Back from Las Vegas!

As always, click on any of the photos for larger image

Sir B and I had a wonderful time in Las Vegas! We arrived Friday night, and went gambling right away after checking in :) I played a Wheel of Fortune slot machine and won $265!! What a way to start the vacation!


We stayed at the Luxor, which is a very neat hotel. This was our room (in the pyramid, note the angled window):



And our view:


The lobby:



The "attractions" level:


They were even decked out for Christmas already! We found it a little weird to be hearing Christmas music while walking around the hotel...


You walk under the sphinx to get to the hotel from the tram...


I like the way the sphinx is reflected in the glass in this photo of the obelisk:


On Saturday I won $60 on a slot machine, and spent all my winnings on this:

The stones are sapphires, and the pearl is straight from an oyster! This photo doesn't have my pearl in it, this is just the display. The sales lady had Sir B pick out the oyster, and he chose one that happened to have a gorgeous grey-blue pearl inside. I had them size it, so I won't be getting it for a few weeks :(
We got "suckered" in to a timeshare presentation (for 175 bucks we felt we could give them two hours), and ended up buying into it! So now we have a timeshare to go to in Las Vegas every third year, plus a seriously discounted week's vacation anywhere once every year.

That night we went to see Penn & Teller, and their show was so incredible. We even got to meet them afterwards, so Sir B took photos of me with them...

Me smoochin' on Teller:


Penn was just too freakin' tall to smooch:


On Sunday we went to the Shark Reef exhibit at Mandalay Bay Resort, and I could've stayed there all day. They even had a petting pool with stingrays (my favorite!)



We weren't allowed to pet these little ones because they were partially buried in the sand, which means they're sleeping


Jellyfish!


Sunday evening was spent enjoying fantastic chinese food at the restaurant Red 8 and seeing the play Spamalot, both at the Wynn Hotel.



On the taxi ride back to our hotel, we got to see the Mirage volcano erupt, and part of the Bellagio fountain show!

Monday we went to Bodies: The Exhibition, which was sooooo fascinating. I highly recommend it. It is amazing to be able to see a human body that way, without all the grossness of cadaver study (which I did in massage school). The neatest part, in my opinion, were the displays showing the circulatory system. For example, they had a leg. They injected a substance into the blood vessels and let that dry, then used another substance to dissolve all the other tissues. What was left was this beautiful weblike mass of vessels. Sir B said it looked like pulled-apart cotton, it was so fine.
The Luxor has an IMAX theater, and we saw a few of the 3-D movies there. Then we were off to the other end of the strip to Cafe Heidelberg for dinner (I'm not into German food but Sir B is, so don't ask me if I liked it!), and The Amazing Johnathon for our final show. He is sosososososo funny. If you don't know who he is, hurry to his website! Now! Watch his Comedy Central special! You won't be disappointed. I think he is considered a magician, but he really doesn't do much magic... he makes fun of magic tricks more than anything. I really wanted to get a photo of Sir B with Johnathon, but we forgot to have cash for souvenirs there and had to run to an ATM, and by the time we got back we were able to buy his DVD and book, but he was already gone. So no picture :(

Photos of the strip from the walkway between Excalibur and The Tropicana:




The waterfall at the Tropicana:

Doesn't it look so nice and warm there? NOT! It was in the low 60's, so we didn't get to enjoy the hotel pool at all. Poo. I really wanted to go swimming!

Sunset from the plane:


My feet are killing me from all the walking, but we had an absolutely fabulous time. We can't wait to go back! The cats were spoiled by the cat-sitter, but were very happy we came home.