USA Road Trip 2019

A smoother start to the morning than yesterday. We got our nearly free breakfast & headed out north on The Strip.

Our 1st stop of the day was The Venetian & it’s classy shops. We strolled through the piazza & came upon a gallery of the most amazing framed photographs by photographer, Peter Lik. The sales assistant / curator chap must have recognised a couple of high rollers had walked in because he latched on to us & gave us all the spiel as if we were buy one. He also took us into a ‘secret’ private room to look at the latest photo not yet for sale. It was of a chrome American bomber in an aircraft hangar. It was stunning. The guy then slowly dimmed the lights & certain parts of the photo sort of glowed. I was dying to ask how much it was. The Venetian is definitely one of my favourite hotels in Vegas. I liked it’s Love themed lobby.

We continued on to the ‘new kid on the block’, the Wynn Hotel. It looked & felt expensive, but there wasn’t a huge amount to see. Jackie was now suffering from withdrawal symptoms & needed a fix of slot machines. We hunted high & low for our favourite Crazy Money II machine. We eventually located a Crazy Money Deluxe, but the minimum bet was 60 cents. This is the trouble with the high-end hotels.

We left, crossed the road, scurried past the Fashion Show & entered Treasure Island Hotel. The moment we opened the door it smelt cheap & nasty. This was what we were looking for & it had our Crazy Money II. We sat down & almost instantly we were both up. Did we walk? “No”. We had 2 free beers each & ended up between us down less than $5 for about an hours entertainment.

We continued down the strip & saw Elvis in a mobility scooter. I took a photo when he had his back to us, but after we had passed him, I turned & hid in a bush to take a front shot. Unfortunately he caught me (before I could take one) & then all hell broke loose. He screamed, “You asshole, you f**king asshole” over & over again. He also was screaming that he hoped I’d die & would be buried in a white casket. Not only this but he has chasing after me in his mobility scooter. Luckily for me there were a lot of people about & he struggled to get through the crowds quick enough as we hurried away. Eventually I think he gave up, because we could no longer see him, but could still hear him hollering that I was an asshole. You couldn’t make it up!

To be on the safe side we went up a flight of steps & ducked into the Mirage Hotel. Jackie was not impressed & urged me not to take photos of weirdos again. All this fun had made us hungry, so we went to Panda Express. We shared a plate of food consisting of orange chicken, teriyaki chicken, Beijing beef & chow mien. It was gorgeous.

After, we went back to our Flamingo Hotel, where Jackie had her 2nd fix of Crazy Money II. We again had a free drink & lost just under $5 between us. This was working out to be a cheap way of drinking if you are frugal like me or a ‘tight bastard’ as Jackie calls me.

It was 2.50pm & I suggested we catch The Atlantis Show In Caesar’s Palace which was starting in 10 minutes. It was slightly further than I calculated & it was the fastest 10 minute walk of our lives. It had literally just started, but sadly it hadn’t changed since we were last here around 20 years ago.

We then went back to our hotel room for a quick rest before the nights entertainment. At 6.00pm, we took the monorail from the back of our hotel to the MGM Hotel. $5 each for a journey lasting only a couple of minutes!

At MGM we made our way to the auditorium & found our seats for the David Copperfield show. We were in a table of 6, but close to the stage. Frank & Leila from Florida were already seated at our table & we were at the last minute joined by 2 Chinese lads.

Prior to the show actually starting there were a lot of warnings about taking photos or using phones during the show. It seemed a bit over the top. We were then all told to put on a wristband & to take out our phones & send an email to David Copperfield & he would send one back later.

At 7.10pm David arrived on a motorcycle out of thin air. He opened his routine with a few gags, then he produced a large sheet of paper with his ‘wish list’, that was photographed with him holding, then folded up & given to some poor bloke in the front row to guard with his life. At 7.20pm we all received an email, except Jackie who hard a ‘Failure To Send’ notice!! We were all told to not open the email & to put our phones in a black box on the table.

David Copperfield looked old, despite all the cosmetic enhancements, but he was funny & engaged with the audience much more than I expected. His first main trick was to make one of his helpers disappear, not on stage but in the audience, just yards from us. His catch phrase was “How about that”.

To randomly select people from the audience, frisbees & balls were thrown about several times & he would then interact with them. Unfortunately for him, nearly all the random people turned out to be foreign & spoke only poor English. It was hilarious him trying to get a conversation or answers out of them & you could sense he was getting annoyed. Just one example was when he asked a Japanese woman for a number between 1 & 50, to which she replied 55.

One blindfolded woman had to select just one of a 100 ribbons connected to card each with a different word on it that we could see. Once she had selected her ribbon the card attach read TRUTH. We all raised our wristbands, the lights were dimmed & the word TRUTH was appeared on our wristbands under UV lights.

Anyway during the show he collected various facts & numbers from random people. He also made a car appear on columns that several members of the audience were holding on to. The showstopper was a 20 ton spaceship that appeared out of nowhere & hovered just feet over our heads before moving around above without any apparent means of propulsion or suspension, then landed at the back of the stage.

The finale was for him to get the bloke in the front row to pass back the large sheet of paper which was opened to reveal that his wish list corresponded with all the random facts collected during the show. David then disappeared in a puff of smoke & reappeared in the audience, but came back to remind us to open the email he sent to us (well most of us) at 7.20pm. It was a photo of him & the wish list showing all the facts & answers that were collected during the show from the audience. That’s magic.

He did a lot more things, too many to mention but it was a great show even if it was a bit cheesy. He was definitely funnier than we expected. We are so glad we saw him, for us he sums up Vegas.

Afterwards we walked back along The Strip taking in all the lights, sights & sounds. At 9.30pm we stopped for another Panda Express to share, then got to The Mirage for the 10pm Volcano show.

We were now done, we stopped in our hotel to play our favourite slot machine & pretty quickly lost $30. We only had time for one drink, but you need to know when to quit!!

FITBIT = 22,014 steps / 10.23 miles.

Song of the Day - A Kind of Magic by Queen.

Bonus Song of the Day :-

Elvis Ain’t Dead by Scouting for Girls
Just An Illusion by ImaginationRead more