Saturday, November 3, 2007

Viva Las Vegas - Part 1

DH and I went vacationed in Las Vegas last week. We arrived at our hotel, the Golden Nugget, on Sunday at about 10 pm Las Vegas time. Our plan was to mountain bike three days and maybe see a show. We also wanted to visit Ethel M and see some other things while in town.

On Monday morning, we wet to the hotel buffet for breakfast and discovered that the Starbucks in Las Vegas generally do not take Starbucks cards. That really sucked because I put extra money on my Starbucks card, knowing that there were tons and tons of Starbucks in Las Vegas. I really need to call them to ask about that. Yeah yeah. I understand that they coffee shop is owned by the hotel or whatever but it still posts the Starbucks logo! I mean, it's not like Barnes and Nobel when they say "serving Starbucks coffee" or whatever. To me, that's pretty clear. The are Barnes and Nobel and they are serving a certain brand of coffee at their store -- like Wendy's serves Millstone. What's worse, these locations are listed on the Starbucks website. They really should take the card! ARG!

After breakfast, we went very high class and stopped at Food4Less and picked up the makings for PB&J along with a Styrofoam cooler and some beverages. By then the bike shop was opened and we picked up our rental mountain bikes -- which were Cannondale Rushes and I think that they were 2007 Rush 6. The folks at McGhie's Bikes were really nice. They even put on a women's specific saddle without my asking.



DH and I then went to the Blue Diamond trailhead in Cottonwood Canyon. This was my first time on a mountain bike (not counting test rides). The terrain was interesting -- some loose gravel type rocks, some fist sized rocks (also loose), some sandy surface and some hard packed. We rode twelve miles, according to DH's ancient GPS and we messed around on the bikes for a total of about three hours. We spent a lot of time figuring out where we were on the trail system.

At one point, I saw a cloud of dust ahead of me -- DH had decided to take a jump, and here I had been viewing those as obstacles to be avoided. Anyway, he fell, landing heavily on his shoulder. He was a bit sore the rest of the trip. He didn't complain but I kept on seeing him messing with his shoulder throughout the trip.



We rode for a while longer after the fall and we got to a section with a steeper incline. We got to the top and stopped and an overlook. I said, "Is that Blue Diamond."

DH replied, "No."

"So if we went down there, our car wouldn't be there?"

"No." DH pointed another direction and said, "We need to go around that hill."



See the town in these pictures? Could it be???


We followed the trail around the hill, went downhill for quite a ways and the trail started to get deep in sandy soil. DH stopped and said, "You're going to kill me. That was Blue Diamond." So we turned around and rode back up the long hill!

We had PB&J back at the trailhead and then went into town to clean up.

We headed to the Wynn for dinner. DH wanted to try the highly recommended "The Buffet." As it turns out, it wasn't all that. I mean, it was good and all but not all that fancy or anything. We were not all that impressed and agree that we won't be back. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't awesome or anything. They had seafood, sushi (DH said the sushi at Whole Foods is better), Asian (pork potstickers, stir fried octopus, baby bok choy <- quite good). There was a carving station that specified "Tom" turkey and "hand rubbed" prime rib. There was also grilled corn (not good) and grilled asparagus (good but not great). The Italian section was excellent though. The pasta station had all fresh, hand made pastas and the pizza was good. The desert station wasn't as good as I expected but I did enjoy the bread pudding. Service was only so-so. My water was empty a lot of the time. Our favorites were the bread pudding, vegetables, prime rib and shrimp cocktail. The rabbit salad and shrimp ceviche were both interesting as well.

After dinner, we did some walking, people watching and saw the water show at the Bellagio. The water show was good but I think that it used to be more than one song. We saw "Viva Las Vegas."

Score after Day 1

DH 1 fall -$5.00
Me 0 falls +$2.65

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