Beatle Day!

Hey everyone! This will be a two-parter, since much has happened in the last day and a half. Let’s finish with Vegas first.

So when I left you it was Sunday morning and we had settled in to Vegas pretty well, having had a fun Saturday and some good hours sleep. Now it was time to get into it, since we only had the rest of Sunday to enjoy the spoils of Las Vegas.

Donny and Marie… why not?

We didn’t have much on the agenda, so after a lazy start just headed back down the strip, soaking up the Vegas atmosphere. What atmosphere I hear you ask? Last post you were complaining about it? Well, ironically the Sunday felt much more alive which was odd. We placed quite a bit of the quiet Saturday night to the cold weather. We in fact got to be part of one of the coldest Vegas day on record. Yep, when I said it was cold, it was cold (like zero degrees cold).

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Sadly Dated Castle

First cliche of many no doubt

So we headed down to finish the wander of the strip, heading down to some of the more classically kitschy casinos, like New York New York, Excalibur, and the Luxor. These have not aged so well I gotta say. But in a way they were nice in a nostalgic kinda way,since they were the bees knees when I first visited Vegas, 15 odd years ago. How times have changed.

The Great Wall of M’s

We didn’t spend much time in them, just really to get all nostalgic. It was a quick fly around and then to one key destination… M&M World. Yep, why not celebrate Vegas by eating colours of M&M’s that are nowhere else to be found. It speaks volumes of Kate and I that by this point we had not gambled, but had hunted down candy. Good times.

Love, Love, Love

The casual wandering took us close to our main Vegas event. As you might have guessed from yesterday’s post, we had tickets to the Beatles Cirque Du Soleil show “Love”, which was our main reason for coming to Vegas. All giddy, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and into the Mirage for the show.

First impressions were of the incredible theatre. Completely purpose built, it’s odd layout meant that I have no idea what else it could be used for and made perfect sense why this show doesn’t tour. As the crowd filtered in we were treated to all kinds of kooky folk wandering about. Then it kicked off.

What took place for the next 90 minutes was a slightly surreal mash-up of the Beatles story and post war Britain, all to a specially constructed Beatles soundtrack. There was so much going on throughout the whole show, you would need 6 viewings to capture most of it.

So how was it? Pretty great overall. I mean, hearing the music presented in that setting was incredible. The theatre part of it was a win for the most part. some bits fell a bit flat, or seemed just a bit too quirky, but overall super glad we went. And if I was in Vegas I would want to experience it all again.

Now for trashy Cirque

Once the curtain fell on it, we had to leg it back to New York New York for another show, and another Cirque Du Soleil. Three in 2 days? Crazy huh?! But given we were in Vegas, we wanted to do a trashy Vegas burlesque type show and it happened we could score cheap tickets to Zumanity, the Cirque Du Soleil Vegas risque show. So we legged it back down the freezing strip to the warm comfort of NY NY for more.

Right from the get go with the warm up folk we knew this was going to be a different show. Language was a whole lot bluer and the costumes much more revealing. And it continued in that vein for the next 90 minutes. Thankfully Kate and I avoided any major audience participation. It was fun in a trashy Vegas way but was probably my least favourite. Although any show where you say the best part is where the dwarf was flying over the audience whilst dancing suggestively with a scantily clad lady and you can probably get the picture.

Caesar’s Palace like we remembered it

It was close to midnight before we then headed back to our digs at the Venetian. I grabbed a bite on the way back down the strip, some odd McDonalds burger that had corn chips in it. Yep, I was back in the US.

Even though we were pretty tired by the time we got back, we had pangs of guilt. How could we be in Vegas and not gamble? So off it was into the Venetian gaming floor. We had big plans… $5 each into a slot machine and then $20 on roulette. Big spenders hey?

The slot machines proved fruitless. I went with the 60’s Star Trek version and to be honest, I really only lost by $5 because I got bored. I was playing for about 10 minutes on the same $5 of credits when I just upped the ante and lost it. I have no idea how people play them so long. Kate similarly did her dough in that manner. Anyway, we wanted the big fish.

So we settled at a $10 min bet Roulette table and each grabbed $20 of chips. Bets were placed and away we went. Alas, in two rounds, Kate was out. Boo! It was quite disappointing. Me however, I kept going… and going… and going. I got down to my last $10 but then back to about $60. In the end I pulled the pin at $51 in chips.

Winners are Grinners

$51 minus our investment of $20 each leaves $10. Take out our slot machine $5 each and we were left with profits of $1. So I can say I left Vegas on top. Ha!