Palm Trees Outside My Window

What’s up from the west side!!!

We’ve been in Las Vegas for 5 days, but I’m just now getting around to doing an update! We’ve been going day and night, nonstop since last Friday night. Dustin’s at the casino next door playing poker, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to blog and catch up.

Our flight left from Stewart on Saturday but our first stop was Detroit. I haven’t flown in 20 years and this was Dustin’s first time on a plane, so for some crazy reason I thought it would be a good idea to take a flight that had connecting flights instead of direct so I could stretch my legs more often and take a break from being in the air. Bad idea! The flights weren’t bad at all, but the 3 hour wait at Detroit was terrible. I never want to do that again if I can avoid it!

Shortly after taking off from Stewart, they served drinks and snacks. The legendary Biscoff cookies…

…and a ginger ale.

This snack was bigger than my first breakfast of 5 saltine crackers and a 4oz juicy box, LOL. I didn’t want to eat too much before we left just in case my stomach acted up. This tided me over for awhile. I liked chewing on the ice cubes, they helped curb my anxiety.

The flight was smooth but I was surprised by how small the plane was. I’m sure some people were tall enough to bump their head on the ceiling, lol. I guess smaller planes are common for connector flights.

So, an hour and 10 minutes later, we landed in Detroit. That airport was massive compared to Stewart. Took us much longer to get to our next gate this time. We had 3 hours to kill, so we grabbed some overpriced sandwiches at the food court.

I got a Boar’s Head “Heart Healthy” sandwich with lower sodium turkey/ham and Swiss cheese.

$9 bucks for that crap! Seriously. I was pretty hungry, so I ate half of it. It didn’t taste that bad, it was ok. But for $9 bucks? Totally unimpressive. There were several pilots in the food court and they all seemed to like Taco Bell. They must have stomachs of steel or were headed on very short flights. I wouldn’t take such risk on a meal like that on a long trip, lol.

Our next flight was bigger, but more cramped and filled to the brim. No upgrades were available at that point.  We went from two-person rows to three-person rows. Our neighbor, a man from Canada living in London on his way to Vegas, who had possession of the window seat, was quite chatty. And geeky. We consider ourselves nerds, but that guy trumped us on that flight, lol. I think he was annoying the other passengers, he talked A LOT and, loudly. The 4 hour flight went by pretty quickly, though—thankfully.

We arrived in Las Vegas around 6:40PM PST. After picking up our checked luggage, we took a taxi to the Luxor.  We paid for our hotel when we bought our plane tickets, so all we had to pay for at check-in was the resort fee. Imagine our surprise when our bank cards, both our personal and business accounts, were declined. WTF? We figured that their merchant account wasn’t working or whatever, so to save time we just paid cash instead of trying another card and standing there forever.

After a long day, we were never so happy to see our room, a spa suite at the Luxor. It was like heaven on earth at that point, lol. We were exhausted.

Not the greatest picture, I was too tired to take better pics when we got in.

Moose was happy to be out of the suitcase.

Being we were so tired, we ordered ridiculously expensive room service to avoid going back out of our room. I was starving by that point, the Biscoff and overpriced airport food weren’t going to hold me over until morning.

I loved the assortment of condiments they brought up with our table, including red wine vinegar and olive oil. How cute are these itty bitty Tabasco sauces?!?!

I saved them to bring home. They’re just too cute to use, LOL.

I ordered the spaghetti and meatballs and a side salad. I was in the mood for pasta, a sign that I was homesick maybe? lol

This was unsurprisingly delicious! I say unsurprisingly because at those prices, delicious is the least it can be. hahaha I ate both meatballs, about a cup of the spaghetti and all of my salad. Oh, and the foccocia bread, of course.

The next morning we woke up to a magnificent mountain view

What is that I spy with my little eye? Is that… In-n-Out Burger?! The popular burger joint NOT found on the east coast?

I made it my mission from that point on to figure out how to get to it without getting run over by a car. It’s one of those things that you just have to try once in your lifetime. In the life of a food blogger, anyway. heh

We were undecided where we’d eat lunch that day, or breakfast for that matter. So, we played it safe and chose a restaurant right in the hotel for lunch called Tacos and Tequila, or T + T for short.

They brought chips and salsa to the table, but I was disinterested in them. I guess I met my quota of fried corn chips earlier in the week.

