The Grand Vegas Finale

Thankfully, the last few days in Vegas were pleasantly uneventful. The day following our day full of adventure was the last day for the baseball bunch. Their flight didn't leave until 6 p.m., so there was still time to squeeze the most out of Vegas. Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to do laundry because I still had over a week of vacation to go. I also used the time when the boys were enjoying a breakfast buffet, compliments of the hotel thanks to Coach T for asking for some kind of compensation for the boys being stuck in the elevator, to start loading up my car with all of my crap. On the way back from the parking garage I ran into a group of the baseball boys, "good morning aunty," they said to me. "Aunty." I have a hard time swallowing the fact that I can be an "aunty" to a 16-year old. Prior to this trip, it was acceptable for me to be called "aunty" by the oldest of my friend's children (so we're talking pre-teens). But now I guess I have to expand the acceptable level of aunty-ness to anyone who hasn't graduated from high school yet. I'm getting old.

After we loaded up the cars with everyone's luggage, we headed off to Boulevard Mall for some last minute shopping since there was time to kill. It was sad. This used to be one of my favorite "regular" (i.e. non-outlet) malls in Vegas, as well as Elastagirl's. But a lot of the shops have since closed, probably due to the economy as well as because there are so many other malls now. It wasn't nearly as crowded as it used to be several years ago. Nonetheless, the boys still managed to find a few last minute items, and it was a good place to grab a bite to eat. I've always seen the Chicken Company around, but didn't think much of it, and I don't really eat much chicken anyway. However, I tried a sample of their grilled chicken and it was good! Someone commented that the garlic chicken is good, so I ordered the spicy garlic chicken with tossed salad. What I like about this place is you can just order one meat and one side order - they didn't force you to order more than you really wanted.

After the mall, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, the baseball gang home to Hawaii, and me embarking on the solo part of my trip. I would be spending another two nights in Vegas at Treasure Island on my own for some fun and relaxation.

I went to check in at Treasure Island, now known as "TI," and found myself in a nice room on the 24th floor overlooking the Strip and the pirate show area. That night I was going to see "Love" at The Mirage, a Cirque du Soleil show based on music by the Beatles. I was in search of food prior to the show and stumbled across a place in The Mirage called Onda, an Italian restaurant and wine bar. I wasn't that hungry and I was in a relative hurry, so I ordered a Caesar salad and an antipasti platter, along with a glass of wine. The Caesar salad was good, although a bit overdressed, and I especially enjoyed the accompanying parmesan crisp. The antipasti platter was excellent with a couple of Italian meats, a couple of cheeses, and some roasted veggies. What intrigued me most were what I found out were roasted baby carrots.

After dinner I headed to the show. The layout of the theater is very unusual. Although there were a couple of technical glitches in the beginning that caused the show to be interrupted and paused for a few minutes, the show was amazing! While Beatles music is always good, what particularly impressed me were the effects used in the show. I don't want to give away anything because if you go, you should go without any expectations of what will occur, but suffice it to say that it is very good and I don't think anyone can deny the impact of the effects and feats on the audience, regardless of how you feel about the Beatles.

The next day I had myself booked for an almost-4-hour spa package at the TI spa, Wet. The facilities exceeded my expectations. While I haven't experienced that many spas, the most memorable one for me is the Spa at the Grand Floridian in Disney World. Wet, while different in theme, was a very nice, very large facility. Some of the reviews I read made it sound like it was really small. I have no idea what those people are talking about - if Wet is small, I can't imagine what "large" is!

In any case, I booked the Autograph package which includes a massage, facial, pedicure, and manicure, in that order, all with separate therapists and aestheticians. I had Charlene for my massage, which was okay. Some parts were really good, but some were just "okay." She did a really good job on my shoulders though, which I told her were probably my biggest problem area. I really enjoyed Linda, who did the facial. Kim did my pedicure, and she didn't have the best personality, but she did a good job - although this was my very first pedicure, so I have nothing to compare it too! She was pleasant enough, but didn't seem as skilled at making conversation. Finally, Sonia did my manicure. Sonia was extremely good at making conversation, and I enjoyed talking to her. She did a good job on my nails too, but again, this was my first manicure. I decided that I'm not a girly girl and manicures for the most part are probably wasted on me. That was only about 5 days ago and already the nail polish has begun to peel off - but I blame myself since I'm not dainty and careful about my nails.

