Day 5: Las Vegas, NV

Day 5 of the Southwestern Chronicles ended in finally making it to Las Vegas for the 2009 American Association of Equine Practioners conference. I checked in at the wrong building at Mandalay Bay -- well, it was the right place but they moved the room from THEhotel to the main Mandalay Bay building. The place was huge and check-in was very crowded but the hotel itself was only crawling with convention-goers. The casino was amazingly vacant. Several conventions and the Rock n' Roll Marathon had many people milling around the restaurants but not the casino. The room was on the 60th floor out of 62, facing south the view was not that of the strip but of the convention center, highway, and pool area of the hotel. It was impressive none-the-less. The huge Mandalay Bay sign on top of the hotel glittered next to the windows.
The convention was succesful. Las Vegas was unique. The restaurants within the hotel were expensive. $57 for two for a champagne buffett brunch. That was right around where most of the restaurants were priced for two. On Sunday night we all decided to walk the strip, watching the fountains at the Bellagio, exploring the Hard Rock Cafe, scoping out the other casinos and noting that The Luxor and The Excaliber had more cost-effective restaurants. We ate at Emeril's. It was fantastic but pricey as we ordered the chef's pick which had about 4 courses. I tasted a small amount of foie-gras for the first time with some green beans. The first course of lump crabmeat was exquisite, the sea bass - interesting. And the desert was very good. Needless to say, by the end of the week we were ready for a hamburger.

Monday brought on a dizzy, fuzzy tired feeling in meetings complete with blurry vision and sweating. This turned out to be the most awful stomach flu which lasted a full 36 hours, some of that time spend literally lying on the bathroom floor with my face on a washcloth. It was awful and I missed some of the seminars on cardiology and respiratory disease - the precise seminars that I was looking forward to. Tuesday brought the end of the sickness and rising out of the fog to attend the Nationals Finals Rodeo which was a fantastic experience. We whizzed through the aquarium at Mandalay Bay, although not overly impressive and not quite worth the $16 admission ticket in my opinion, it was fun to perfuse through the animal exhibits and to see the sharks. We didn't make it up the Eiffel Tower or to ride the roller coaster at New York, New York because the weather was cold! But we did get a hamburger in New York, New York on the last day we were there and it was so good.

Kyle and Sabrina on the escalator up to the Aquarium.

By the end of the 4.5 days in Las Vegas I was ready to go. I can only take so much of all that night life and expensiveness! And those gross little guys that hand out the X-rated cards on the strip were really freaking me out. I won about $80 on my meager go-around with a slot machine and called it quits. Even though we were leaving the journey wasn't quite over. We had a lot more to look forward to!. Check back for "The Road Home."