Vacation Blog VI, Part IV, it's my favorite person's birthday today!!!

5:05 AM - Yeah really not that excited to be up this early. Slept OK, I guess, but sure could have used more. Perhaps I'll find time for a little nap later, but we have a fun day planned.

And I need a fun day, let me tell you. Yesterday's football results hit hard. I used to be very emotional about sports, and I rarely (if ever) get like that anymore, but the Chiefs losing to Tom Fucking Brady and his deflated balls in that fashion? Hard to live with.

If only there were a bunch of cute cat videos on the internet somewhere that could cheer me up.

But time to move on, and make today my wife's best birthday yet! She deserves no less. I am sure she will sleep for many, many more hours.

Speaking of which, I hear her stirring in the bedroom so maybe this is my chance to go back to bed without disturbing her.

9:35 AM - MUCH BETTER!!!!!!!!!!! She can sleep later if she likes, but I am much more rested now.

10:05 AM - The hard reality of real life smacks me in the face, as I get a notification that it's time to check in for our flight home tomorrow. Four nights here is just not enough. Luckily we are just a few months away from our next trip here.....we do it all again for six nights, with the main event being AEROSMITH!!! And in even better seats than we had for Gaga. Awesome!

10:15 AM - The birthday girl is up and is a fantastic mood until she looks at her phone and sees the boarding pass I sent her for tomorrow's flight. Rage ensues.

....but it's short lived. Our free breakfast has been ordered and she hops into the shower to prepare for the day. There are about 12 things we want to accomplish on our last day here, and we actually will try to do 2 or 3 of them. We will see how successful we are.

10:45 AM - Well holy shit, as we are eating breakfast the fire alarm goes off!! Oh man. Tracey runs to get dressed while I go to the safe and grab our valuables and our passports and get ready to run down 23 flights of stairs. OMG I hope there isn't a huge fire in the Hotel.

Um....as we get into the hallway, we notice that the fire alarm is going off ONLY IN OUR FUCKING SUITE!! Well, I guess the hotel isn't on fire.

It takes 15 minutes for a maintenance guy to get up here. He is great and solves the problem quickly, but Tracey did not ask for a splitting headache for her birthday, and that's what she got. Not so great.

I hop into the shower....AND THE FUCKING THING GOES OFF AGAIN.

11:45 AM - Same maintenance guy is here, and this time he is actually removing both smoke detectors and replacing them with new ones. Having said that, the ones that kept going off were brand new already he said, so he is unsure of what the problem is. Suffice it to say we are not particularly pleased. Damn good thing this didn't happen at 3 in the morning.

We will have to have a chat with the front desk when we go down. Not acceptable.

Maintenance guy finds the issue......a wire that was not attached properly when the smoke detector was installed. Well, at least this shouldn't reoccur.

12:15 PM - Downstairs to hop into the car to go to the Mirage. We have a couple of comp passes to the Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat. While we go outside to wait, I realize that the weatherman wasn't kidding when he issued a wind advisory for today. Here is me, a fucking dumbass, in shorts and tank top. Quickly upstairs to put on a T-shirt and jeans, and honestly that isn't really even enough. It's freaking cold today, a departure from the beautiful mild weather we have enjoyed so far this trip.

I'm pretty cold most of the time while at the Garden....but you know who else is cold? The cats!! Usually we are here when it is stifling hot and the bigt cats sit there and do nothing due to the heat. That's not the case today! They are all up and around, and there is even some frolicking and play fighting. We got some incredible pictures. Just a couple examples.

Those are from my camera; Tracey got some better ones with her new iPhone which has a 10X zoom. I'll post some of those after we are home.

Oh, before leaving the Mirage we head to Rhumbar and I pick up my first, and only, Pina Colada of the trip. I am a little bit disgusted with myself, but at least I made up for it with extra great wine. I mean, you can only drink SO much, right? At least that's what I've heard.

3:30 PM - After some more retail therapy (it was a really, really, really good birthday for someone - when we walked into Jimmy Choo they all screamed "THE ENGEMOENS ARE BACK! THE ENGEMOENS ARE BACK!!!), we head to Trevi for lunch/dinner/whatever you call a meal at 4 PM. The food is fantastic as always

5:40 PM - Back to the room and I am going to have a soak while Tracey packs. As soon as she is done, I would anticipate I will be physically removed from the tub as she will take over for "Birthday Bath". It will be epic. That's not a prediction - that's a spoiler.

6:52 PM - Tracey is just about done with the packing and I am out of the bath so as to avoid a confrontation. It's her world, I'm just livin' in it.