I ate 3 of the chips out of hunger, they were pretty good. I liked the salsas.

For my entree, I ordered the shrimp quesadilla:

It was tasty, but too greasy.

I ate one triangle and decided to save my appetite for dinner, whatever, wherever that may be.

We did lots and lots of walking up and down the strip the rest of the day. We stopped in several casinos and stores, and our bank cards STILL weren’t working, but it was Sunday and our debit card customer service is only available during business hours Monday-Friday. Would have been pretty inconvenient if we had to rely on them as our only means of paying for things! Later on in the day, met up with my aunt and uncle at their hotel. We did more touristy walking around and a little gambling and saw a free show outside of Treasure Island called Sirens of T.I. or something like that. It was a pretty cool pirate ship show with singing and dancing. Nothing I’d pay money to see, but it was fun to stand on the sidewalk and watch. We went back in the casino, I lost $150 in 2 seconds at the roulette wheel, ha! It was getting late, so we grabbed a fairly good slice of NY style cheese pizza at a little pizzeria in their hotel. I was more thirsty than hungry, anyway.

The next morning (Monday) we called our bank right away to find out why we couldn’t use our debit cards. They told us that they have all of Las Vegas blocked because of the high fraud rate and that we have to call to unlock it. They said we should have called before we left, but we had no idea. We had to let them know exactly which dates we’d be back because after that date they will block all transactions from Vegas again until we request it be lifted. Geez. Super high security, but that’s understandable, I can appreciate that. Next time we know to call ahead before we go out of town. I suggest doing the same with your bank cards if you are going to Vegas, especially if you are using your them to pay for anything! It was pretty embarrassing when they say your card has been declined without providing any other explanation as to why it’s declined, lol.

After taking care of business in the morning, my aunt and uncle came to our hotel for lunch. We decided to hit up the buffet in our hotel. I’ve heard Vegas buffets are amazing, so I was pretty excited to check out the salad bar. Yeah, who goes to Vegas looking forward to a 30-foot salad bar? *raises hand*

Dustin and I could hardly contain our excitement LOL

The Luxor MORE buffet had a lot of foods, but I was very disappointed in the salad bar! The lettuce wasn’t that great and they didn’t have as many fresh fruits + veggies as I had imagined. Ah well, it was still pretty good.

First, I filled my plate with lettuce, spinach, 3 bean salad, and little scoops of various salads. A few pieces of melon, and then I went for some hot foods: lasagna, beef and broccoli, and an roll.

Everything was SO salty! So I kept filling up on water. I ended up eating less than half of my plate, I didn’t want to eat too much before we went out of the hotel. I liked the lasagna and the beef + broccoli, the salad was pretty good, too. I only had a bite or two of everything else.

After lunch, we took a taxi to The Gun Store to shoot machine guns and other cool guns that you can’t touch in communist NY state. lol We had an AWESOME time there!!! I haven’t edited those pics or videos yet, so I’ll do that in my next update. Dustin’s a natural born shooter. He’s very, very good, especially for being out of practice. <3

We headed back to my aunt and uncle’s hotel room, then I went out shopping along the strip with my aunt Gina while Dustin and Brian went to play poker. Later we met up with the boys for dinner. I was still kind of full from that buffet and all the water I drank all day, so I didn’t know what to eat. It was getting late and my feet were killing me. I had blisters on my toes from the shoes I wore the day before, so by midnight I just wanted to grab a quick bite. We ended up at Chipotle, I had a bean + rice burrito, but I requested that they just put a little bit of everything in. The full-size version is just massive. After we ate, we took a taxi back to our hotel and called it a day.

We decided to get a rental car yesterday. Taxis are REALLY annoying here! They try to trick tourists by convincing them that taking the highway is the “shortcut” or takes the same amount of time, then a $10 ride turns into $30. Every single taxi we got in for the first 3 days tried to do it. We fell for it the first night on the way from the airport to our hotel but figured that racket out quickly. So, to save some aggravation and money, we rented a small Toyota for the rest of the week. Screw you taxi drivers and your tourist traps!!

We’re going for lunch now, then we’re off to play poker. I have a lot more to tell you about, so I’ll do another update later tonight. Much later!

TTFN

Tagged as: airports, Las Vegas, Luxor, restaurants, room service, salads, travel