a trip to the Palazzo pool….wasn’t quite the level of the Bellagio pool, but, it was fine for what we were there for. Finished up reading (Suzanne was reading “The girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, I was deep in the Malazan saga) and headed upstairs to get ready to go see Suzanne’s sister Melissa.
Had a nice drive out of the center part of Las Vegas to Melissa’s apartment; it’s always nice to get out away from the tourist-y parts and see the real parts of the city, and Melissa’s apartment was waaaay out on the edge of the city. Met up with Melissa, had lunch at a Thai restaurant, and returned to the apartment to talk (surprised to find such a collection of Nerf-gun equipment at Melissa’s….turns out that the boys have, by accident, a very sought after model that you can easily modify to be twice to 4x as efficient as it is now).
After the trip we returned to the Strip and headed over to the Wynn and Encore (the two casino’s to the north of the Palazzo) to look around.
Another pretty lobby/public area; this time at the Wynn.
Had a good time over at the Wynn…..enjoyed some chocolate martini’s…..won some dollars (Suzanne and I both had success here….again, Star Wars slots were good to me, along with some video blackjack), and earned enough gaming ‘points’ to get to spin the Wynn wheel and get a prize. Of course, we won the minimum prizes, I got $10 of slot play, but, Suzanne got a level up and won a free buffet. So, since it was dinner time….
we went to the highly-rated Wynn buffet. This picture was of the flower-sculptures in the main foyer, and that’s actually where we ended up sitting. The buffet, well, was spectacular, prime rib, crab legs, chicken panang, just an incredible variety of foods and man, the desserts. Well, words won’t, can’t, do it justice (ok, a few words…..chocolate oreo mousse!)
After the dinner, we left the Wynn and headed over to Treasure Island to see Mystere, the oldest of the Cirque de Soliel shows running in Las Vegas. We had seen Love last time, but, that maybe isn’t a true Cirque show. This one was and it was awesome. Very happy we went to it.
Tuesday: Headed out to the Valley of Fire State Park north of Las Vegas….it was hot, and the rock formations were worth the trip.
Remember the panorama comment earlier….there’s a lot of them below.
The first panorama as we entered the park, this view looks east.
More views as we entered the park. Screwed this panorama up a little bit, but, it’s hard to see.
these rock formations have been nicknamed “beehives”….
and we circled around one formation to see this small arch
Headed down the main road to the visitors center and then took the turn from there to head into the park a bit, this view looks back down the road towards the visitors center.
Really enjoyed the color change in some of these rock formations (as the silica sediments become more predominant you get that white/cream color)
Panorama central
The last two pictures before we left the park
I’m tired of typing and importing….I’ll leave Tuesday night (our trip to Downtown Las Vegas) and the trip home for later….
