Friday through Tuesday was my third trip to Las Vegas, the least sustainable city on the planet. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship and mixed emotions about hitting this adult Disneyland in the desert — it’s always a blast, but it’s always so over the top in so many ways (the sheer enormity of all the casinos, the drinks, the gambling, the food). Not only that, but I’m one more tourist consuming all that energy and water and waste in the desert. 107 degrees of dry heat. Returning Tuesday night and feeling the humidity as we walked off the plane in Albany made me appreciate the humidity here in the Northeast for probably the first and last time. Regardless, Vegas is easy to get to and is a great rendezvous for NY-CA meet-ups… and for having one hell of a time.
This trip was much smaller than our last two trips (Vegas 2003 | Vegas 2004), which were both bigger trips of about a dozen of us. This trip was actually a business trip for Jen, hence the lack of a bigger group of friends joining us. Alas, this trip consisted of Jen, a handful of her fun coworkers, Ben, Enoch, and yours truly.
We enjoyed three nights of delicious meals — an Italian place off the strip, Jasmine at the Bellagio, which offered an incredible front-row view of the famous dancing fountains. I ate this bass dish, which was the best piece of fish I’ve had in as long as I can remember (probably since our last trip to Farallon): Soya Chilean Sea Bass / Chilean Sea Bass roasted with Rose Dew wine with Ginger soy, Lotus root, Shitake Mushroom & Asparagus. Mmm mmm good! We also ate at Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse inside the Golden Nugget on our final night in town.
And here’s the great thing about Vegas: On one hand, you can find some of the finest dining in the country, if not the world. Then just down the strip you can find the Hooters Hotel & Casino, where Ben and Enoch hooked up a room for the weekend, and where we spent most days by the pool and auditioning for the next Hooters calendar. OK, not really, but we did get our photos taken with the Hooters Calendar 2006 cover girl, as well as Ms. February and Ms. November. Check out my rockin’ tan. I put those models to shame, right?
Craps. Oh craps! I now know how it earned its name. By day, the boys and I rolled the dice and lost lots of money (except for Enoch). By night, when we joined Jen and Nicole, we rolled the dice and lost lots more money (except for Enoch). Hey, we may have lost a few hundred bucks at the tables (more than I lost in my last two Vegas trips combined), but man oh man did we score on the free drinks! Little do the casinos know how far ahead we really were.
New York, New York: Though we passed by Coyote Ugly (really long line), we did do the next best thing: Rode the rollercoaster after a night of drinking. What fun! And later we grabbed some Ugly Sticks (Coyote’s foot-long slushy drinks) on the way out of the casino — that’s the other thing I love about Vegas, of course: Open container law, so party-goers don’t have to lose the buzz when leaving the casinos and hitting the streets (hopefully by foot, of course).
Our last night in Vegas we high-tailed it to Old Vegas — mine and Jen’s first time there — and had another delicious meal, followed by more lost money at the craps table (but Enoch had already left, so he couldn’t show us up that night!), and cruising around old town, seeing the seedier and original side of town. We saw the famous waving cowboy, but missed the light show. We ended the crazy evening by hopping the fence at our hotel’s swimming pool and enjoying some 4am swimming and hot tubbing.
We woke up 5 hours later and have been in a daze of trying to recover from our vacation ever since. This weekend: vacation from vacation.
In other news, our kitchen faucet sprang a leak. I’ve tried to fix it myself and successfully replaced the stem, but one of the key parts to put it back together is all jacked up, so I’ve schedule a plumber for Tuesday. Hopefully the kitchen won’t be too far buried under the mountain of dirty dishes by then (we also can’t run the dishwasher since it’s connected to the same water lines as is the sink).
View More (Edited*) Vegas 2006 Photos
* Email me if you want a link to all photos.
1 response so far ↓
1 Alex and Cati // Jun 12, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Jen and Gabe are the champagne of friends.
An appropriate combination that makes everything better.
Like a cold beer and salty peanut.
Like the delicious candy shell and the tootsie roll center.
Like drunkenness and water sports.
Like glitter make-up on a stripper.
You guys are the bestest ever!