After the spa I went to Canter's Deli in the hotel and ordered a pastrami sandwich on rye served with fries and a pickle spear. Everything was very good! That night I had a ticket to see "Phantom of the Opera" at the Venetian. I didn't have much time for dinner, so I just had an antipasto salad in the Venetian food court, which was pretty good.

"Phantom" was also excellent! I am partial to "Phantom" since it is my favorite play and I love the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but this performance was exceptional in every way. The actors were terrific, but I would go again just to see the theater. I booked a seat in the front row of the mezzanine, so I had an excellent view of some of the effects. Most people know about the chandelier, but there are other effects that occur that are amazing, and even the chandelier is probably nothing like you've ever seen.

If you decide to see shows in Las Vegas, especially in the near future, try checking the hotels' websites for special deals. I got 25% off both shows that way. I think Vegas shows are hurting too, so they're offering some really good deals.

That's about it for the Vegas portion of my vacation. The next day I left Las Vegas and began my California Adventure. Stay tuned...

The Vegas Adventure Continues

Let's see if I can finish up the group portion of the Vegas trip in this one post!

I'm already starting to forget what happened on what day! But I do know there was a lot of excitement on Sunday. But before I get ahead of myself, let's see if I can get through Saturday. There was one baseball game on that day in the morning. The boys wanted to ride the New York New York roller coaster, so we headed back to the Strip. While I love roller coasters, I was slightly reluctant to ride this one because I saw it being built, and my memory of it was the track ending mid-air! However, I didn't let that stop me, and I decided to ride it, but only once - the boys bought an all-day pass. It was quite exhilarating! There was a steep incline at first, and we were headed straight into the sun. At the highest point, it seemed like we could see all of Las Vegas, and we were definitely higher than the Statue of Liberty in front of the hotel. While I'm glad I tried it, once was enough!

After we got off the coaster, The Coach was waiting for us with some Nathan's hot dogs, which were really good hot dogs! That night was a fairly early night since our game the next day started at 7:30 a.m. The adults went to The Cal and had dinner at Aloha Specialties. I just had a large saimin with veggies (which was obscenely large - even the small was huge) and tofu. In the past, I really liked the tofu which was topped with bonito flakes, but this time I was disappointed. The portion was smaller and it looked like they just dumped it on the plate istead of displaying it in a neat square.

Sunday was quite a day! We had a 7:30 a.m. game so we dropped the boys off really early, then the girls went to Smith's in search of food. This was not satisfactory, so we also went to Sonic, where I supplemented my ham sandwich from Smith's with tater tots with chili and cheese. A couple of the girls got burgers. Keep in mind that this was for breakfast!

We won that game and were scheduled to play in the finals sometime around 1:30 p.m. We took the boys to In-N-Out Burger for lunch. Yes, burger number 2 for some of us! It was still early, about 10 a.m. The boys went to the door and it was locked, then we realized they didn't open until 10:30. But we were in luck, the manager opened the doors for us! Cool! If you go to Vegas, please go and patronize them - this is the one near Sunset Station and Galleria at Sunset. Elastagirl thanked the manager for opening and he said he remembered his days of playing ball. It was probably a good business call anyway, there were a number of other people who came in as well.

The afternoon game was the final game that we played against a team from California. The team was physically huge. They did not look like high school players at all. I later found out that they had all graduated, while our team was primarily made up of sophomores and juniors. Not really a fair game, and the other team won by one point. It was a good game though, and the boys still got a trophy for coming in second. Good for them!

From this point, all hell broke loose! On the way back to the hotel, Elastagirl and I were having a good ol' time talking about all kinds of things, including aliens (since Area 51 is nearby Vegas). We were talking so much that we completely missed the freeway cutoff! And The Coach was following us too. Oops. So we got off on the next offramp. But that was still wrong, we were supposed to get off the next one. That's okay, we'll figure it out. We ended up at a kind of strange intersection where we had to turn left on the right side of a median. But we ended up turning to the left of the median...facing oncoming traffic! And worse yet, The Coach followed us too! S!*t, what are we going to do??? I tried to quickly assess the situation. I didn't think we could make it over the median. Fortunately, the oncoming traffic had a red light. In my assessment, making a left turn was the only way to go...against the light! As soon as I saw that the coast was clear, I told Elastagirl to go, and The Coach followed. The passengers in our van were eerily quiet, at least for a while. Then there were some, "ho, aunty" comments going around, as well as, "that was too much excitement for me!"

