Viva Las Vegas 2006!

We took the short 55 minute flight from phoenix to vegas for the final two nights of our vacation. It's funny: we left phoenix at 2:45 pm mountain time, and arrived in vegas 2:40 pm pacific time. Talk about time standing still!

Anyway, we were staying at the old but moderately priced tropicana hotel and casino, which is right on the corner of las vegas blvd. and (of course) tropicana ave. The other corners are occupied by the mgm grand, new york new york, and excalibur. (Interestingly, the mgm goliath owns all three, plus the luxor, mandalay bay, and some others.) Revisting one of our favorite restaurants, we had dinner at emeril's new orleans fish house at the mgm, followed by a night in their poker room. Football coach and TV analyst jimmy johnson was playing on one of the tables here!

On monday we toured around a bit at excalibur (krispy kreme donuts for breakfast!), luxor, and mandalay bay, where we practically opened the rum jungle at 11:00 am with a nice $11 mojito. Then we took a ride on the new monorail system from the mgm to ballys, and walked over to the one year old wynn casino. (Their website is so ridiculously slow that I don't give the link here.) The place is very upscale — they charge $10 just to walk into their ferrari showroom — and the table games don't have the lower limits that you find most everywhere else.

After a great lunch in their casual restaurant overlooking the pool, we headed down to our neck of the strip. I went back to work in the mgm poker room, playing straight through from around 8:30 pm to about 5:30 am. (I did take a break to check out the new hooters casino, located in the former san remo about a half block away. It's small but features a hooters restaurant, and of course, lots of hooters girls. I also took some photos of the lights on the strip (see my night lights pics).

Then I packed my bags and we caught the 8:40 am flight back home. Another excellent (but too short!) vacation.