And besides, I mean it's almost 7 PM, I'm freaking exhausted. Time for bed! I need my rest to try to outrun the border guards tomorrow when they see how much we bought down here. Aye, carumba!

Oh, and I was wearing my Chiefs T-shirt today and I cannot count the number of people that said they were so sorry to see them lose yesterday. Nobody likes the fucking Patriots!!!!!!


Chances are this will be it for my blogging this trip; if I write one tomorrow it will probably be because something extraordinary happens (and I'm not sure I want anything extraordinary to happen on a simply travel day), so, until April....

Engemoen out!

Vacation Blog XI, Part III: Are you ready for some FOOTBALL????

8:00 AM - That is an acceptable sleep in while on vacation. Approved.

Today is a bunch of nothing but relaxation and screaming at NFL referees if they do anything to screw the Chiefs tonight. So many reasons that this is the biggest game of the year.

1. I like the Chiefs
2. I detest the Patriots like a sickness
3. We win $2000 if Chiefs win the Super Bowl

So those are pretty good reasons that we are very motivated for a Chiefs win tonight.

Up until then, I don't know that we are going to do much. The first game, Rams vs. Saints, starts at Noon so we will watch that too of course, and we will do so from the comfort of our living room and 60" 4K TV. This hotel really is special.

Oh, and the one thing I actually needed to buy from the mall yesterday - socks - was the one thing I didn't buy. Moron. Might have to make a return trip this morning, or maybe tomorrow.

I didn't mention yesterday that one of the things I DID buy was a kick ass wooden block for my knives. This store ships anything for free if you spend over $60. Since I am not about to take a huge, heavy, wooden knife block on a plane, I had it shipped to my package place in Sumas. I wonder if they considered how much it would cost them to ship an item that heavy?? Oh well, good for me, bad for them.

8:35 AM - Discombobulated Bear makes her first appearance of the trip, as Tracey stumbles to the fridge, retrieves a water, and shuffles back to bed.

She isn't back to bed for long, however, as shortly after she gets up and we peruse the breakfast menu. She orders while I hop into the tub for a short soak. What a bathtub. Not totally sure how to describe it; we've been in bigger tubs, but this one seems to be just perfect. You can almost sit diaganolly in it, guaranteeing the most comfortable soak. Bliss.

Breakfast arrives and is terrific, as you might expect. At this point, the only thing that would surprise me would be something here NOT being great.

The wife heads back to bed for a little nap while I watch some TV. It's just nice to sit and relax for a while.

Noon: The Rams/Saints game begins and the wife is still asleep. She is sleeping so soundly that I think I'll let her sleep for a while. Besides, I'm opening up the Austrian Riesling so the longer she sleeps, the more wine for ME :)

12:45 PM - OK she has missed the entire first quarter, so I should probably wake her up at this point. She is less than thrilled but gets up begrudgingly.

7:45 PM - So, we had some great food and wine but both football games were a fucking disaster lead by the terrible NFL referees, so I am giving up for today. If any of you want to get me a late Xmas present, please murder Tom Brady, his wife, his children, and everyone who has ever met him. I would appreciate that.

If there are any Patriots fans reading this, please enjoy this blog and then kill yourself and your family as well. You are too stupid and crooked to live. And if you happen to know 3-4 more Patriots fans and want to eliminate them as well, we would all appreciate it.

Thanks.

Tomorrow, my beautiful wife's birthday, will be a better day.

Vacation Blog XI: Part Two. Lady Gaga.

6:30 AM - Oh my. I really have no reason to be up at this hour, and I sure as Hell am not enjoying this headache. Absolutely the worst headache I can remember. Given how I had my brains clobbered all over the poker table last night I should not be surprised....but I actually think it's due to extreme dehydration.

I mean, we had some wine last night, but not THAT MUCH wine....and I had the cocktail waitress bring me water on a loop last night. No exaggeration, I probably had 7-8 bottles of water in the few hours I was being anally probed by morons. And I also had a bottle of water when I returned to the room to lick my wounds. How much water do I have to drink to get hydrated FFS? I know this is the desert, but this is ridiculous.

I get out of bed to walk around a bit which actually helps me feel slightly better, but I'm so tired that I need to get some more sleep but getting back into bed makes it worse. Arrgh. Not a fun morning.

Eventually the 5 extra-strength Tylenol I take kick in and I am able to drift back to sleep, at least a little bit.

9:30 AM - I am awakened by the sound of Tracey screwing the pool boy outside of the room. Oh hang on, that's not totally right.....that's my headache playing tricks on me. I think she is actually just paying the room service guy who delivered our breakfast. My bad.