But that wasn't it. We went back to our rooms and were supposed to meet downstairs at 6:30 to take the boys to go bowling. The brother of one of the adults works at Green Valley Ranch and could set up bowling for us. We got back to the hotel around 5, and Elastagirl and I couldn't get into our room. Our keys didn't work, but we noticed the lights didn't go on either. She explained this to the front desk, but they just gave us new keys...which still didn't work. Front desk says they'll call an engineer. At this point, we decided to just sit on the ground outside our room as we waited. Engineer comes along, a nice guy who was very helpful, and sticks what I call a slim jim for hotel room doors, under the door to open it, so at least we could get in the room. He can't figure it out either and says he has to have security reset the door. Without going into further detail, it turned into a big mess which resulted in over 1 1/2 hours of lost time and an angry Elastagirl. We might've had to change rooms. We ended up just leaving the room in the hands of security and the engineers, we couldn't wait any longer.

But that's still not all! We get downstairs and one of the moms comes around and says some of the boys are stuck in the elevator and have been there for a while! She found out because her son called her on his cell, but then lost service. Another mom comes around and is talking to the useless security guy at the Plaza, who apparently made a comment that she could call the fire department if she wanted to. So she did. The boys had already been stuck for 40 minutes. The fire department showed up! I'm not quite sure what happened at that point, but I know that just a couple minutes after the firefighters arrived, the doors were opened and the boys got out. Ten of them were in there and their biggest complaint was that it got really hot, and someone farted. They all had to file reports with the hotel. We were supposed to be bowling at 7, but didn't leave the hotel until 7:30.

But that's not all...the guy who arranged the bowling and one other van disappeared, but we knew where Green Valley Ranch was, so we headed there along with The Coaches van. Besides that, Elastagirl's aunty and clan were also on their way to Green Valley Ranch. Just as we're pulling into the driveway at Green Valley Ranch, someone calls and asks where we are, they're at Red Rock already. Red Rock??? On the other side of town??? There was some kind of misunderstanding, so now we had just hauled our butts to Henderson (east of Las Vegas) when we were supposed to be on the far west side of Las Vegas.

We finally made it to Red Rock and had a great time. The boys bowled while the adults went in search of food. The Coach said that Rubio's has good fish tacos, so I decided to try that. It was good! But I found the special fish taco to be better than the original. After we ate, we headed back to the bowling alley and Elastagirl and I played pool for a little while. At least the day ended well!

To be continued...

Vegas continued...

Okay, in typical Kendra fashion, I am behind on my blog, particularly since I'm no longer in Vegas! Let's see if I can catch up in one or two posts.

The afternoon of our first day, we had to go to Costco to pick up items for the baseball boys like bottled water and snacks. It turns out there was one just a couple minutes away from the hotel. It was so deserted, it was almost eerie! It almost felt like we were the only ones in the store. The Costco was pretty cool - literally. There was one entire section in the back that was a giant refrigerated room, cooled to 42 degrees, where they stored all the produce. They even provided jackets outside the room. The other thing I thought was interesting was how they sold snacks individually, so you could buy one small pack of cookies or muffins rather than having to buy a dozen of them. Oh, and water was unbelievably cheap! A 36-pack of water was only $2.99 (after $1 instant rebate)!

The first night in Vegas, we had dinner at the Main Street buffet, which was quite good. There was a wide selection of food, and I think the cost was about $10.99. One of my favorites was the brisket, which was seasoned very nicely. Some other tasty items were the garlic bread, ribs, and taquitos. After dinner we walked down the Fremont Street Experience which was accompanied by the music of Queen, which was pretty cool. We also gambled a bit at Main Street where I made a little money on a Treasure Chest poker machine.

The next day, Thursday, was the first day of the baseball tournament. The team was scheduled to play two games, the first at 10 and the second at 5:30. Both games were very good, but we lost. The games were played at the baseball field at Basic High, in Henderson which is a pretty nice looking school with nice sporting facilities, as far as public schools go.

Between the games, rather than drive back to the hotel, we drove to the Galleria at Sunset Mall. Surprisingly the baseball boys seem to enjoy shopping! It was at their request that we went to several malls. While the boys, including the coaches, walked around, the girls decided to have lunch at Chevy's Mexican Grill at Elastagirl's recommendation. This turned out to be a great choice. Elastagirl said the guacamole was really good, so we ordered it. It's cool that it's prepared tableside, and it was probably the best guacamole I've ever had. When I get home I want to try to replicate it. A couple of us also ordered watermelon margarita's, another good choice. I was torn on what to order since everything sounded good. Fortunately, one of the other ladies ordered first, a make-your-own combo which I hadn't seen on the menu - this allowed me to get two of the items I was eying, the tortilla soup and Santa Fe salad. Everything was very good, including the chips and salsa.

