8/17-8/22 adventure

Just returned from five nights in Our Favorite City. Here are the high and lowlights:

Hotel: Stayed at MGM Grand. First time there. We had two rooms. Wife and I had a king room in the Grand Tower. Great room. Very spacious. With couch. Loved the deco decor. Teen kids next door had two queens. Plenty of room for everyone. Had great meals at the Pearl and Wolfgang Puck's. Highly recommend both. Puck's is very informal, Pearl much more formal. Great service at both.
Our big complaint was the pool. We had brought some snake-like floaties that became small inner tubes. Great for lazy rivers. Never had any problem at Mandalay Bay or Monte Carlo (in fact, they both will blow them up for you!), but MGM refused to let us bring them in. Meaning that they want you to rent their HUGE always-in-the-way innertubes for $15 a pop. We were outraged, but nothing we could do. A small thing to a lot of folks I suppose, but it was important to us.
Overall, MGM was just plain large. If you like to walk, you'll love it. By the way, the shortcut through the Emerald Tower worked like a charm. I would hate to have a room on that first floor of ET. Constant traffic up and down the hall. Ugh.
Gambling: Had my best lucky downtown at the Golden Gate crap table. Had a nice run of about a half-hour. Very pleasant place with great air circulation despite being the oldest hotel in LV. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. I fell in love with three-card poker (must have been those three queens!) and it took me pretty good. Still a fun game.
Entertainment: Saw three GREAT shows. Fab Four Beatles tribute at the Hilton is first rate. A must see if you're a Beatles fan. The guy who plays Ed Sullivan is an absolute hoot!!!! Also saw Blue Man Group for the second time. Very fun! And we took in the Second City improv at the Flamingo. Also very fun. If you like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" you'll love this.
Food: Besides the good food at MGM, we also had a wonderful dinner at Bull Shrimp at Green Valley Ranch. The chop salad is to die for! Also had a late-night snack at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse that was delish (Wollensky salad and split pea soup). We were lucky enough to be seated as a group of 8 in the Kitchen Room (because of smoke in bar). A real treat! And we used the $50 LVA Palms coupon at Garduno's at The Palms. A great deal.
One more thing: We hit the wax museum at Venetian for the first time. What a kick! You're allowed to hang all over the statues if you want. We took some great photos. Me and Larry King are best buds!

 

Hey--people like you are the reason the crew at Mme Tussaud's have to spend 8 hours every night repairing the wax creations Sounds like you had a great time!

 

Thanks for the report! We leave in T-17 and can't wait. I love reading about everyone elses experiences, but now I want to see more/do more. Oh well, guess we'll have to plan another trip.

 

Ha! It was amazing what you could get away with. A lot of people were very shy about taking pics. We weren't.

 

This was one of the few times we really did everything we set out to do. Usuually there's never enough time.