We get free continental breakfast each day of our stay, OR, $30 towards anything else on the breakfast menu. Nice perk. Their continental breakfast consists of a fantastic muffin, yogurt and berries, and the worlds largest croissant. That thing could feed a small African village for a week. I almost feel bad eating it all myself.

Almost.

11:30 AM - We head across the street to the Fashion Show Mall for a little retail therapy. They have some really great sales at Macy's and we do a little bit of damage without going too apeshit. It's a pretty terrific mall. I suspect we may have gone a little more overboard had last night's debacle not occurred :)

3:00 PM - Back up to the room where Tracey hops into the bath to soak a bit before we head down to the buffet for dinner. Her feet are particularly sore today - a frequent offshoot of her Psoriatic Arthritis - and walking is difficult. Some days are worse than others, and this is one of those days. It kills me to see her in such constant pain. She is about to start on medicine number 8. Hopefully the Ocho is the one that finally gives her some relief.

3:40 PM - Tracey has left the bathtub! REPEAT! TRACEY HAS LEFT THE BATHTUB!!

Down to the buffet where we enjoy the best buffet in Vegas. Some of the best Prime Rib I have ever had....definitely the best at a buffet.  Lobster bisque, crab legs, three different kinds of pasta, tiger prawns, dim sum, breaded chicken stuffed with prosciutto....and that's just what I had room for. Oh, and homemade ice cream. Fabulous.

During dinner I confirm what I thought I had noticed while walking around the mall; I have managed to re-injure my knee. I sprained the MCL in my right knee a couple of months ago. It had healed, I thought, but something about the way I was walking around the mall has aggravated it. Not only is it particularly sore, it is making an irritating clicking sound when I walk. Not good. The MCL is the ligament that keeps the knee stable, so walking in a straight line isn't too bad, but planting the leg and turning on it is quite a challenge. Oh well, it's not like I'm going to a concert where I'll probably be on my feet for the better part of 3 hours or anything.

5:40 PM - Back in the room where Tracey will complete The Process (TM) before we head down to the Park MGM for the show. We are planning to park at Bellagio and take the tram to the Park, since we don't have the patience to deal with the crowds. Tonight:

Lady GaGa at the Park MGM Theatre

Penguins at Golden Knights at the T-Mobile arena (right next door)

Manny Pacquaio fighting some sack of crap at the MGM Grand (across the street).

All starting, and finishing, at ostensibly the same time. Going to be a bit crowded on that end of the strip tonight.

6:12 PM - We get in the car.

6:51 PM - We arrive at Bellagio. Jesus. Imagine how long it would have taken us to drive all the way to the Park MGM.

We have a bit of time to kill before the show and we decide to peruse the new casino...well, the remodeled casino anyway as it used to be the Monte Carlo. Honestly nothing much seems to have changed, and we're pretty unimpressed. They painted the outside this God-awful olive green. It's ghastly. As we get to the other end of the casino, Tracey spots a wall of wine. We head over in that direction and we find it.

We find IT. IT.

The reason for this hotel and casino to exist (apart from the Park Theatre where we are about to see the concert of course).

It is called the Eataly. Like, Italy, but cuter. How do I describe it.....it's a bit like Granville Island, but everything is Italian.

And there is sort of a food court, but with fresh goods cooked right in front of you.....like, instead of Taco Bell and Coke, you get Filet Mignon and fresh fish with the head still on it (if that is your thing).

They have a cheese and salami place, a Fish monger, a butcher, a baker, and probably, somewhere, a candlestick maker. Wow, this is pretty fucking impressive.

I find out that they've been open only 3 weeks, and it has been a smashing success so far. I predict it will continue to be.

We order a couple of glasses of wine; Tracey has a Gavi and I have a Barolo. Delicious, and not the kinds of wines you normally get by the glass.

Off to the show! This theatre is spectacular......holding only 5,200 seats, there isn't a bad seat in the house. Well who am I kidding, of course there are some shitty seats way up in the nosebleeds. We are not sitting up there, of course. There is a pit of General Admission right around the stage, and we are right behind that in Row 7. Fantastic seats and the stage is...interesting.

8:10 PM - This happens. The lady knows how to make an entrance.

I could talk about this show all night. It's more Rock Opera than rock concert. It's more Performance Art than a group of songs. It's a story. It's her story. And it's fucking brilliant.

Gaga is not one of those artists who makes you wait for the big hits, opening up with Let's Dance and Poker Face. What an incredible body of work she has already. What an artist.