For dinner that night, we decided to go to The Cal and have dinner at the Market Street Cafe. They had a special for $7.95 that included prime rib, salad bar, and a cherries jubilee. A great deal, and tasty! The salad bar was very nice too.

On Friday we had to wake up very early for a 7:30 a.m. game. We lost that game too. That afternoon we went to the Premium Outlet in Downtown, and at night we headed for the Strip. We started out at Fashion Show Mall, then had dinner at the Flamingo buffet, which was just "okay." We had some service issues with them too, which created a lot of confusion. Fortunately, we had a wonderful waitress who lived in Kaneohe before moving to Vegas. She helped to make the experience better. A tip for anyone who eats here: the crab is on ice, but you can hand it to a dude next to the prime rib and he'll heat it for you by throwing it into a basket and lowering it into some hot water.

After dinner, we headed to the Forum at Caesar's Palace. It was funny watching all of the baseball boys pack themselves like sardines into an elevator on the Strip to go up to the walkway that crosses the street. We watched the Bellagio water show then headed to the Forum at Caesar's Palace. At Caesar's Palace, the adults were pretty tired of shopping and just wanted to lounge. The boys walked around and watched the moving statues before we left for the evening.

To be continued...

Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire...

Well, I don't have a whole lot of money that's ready to burn, but so far I've done my part to help the Las Vegas economy recover from whatever financial straits it might be in!

We've been here in Las Vegas since Wednesday morning, and it's been quite an adventure. "We" is myself along with a couple of friends and some Kailua High School baseball team members who are participating in a wood bat tournament in Henderson. So far I've primarily been the tag-along and sometimes designated driver (not necessarily for alcohol-related situations!).

The morning we arrived was somewhat of a challenge for all of us with logistical issues such as car rentals and miscommunication with the hotel. After that, things have gone pretty well *knock on wood* except for the baseball games!

So far three games have been played and all have been lost. However, the games that have been played have been for seeding purposes, and supposedly the real action begins tomorrow.

As for leisure activities, we started off the first day at the Adventuredome at Circus Circus. Prior to Wednesday, I hadn't been there since it first opened, I think over 10 years ago. It was fun going there again.

After that, we were starving and ate at a place called MexItalia (can you tell what kinds of foods they serve???) in the hotel.
The Mexican items turned out to be good choices, although Elastagirl wasn't thrilled with her Italian dish. I ordered a Mexican pizza thinking it would be something along the lines of a Taco Bell Mexican Pizza. It turns out that they actually put it in a pizza box! It was ridiculously large for one person and I only ate two of the eight slices (and even that was pushing it). But it was really good, and a good deal at $8.99.


Getting tired...or shall I say, AM tired...to be continued soon.

Leaving Soon for Sin City!

Thought I'd post a quick preview of my trip before I depart tonight for Las Vegas!

Tonight I begin my two-week adventure in Las Vegas and exploring California. I haven't been off the island since October, so I'm really excited to be getting off the rock! I feel like I need some really good R&R.

My adventure begins in Las Vegas where I'll be helping a friend out with a baseball tourney (probably running errands, helping to keep an eye on the players, etc.). I'll also be squeezing in a couple of shows, "Love" and "Phantom," as well as a luxurious few hours at the Wet Spa at Treasure Island (now known as "TI")! I'm looking forward to traveling with Elastagirl since it's been quite a few years since we've traveled together.

After Sin City, I'll be driving over to California. I've always wanted to drive down the coast, and I've never covered the area between Monterey and Santa Barbara, so that was my goal for this trip. I'll post more details on how I chose my locations later, but I'll be stopping off in Paso Robles, Monterey, Avila Beach, and Redondo Beach. Some of the attractions I'll be covering include the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Hearst Castle. I also hope to book a walking tour in Carmel.

While I'm in Redondo Beach, I plan to visit my aunty and a couple of good friends. One of these friends is having a baby, TOMORROW! (This, according to a text message I received from her today!) I'm hoping that I'll be able to visit with them and meet the little guy.

Keep posted, I plan to post updates daily, including pictures!