vacation Friday (6/7) and Saturday (6/8)

Friday (6/7) we were up at o'dark hundred (5:25 AM) to leave for the airport with Joe at 6 AM.  The first mishap was that the man at the USAIR desk gave us a credit card receipt (with his luggage tag attached) for Michael instead of a boarding pass....of course we don't notice this until we were ready to go through the scan at security....I take everything and go through security while Michael runs back to the gate to get a boarding pass.  He catches up with me and we head on to our gate.  Even though we got to the airport 2 hours before our flight.....Michael is still in line buying breakfast as they are announcing 'all rows boarding...please board all rows' for our flight!!!  I am panicking waiting for him to show up...I can see down the terminal that he is not even at the cashier yet!  He finally comes running up to the gate and when we get inside and settle down he tells me that he never saw anything like the bagel place....there were 5 people working there and they were all fighting!!  They couldn't even get a bagel toasted...nobody seemed to know what was going on....SHEESH!!!  Anyway, we left at 8 AM and after our 4 hour flight, we get to Las Vegas at 9 AM.  By the time we get our luggage and our car and get to the hotel, it is NOON.  We drop our stuff at the hotel (very plush) and split a burger for lunch.  Our $12 burger comes with the world's smallest bottles of catsup and mustard:

 

We head off walking as soon as we are finished.  I have to say that Las Vegas is certainly an assault on the senses, both indoors and out.  When you are inside you are generally walking through or near a casino and the noise is deafening.  Plus, Vegas certainly seems to be the place where everyone lets everything ‘all hang out’….whether it should be hanging out or not (if you know what I mean J)  When you are outside, the heat is an assault (the first time we stepped into the street we both had the same thought and Michael actually said 'I can feel the asphalt giving way under my feet!)  Also, every 2 steps, people are trying to hand you coupons or ads for their particular shows or casinos and regular people are hawking ice cold water (that they got who knows where!).  The other funny thing is...everything looks like it is so very close...when it is really very far away.  Whenever we would ask for directions to someplace...most times they would give us a crazy look and try to talk us out of it, because it was 108 in the shade and things are much farther away than they appear.  They were right....but we ended up walking all over the place anyway  J.  We ended up on gallery row with a Chihuly Gallery (remember the Chihuly sculpture at the Bushnell in Hartford???)

 

 

 

 

 

Dan MacDonald who does sculptures of Cirque du Soliel artists (incredible looking) and the final gallery was a guy who does landscape photos. Although they don't look like photos at all....they look like paintings on glass, with lights behind them...incredible.  We finally make it back to the room around 3 PM and nap from 3 - 4.  The wake up call at 4 PM also tells you the temperature is 108 degrees...yep, official 'fry an egg on the sidewalk' temp.  We both take quick showers and head off to the Mirage for dinner and a show.  We ate at FIN (Asian food) where Michael got a Golden Lotus drink :

 

which he pronounced heavenly.  After dinner we headed to one of the cirque shows....THE BEATLES.  The show used all Beatle music...Michael was in heaven. 

 

We have seen cirque shows twice (once in Hartford and now Vegas) and there is simply NO WAY to describe them to someone who has never seen one.  All I can say is...if you have an opportunity...no matter what it costs...you should go.  Michael and I walked around for another 1-1/2 hours after the show and we caught part of the volcano show at THE MIRAGE and a teeny tiny bit of the water show at THE BELLAGIO.  We walked through the BELLAGIO lobby to get to the cab stand, and saw the HUNDREDS of Chihuly flowers (at a cost of hundreds of thousands I am sure) they have strung up on the lobby ceiling:

We got back to the hotel and finally turned out the lights at 11 PM...a very long day indeed since our bodies thought it was 2 AM and we had been up since 5 AM!!

 **********************************************

Saturday (6/8) we had a wake up call for 5:25 AM (temp was 86 at that time).  We hopped up and got ready for the limo which picked us up at 6.  The restaurant in our hotel was not open at that time, so I told the driver that we had to stop somewhere, even a fast food drive through for something for breakfast.  He ended up taking us to a convenience store.  I felt like I was in some supermarket game show, running up and down the aisles, looking for something to eat for breakfast.  We finally found some Nutri-grain bars and some Belvita cookies and we were on our way.  About 20 minutes later he dropped us off at the helicopter pad.  We took a 45 minute ride over and around Hoover Dam (where Michael noticed how low the water was...it has dropped 120 feet in the last 20 years...and that represents a TON of water lost L) and the Grand Canyon, finally landing down at the bottom.  We walked down to the water and took a boat ride up and down a length of the canyon...spectacular views!  Neither pictures, nor words can really convey the vastness and height of the walls in the canyon.  We hiked back up to the helicopter and went up to the rim, where we caught a bus to the cantilevered bridge out over the Grand Canyon (which is on the west rim, on land owned by the Hualapai Nation Indian Tribe).  The bridge is 4,000 feet above the Colorado river…and believe you me…you see every inch of that 4,000 feet as you look down – down – down through the glass!!

 

with Andrea, who we adopted on the bridge!

she's from England and her hubby is afriad of heights, so he stayed behind

 

 

Then it was on to the Guano Cafe for lunch....not a very appetizing name right?  You DO know what guano means, don't you?  Yep, that's right, it means bat poop.  Apparently there was a huge bat cave nearby and they set up a mining operation for the guano (they use it as fertilizer).  They shipped it across the canyon on a zip line.  We finished lunch, saw many more spectacular views and headed back on our helicopter ride.  Michael got a beautiful skywalk t-shirt and we got certificates from the Hualapai Nation for visiting the bridge.  We hopped back into the limo for our ride back to the hotel.  It was only early afternoon, but by then I felt like we had already put in a 12 hour day!  We took a short nap, got cleaned up and headed out early for dinner at THE LUXOR.  It was another fabulous dinner (Michael had KOBE beef and King Crab meat and I had lobster risotto).  Then it was off to the Chris Angel - Mind Freak show.  He is an illusionist that Michael sometimes watches on television…and his illusions make my brain hurt J.  They are so incredible, you just can’t figure out how he does it.  We took another walking tour of Vegas after the show and finally fell into bed just after 11.