Vegas - Day 4

As per my assignment from Ann, we went back to Tiffany's on Monday so I could photograph the paper art in the windows. I'm still undecided if it's truly hand cut by Jeff Rudell or some other artist, or mass produced by Tiffany's for all their stores' windows - probably the latter.

That top photo was to whet your appetite. Look at these two windows! I think they are just breath-taking. The mitered frames around the windows are gray leather. It's Tiffany's, of course they are.

Tiffany's is in the street of shops at Bellagio, which also featured this atrium area. I love the burst of color of these lanterns (or seed pods) - not sure what they represent. There were also very large pots of sand sitting around, each holding a dozen or so giant burning incense sticks. Each was about 1" in diameter, about 18" long. (But not smoking as much as you'd imagine, it was very subtle.)

Then there's this dude.

I was kind of taken with these gold coins because artists use these (normal sized!) for embellishment on cards and as collage elements.

Before our trip, we had strongly considered renting a car and driving to Red Rock Canyon and Hoover Dam as I mentioned in a previous entry. Then I got the wild idea of driving to a California beach because I've never been to the Pacific Ocean. I did a MapBlast search and it seems like it would have been about 4 hours. I thought if we left the hotel at 6:00 AM, we'd get there by 10:00. We could hang out for about 6 hours, then drive back, arriving at the hotel by 8:00ish. (We never really slept past 7:00 any day we were there, try as we might.)

I wasn't totally convinced it was a good idea - that's 8 hours of driving for 6 hours of unguaranteed fun. But I floated the idea past Steve while we were eating lunch at New York New York, awaiting our room. He was moderately receptive to the idea.

Then we got our really cool suite and said screw any plans - let's just hang out and relax. So Monday after breakfast, we walked down to Bellagio for the above photos, then went back to the room, read for a while and napped for a while. Then I stitched for a few hours, watching Michael Jackson's movie, This is It, which honestly wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

Steve decided that would be a good time to go play some video blackjack. The movie was well over and he wasn't back yet - I was hoping that was good news. :-) I thought about going downstairs to find him but the casino is so big, it was likely I would miss him if he headed up to the room at the same time. (Duh, I could have called him on his cell phone.) When he came back to the room I asked if I should call our respective jobs to give notice. Nope, darn it. He'd played 3+ hours on the same $20 he started with! Guess he got his money's worth of fun out of that 2o bucks.

We walked around a couple of hotels trying to find just the right place to eat dinner. We ended up at a steak place in Excalibur. Truthfully, I only had French Onion Soup and a salad because I'd had a pizza pretzel mid-afternoon. Steve enjoyed his steak though.

This is the view from one side of the suite, during the day. You can see that crazy roller coaster track. Beside the rollercoasterness of it, add in alcohol - how much puking you think goes on, on that thing?? Ewww. It went until 10:30 at night (I think it was) - we could hear the screams faintly from our room. You can also see the Statue of Liberty in the lower left. It all looked so big from the ground.

Mom, I thought of you often, in our big fancy hotel room on the 32nd floor. There were specific elevators to specific sets of floors so the higher floors didn't have to stop at every podunk lower floor. That thing zipped so fast, it just showed XX for the floors it was skipping! (It was beautiful inside, all inlaid wood looking.) You would have hated every minute of it.

Same view at night. Not bad for photos taken through windows.

This is out the front window, overlooking the strip.

Same view at night.

This is the sun setting over the mountains in the distance. We didn't want to go to bed because then vacation would pretty much be over but we got to bed at a reasonable time. Good thing, because we both slept like crap, waking up a lot. Must have been the anticipation of the alarm and getting showered, packed and to the airport by 9:00 the next morning.

I watched most of two mediocre movies on the plane, Fame and Post Grad. I even stitched while watching because we had no one with us on the aisle seat so Steve moved over and we put the tray down between us to hold my stitching things. I was so afraid I'd drop a spool of thread or my scissors and not be able to pick them up because everything is so cramped, especially with the seat in front of me reclined. On the way to Las Vegas, when the seat in front of me reclined, I could no longer hold my book out far enough to read without my glasses. I asked Steve if he would mind holding it for me out by the the aisle, but he politely declined. :-) I could read okay with my glasses on but it's kind of weird because I never do and I had to figure out just where to look through them.

A fine time was had by all.