By the time she took the stage for her one song encore - "Shallow" - I could hardly breathe.

And, bad knee and all, I barely sat down all night.

Well, except for the 25 minute unplanned 'intermission' when the power basically went out. Poor drummer, left up there alone to bang those drums for a half hour. The guitarists were up there too playing, but we couldn't hear them at all. Actually, although it sucked the air out of the building for the duration of the outage, it was a welcome break for me and my knee. And it didn't take long for Gaga to set the place back on fire once everything was restored and the show recommenced.

And, yes, getting home from the show was a fucking debacle.

11:58 PM - Home, finally and up to the room where I update this blog while the wife has another encounter with Monsieur Tub. It's quite a torrid affair they are having.

Soon to bed. Tomorrow is a relaxing day of wine, food and FOOTBALL!

Vacation Blog XI, Part 1: We head in search of luxury, and GaGa

Thursday, January 17th

Noon: I meet the wife at our dear friends' place to drop off the dog. They take excellent care of her and she loves it there; they just let her out into their backyard and she runs around like a lunatic until she can run no more. I will tell you, having a dog is a huge shift in our lives, but it would be bigger if we didn't have this place to drop her off. We are away for the better part of 5 days, and we can easily leave the cats at home alone for that long (to be honest, it's a vacation for them too!), but you cannot leave a dog alone that long, so it is really a Godsend that we have this resource for her. We really don't have to change our vacation plans at all, except when we are going somewhere that we can actually take the dog. Vegas is not that place.

3:00 PM - We arrive at our new favorite pre-flight hotel, Cedarbrook Lodge, for the evening. I am remarkably tired...in fact I slept most of the way down here while Tracey drove.

3:30 PM - Neither of us had lunch so we are heading to the bar for "happy hour" where we will enjoy some appies and wine. Just a little snack, and we are planning to have room service sent up to us when we are hungry for dinner. The food is just fantastic, and the wine is very good as well. We order a Marsanne from Washington State; Marsanne is a Rhone grape that is generally found in blends along with Viognier and Roussanne (for example, Le Vieux Pin's 'Ava'), but this one is all by itself, which is rare. It is quite tasty.

4:30 PM - Up to the room to relax for the evening. I am still remarkably tired. In fact, I may just lay down for another nap. TWO naps in the same day??

I hear the wife drawing a bath, so I know she'll be in there for a while. I am sure I will wake up for dinner.


Friday, January 18th

5:30 AM - Hmm. I slept through dinner, and in fact, slept for about 13 hours which could be a new personal record. Unreal. Woke up briefly around Midnight, and again around 4:30, but it was pretty easy to go right back to sleep. Guess I needed it. First thing the wife asks me when she is up is whether or not I am sick, because she has never seen me sleep like that when I am not. I am not sick, I don't think.

6:00 AM - The wife's alarm goes off and we are both up and getting ready to go down for breakfast. Our flight isn't until 10 but with the Government shutdown, we are going to get there a couple hours early to ensure no TSA-related issues. From what I hear, the lines at Sea-Tac have not been bad, but better safe than sorry, as they say.

6:45 AM - Down to the breakfast room where we fill up on their tasty wares. We know we are getting breakfast on the plane to no need to overeat here, but we want to have something in our bellies while we wait for the flight.

No issues at all with TSA (slightly longer than normal, IMO, but still no biggie). Our plane is a bit late arriving but we have no plans until 6 PM tonight so we are not worried about getting into Vegas a bit late. And when we get on the plane, everything was worth it. HOLY SHIT! We heard that Alaska was updating their fleet, and this new plane is GORGEOUS. Much wider aisles than before, wider seats, even in First Class, upgraded leather seats, new footrests...I could go on and on. Beautiful. Flying with these guys is always comfortable, and now it's going to be even better.

To make things even better, we get a wonderful lady taking care of us in First Class who could not be friendlier or more efficient, and our breakfast sandwich was one of the best I have ever tasted. As flights go, this was a 10.

After landing we get our bag and head to the Rental Car centre to pick up our car. We only rent from Hertz now, as part of their Gold Rewards program we don't have to do any paperwork at all, just hop in our pre-assigned car and go. We have to stop at the exit booth to confirm our identity and that's it, the whole process takes about 2 minutes. Very efficient!

