My last Vegas trip was in June, 2014. That is a span of seven hundred and way too many days. It feels so good to be back.
And my wife has an even bigger beef, it's been over THREE years since she has been here. Clearly we need to travel more.
So I'm not going to get too much into our travel day; it was not the greatest of days, marked by one little problem after another. Alaska Airlines took good care of us, the best they could....but nobody could do much about the lineup of flights that were diverted during quite the thunderstorm earlier in the day. As if leaving late wasn't bad enough, we got re-routed during the flight as well, as the T-storms fired back up, leaving us little choice to take a non-direct route around them, coming into Vegas from the Southwest.
And once we got off the plane, there were about 150 people in line for the shuttle to the rental car centre. Some sort of construction causing massive delays and a much longer trip to the centre than normal. Luckily for us we were renting from Hertz, which basically meant we spent about 0.4 seconds getting the car. Not so luckily for us, our car was a Camaro...not that the car isn't excellent, it is, but it's our first time with this car and we couldn't figure out how to put the top down. Why worry about putting the top down at 1 AM, you ask? Well our luggage wouldn't all fit in the "trunk", and I use that word loosely, so it seemed an easier way to get our extra luggage into the back seat. After about 20 minutes of frustration we said "screw it" and shoved it into the back seat the old fashioned way.
Anyway, long story short, our heads finally hit the pillows at the Mirage around 2 AM...about 4 hours later than planned.
We love the Mirage, it's gotta be the best reasonably priced hotel in Vegas. This is just a quick one-night stay, comped through our MyVegas rewards. In order to avoid paying much higher prices by flying on Canada Day, we decided to come in the night before and crash here for one night before it's time to check-in at our resort. What an excellent decision, the flight problems notwithstanding.
Friday, July 1st - why spend Canada Day actually IN Canada??
8:30 AM - Up earlier than I'd like of course but that's not too bad given what time I hit the sack. Wonder what time The Bear will stir??
We already asked about late check-out.....normal check-out time is 11, but they said they would allow us to stay until Noon for no additional charge. $15 for 1PM, $40 for 3 PM, so that's pretty reasonable. We expect to check into our resort between 3 and 4 so this allows us a great deal of flexibility.
I head down to the M Life desk to redeem some other rewards and to pick up Tracey's M Life card, which she forgot at home. The casino floor has changed a ton since I was last here, including the cashier cage and poker room being totally relocated and a new bar put in their old spot. A couple of new restaurants as well.
10:00 AM - Back up to the room (which is gorgeous, BTW, they did a fabulous job of renovating all the rooms in this Hotel which doesn't show it's age at all anymore) and Tracey stirs when I come in. One of the rewards that I just redeemed is a 2 for 1 breakfast or lunch buffet here, so once we are both ready we head downstairs to take advantage of that and also go to the LOVE box office to pick up our show tickets for tomorrow's show. We are taking Tracey's brother Rick and his wife Sue to the show, and they have never seen it. I would imagine they are going to like what they see.
This will be my 8th time. Tracey is at 6, I believe. It's just spectacular.
The brunch buffet is really good. $25 and the food is excellent; sure it doesn't rise to the quality of the buffets at Bellagio, the Wynn or Caesar's, but you get what you pay for. The Mirage never disappoints. And we will happily be "getting what we paid for" at those other buffets later in the week.
After brunch we head back upstairs and pack up our stuff and use the online check out. The MGM properties have controversially started charging for parking, and combining the $18 valet fee with the $33 Resort fee which they've had for years, and our "free" room cost us $51. Actually $61 if you count the 2 bottles of water from the mini-bar. Still a bargain at twice the price, given that we saved about $350 on our airfare by coming down one day earlier. In fact, we were able to fly First Class for about the same as Coach would have cost had we flown on July 1st. No-brainer.
Off to the outlet mall to do a little shopping. SERIOUSLY good deals this weekend, as the entire mall was having a "Fourth of July weekend sale". Everything was basically free. No, really.
I was running out of good shoes and I didn't even bring a pair with me- I came down in my sandals - so first stop was the Nike store where we got three pairs of good shoes and some socks for under $200.
Usually this is the point in my blog where I lament that we left the mall having spent a small fortune, but not this time. The deals were terrific; I got two pairs of shorts and a shirt at Ralph Lauren and Tracey got some miscellaneous makeup and L'Occitane foot cream and it felt like we hardly spent anything. Fantastic.
3:15 PM - We arrive at our resort, where we've stayed many times, and are delighted to see absolutely no lineup to check-in. They are VERY firm about their 4 PM check-in time, except that they are not really firm on it at all....something that we know from having stayed here many times. After just a couple minutes at the check in desk we head over to the next stop where we get our parking pass and they try to convince us to go to one of those fucking timeshare presentations. We have to wait in line for about 20 minutes as the two employees at the desk have both found suckers who are going to the presentation and it takes some time to explain it all to them. When I approach the desk I shut her down in about 10 seconds and she knows immediately we aren't falling for any of this, so I get my pass and we are on our way to our 2-bedroom townhouse overlooking one of five pools. Beautiful.
Next to Target to stock up on supplies for the week. Man this Target has absolutely everything. They should bring this store to Canada one day.
One thing I always forget to bring with me when we come to the States is peanut butter. Seriously, America, your peanut butter selection is a disgrace; we have to choose between Skippy and Jif. We choose Skippy of course.
I am pretty sure Skippy's company motto is "hey, at least we aren't Jif!!!"
Back to the room to get ready for dinner at Del Frisco's, where we are meeting Rick and Sue.
7:20 PM - We get in the car and put the address into the GPS and it says it's a 3 minute drive, which can't possibly be right, because once we leave the resort we have to turn right and go around the corner and that's going to take us 3 minutes all by itself, not to mention the restaurant can't possibly be right behind us.
7:23 PM - We arrive at the restaurant, which is right behind us. Who knew?
Oh, and just as a little bonus? The restaurant, which has an impressive wine list, is having a sale. A SALE ON WINE! 30% off any bottle that is $500 or less. I giggle like a schoolgirl for about 10 minutes and finally decide on a 2003 Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which should go beautifully with everyone's meal of red meat. After discount it's just over $200. I'm giggling again after typing that.
The meal is fantastic, the wine is transcendent, and just in case that wasn't good enough, the dessert is a piece of lemon cake big enough for four people (or six probably). I don't like lemon desserts at all, but I like this one! It's a perfect mix of tart and sweet. Superb.
Oh, and did I mention that Rick had arranged for a tour of their wine cellar? So there's that. And we also got to see the James Bond table. What is the James Bond table you ask?
I could not possibly describe it to you, just suffice it to say it's a table that is worth $1.2M. And probably worth even more to a huge James Bond fan, as my brother-in-law is. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
After dinner, we take the long 4-minute drive back to the resort (we took the long route) and head right to bed, as we are both exhausted after a couple of long days.
What a special evening and this is just day one of the trip. Tomorrow we are heading up to Rick and Sue's place for some more visiting time and there will be poolin'.....oh yes, there will be poolin'.... oh, and then another great dinner and LOVE!! Can't wait.
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