Vegas Baby

I love Vegas. Just adore it. The gambling, over the top hotels, jingling casinos, rooftop night clubs, late nights, and extravagant food. Over the past weekend, my family and I went to Vegas. Oh, the stories I could tell you....but I think I'll stick with some photos.

You may notice that many of these pictures feature the same beautiful blond girl.  That's my cousin Tara, and she turned 21 three days before we went on our trip. In the spirit of turning 21, the three lovely ladies you see below (my mom, Tara, and I) went clubbing one night.  We hit the Voodoo Lounge at the Rio, which has to be the most awesome dance floor I've ever been on.  The "lounge" is on the very top of the building, the 52nd floor, and the dance floor is outside.  I do have to admit I was quite distracted from drinking and dancing by the view of the strip.  After the Voodoo Lounge, we went to Christian Audigier, the dance club in Treasure Island.  In true Vegas style, the later it got, the more people who showed up until the dance floor felt a bit like being in a jar of chunky peanut butter.  Fun fun.  I think the three of us managed to go to bed sometime around 5am....

We had a running joke in Vegas about those unbelievably-piss-me-off jerks who insist on stopping to chat right in the middle of a walkway. I get very very frustrated by that. To show how it could be worse, I guess, here's mom and Tara demonstrating:

Tara is great to have in Vegas. Emotions run amok through her while she is gambling. Verbal yays and nays, physical movement, and perfect facial expressions accompany almost every hit of the slot machine button. She won $50 on Super Slotto once, and she literally came off her chair, hands in the air. It was awesome, so I of course took a picture:

Every time we go to Vegas, we go to a show. This year we went to two (because we got one free). Our first show was Le Reve at the Wynn, a playoff of Cirque du Soleil. Le Reve is a circular theatre where the stage is water. Included are the typical Cirque du Soleil acrobatics and a bit of the aerial, but with diving. My only real problem with the show is its premise: I think it's about a virginal girl who, after getting proposed to, takes a strange sexual journey before saying yes. Hmmm...okaaaayyy. I enjoyed it, but Ka is still my favorite. The first picture is mom and me; the second is of Tara, my aunt Sheila, and my uncle Mark.

I have found my new favorite game - virtual blackjack. I don't venture to the tables very often (blackjack and roulette do call to me) for two reasons: 1) I don't want to feel like an idiot by being the newbie at the table and 2) I've had bad dealers before, boring, sullen, not-even-paying-attention dealers. With Virtual Blackjack, I do not have to worry about this. I do, however, have to worry about the men in my family running off with the virtual woman. We called her Freckles because her ample cleavage is speckled with them, and the men were distracted trying "to count them". :)

Finally, here is a picture of everyone (except of course me, the cameraman) in front of Treasure Island, obviously where we stayed. I can't wait until next year!

Does anyone else have a place they like to go regularly?