2:00 PM - We arrive at Encore. We are staying in the Tower Suites and that gets us a special Valet, and a special check-in area. As if the regular part of Encore wasn't swanky enough.....this is next level. Our room isn't quite ready yet, so we drop off our luggage and head to the shops in the Wynn and then to La Cave for a quick bite and bottle of wine. The wine is from a winery we are familiar with - St. Supery - but the wine itself we have never seen before. It's a white Bordeaux-style blend which is really special. I can get them from wine.com for $30 and you can bet we will be doing that once we are home.  Our food, a Margherita pizza, is one of the best that either of us have ever had. The secret to this one, I think, is the addition of capers. It's fantastic.

Our room is ready and we head up to see the nicest room we've ever stayed in in Vegas; we upgraded to a Parlor Suite, a 1-bedroom suite with about 850 square feet of awesomeness. There is a massage room. That is not a typo. A massage room in our suite.

We wanted to be extra comfortable this trip as we plan on spending most of Sunday in our room watching football, drinking wine and eating whatever wondrous morsels we can get from room service. Going to be a really good day! Hell, it's going to be a really good trip!!

One of the cool features of this room that I have not seen before is, in addition to the obligatory mini-bar, we have our own fridge! That's perfect, as we are going to need somewhere to keep the white wines cold for our Sunday football-fest.

Into the car and we head down to Mandalay Bay for our dinner reservations at Aureole. We are a bit early, so we decide to head into their shopping area to kill a bit of time. This is not like the high-end shopping areas that we frequent so often, this one is a little more "for the people", you might say. We wander around a bit when we come across a pub with this sign in the window.

Even though we already had dinner reservations, I was pretty tempted to go in and order SOMETHING.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOO YEAH, THE MACHO MAN WANTS EXTRA GUACAMOLE WITH HIS NACHOS, DIG IT? OHHHHHH YEAH!!!"

Priceless.

5:25 PM - Our reservations are for 6 but we figure it's pretty likely they will be able to take us early, which is correct, except that the dining room doesn't open until 5:30, so they send us down to the bar until they open. It doesn't take long for them to come get us and take us to our window-side table. The place is almost empty at this point.

We have only eaten here once before, several years ago. We enjoyed it, and there is no reason that we haven't been back except that...well.....have you SEEN how many great places there are to eat in this town???

For appetizers we split two; a Caesar salad and short-rib ravioli. Both are sublime; in fact, I told them they are absolutely nuts if they don't put that ravioli onto the menu as an entree. It is one of the best pasta dishes either of us have ever had. Tracey had a beautiful chicken dish and I have salmon for my entree. Both are great; honestly, though my salmon was the least impressive thing we had. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but the bar was set so high by the other dishes that it paled in comparison.

We paired out entrees with one of the great Pinot Noirs we have had in recent memory, this little beauty.

This is a California wine, done in the traditional Burgundian style. They even go so far as to not mention the grape anywhere on the label, which is an Old World tradition, and very uncommon in the New World. It is very very special. I will do a full report on the wine we enjoy this trip in my wine blog once we are home.

The wine list here is extraordinary, and all of the wine is kept in a tower. In order to access the wine, they send a woman up on a trapeze. I am not making that up.

This place was on Wine Enthusiast's Top 100 wine restaurants in the USA in 2018. It really is fantastic, and a bonus: the wine prices are very fair. Sure you are paying restaurant prices, but there is no gouging here.  Highly recommend eating here next time you are in Vegas.

After dinner we drive down the strip a bit to Total Wine, to pick up our Football Frenzy bottles. We figure 3 bottles will be appropriate, and we get lucky and get helped out by a woman who really knows her shit...in fact, she just returned from working in the Caribbean, and before that she was a Sommelier for 8 years at.....AUREOLE!! LOL.

She recommends 3 bottles, a nicely aged Brunello di Montalcino, a Condrieu, and, because I asked for something off the beaten track, an off-dry Riesling from Austria. Looking forward to those!

8:00 PM - We are back at the hotel and Tracey makes a bee-line for the bathtub while I go down and play poker. I have to pay for this trip somehow!

11:30 PM - I am going to have to find another way to pay for this trip. Holy shit, that was the worst poker session I have had in years. Granted I don't play a ton these days, but I got my brains beat out for 3 hours. Went broke twice, on these hands:

KK loses to T6, on a flop of JT3, turn 4 (all the money goes in here and I am way ahead). River 6.

After a reload.....

TT in the big blind, I slow play it a bit and just call the button raise as we go heads up to a flop of 532 rainbow. He bets, I check raise half my stack. He calls. Turn is a 6. I shove, he thinks for a while and calls with 77.

River 7.

OK, so that's enough of that. Back up to the room to get some sleep, another big day tomorrow. Shopping during the day, and then LADY FREAKING GAGA!!!