tuesday 10/12
We left for las vegas at 6am. I was anticipating that the the drive would take
between 8 and 9 hours. We were making decent time and arrived just after 2pm.
We stopped off at The Rio first, to pickup tickets to the Penn & Teller show.
Then we drove to The Sahara and checked in. Overall, everything was just as it
was a year ago. Our room was on the 8th floor, and was clean and quiet with a
fairly dull view of the city looking southwest of the strip. We had the usual
long haul from the parking garage to the room, and that occupied a chunk of the
afternoon. We went to dinner at the Carnival Buffet at The Rio, and it was even
better than we remember from last year. They appear to have renovated the
dining area, and made a bit more modern looking. I ate alot of everything and
we were both stuffed. After that, we drove to the Bellagio to try and catch the
water fountain show. Upon driving into the parking garage, they were requiring
all vehicles to open their trunks for a security check. It seemed kinda stupid,
since we could have easily snuck anything in elsewhere in the car. This was the
first time that we had been inside the Bellagio, and overall it was nice. The
blown glass flowers in the lobby were kinda nice from a distance, but up close
they looked kinda garish. As we were wandering outside, the fountain show was
just starting. We got a semi-decent view from just outside the main entrance,
however david got spooked by pressurized air cannons that they used to fire the
jets of water in the air. He ended up staring away from the show, but i thought
it was ok. We stayed for a 2nd show (i think they did them every 20 minutes)
and then wandered about the hotel a bit more. After that we went back to the
car and drove to the airport to pick up Denise's sister who had flown in from
Pittsburgh. I had figured that it was silly to pay for parking just to pick her
up, so I planned to just circle the airport and drop Denise off. Initially,
she planned to take David in with her, but when we got to the airport, he had
fallen asleep. I drove a few blocks up the street to the MGM Grand parking lot
to kill some time, since the flight wasn't due to arrive for about another 15
minutes. I waited until 10PM, and then drove back to the airport to see if they
were ready. No luck. I circled. Still no luck. I circled a few more times.
No luck. I ended up circling 24 times over 40 minutes before they were ready.
As soon as they got into the car, david woke up and freaked out and started
crying histerically. He cried for about 10 minutes as we drove back to the
Sahara.