We woke up mighty early on Wednesday morning and headed out to the airport. The flight was uneventful and we landed full of excitement. You get off the plane and see a room full of slot machines - yup, this is Vegas. We wait forever and a day for our luggage to come sliding down that funny ramp and make it's way around the merry-go-round they call a luggage carousel. Everything in that airport is an advertisement for Vegas shows and casinos. We deciding to take the $5.00 shuttle bus to our hotel, which was fun because I got to sit in the front seat, right next to our wacky driver. He started off by telling the bus he was proud to be de-virginizing us. Then heproceeded to brag about the fact that Vegas is the only place that you'll have porn handed to you as you're walking around on the streets. And not just any porn - these are advertisments for all the different "working girls" around town (ie: Leslie, $49/hour). So we got to our hotel and dropped our baggage with the bellhops seeing as we couldn't check in until 3:00. Because we couldn't get a room just yet I was stuck walking around in my "flying outfit," which is comfortable for flying, but not so comfortable when walking amongst all the grandeur Vegas has to offer. But I managed. Chuck wanted to jump right in, but I was nervous. I've never gambled like this before. Yeah, I've done some slots or whatever, but nothing like this. We walk into the Excalibur (that's where we were staying) and you just hear slots, (cha-ching), Craps, Roulette, Black Jack, and a bunch of other games I'd never even heard of. Since we were fairly famished we headed upstairs to enjoy a buffet. A LOT of food. Not the best food in the world, but not too bad either. But a lot of it, that's for sure. So we stuffed ourselves, then headed off to explore a bit. After fending off a solicitor (let me tell you, there were a lot of those - ultimately trying to sell timeshares and junk) we wandered through Luxor and Mandalay Bay via the convenient ramps connecting all three casinos. We needed to kill more time though, so we headed up to where Chuck's parents were checking into their hotel - the Monte Carlo (I always want to call it the MOnte Cristo...). We found Chuck's Mom waiting in line - she's lost some weight and looks amazing by the way! We only saw her briefly as she had to run back to their *other* hotel and check *out* from there. So we're stuck at the MOnte Carlo and Chuck's itching to play some Craps, while I'm nervous about attempting to gamble and make a fool of myself. I play it safe and play some 1 cent slots while he takes a chance at the Craps table. He comes back $46 richer, and I've lost 50 cents. So that was a good start to our gambling weekend I thought! By this time it's nearing 3:00 so we head back to the Excalibur, check in, and have our luggage brought up. I think the bellhop was upset with our $1.00 tip... I felt bad... Oh well. After freshening up we ended up back at the Monte Carlo. We ate at the Cafe there (which apparently wasn't very good...) and then lost some money at Blackjack. After some video poker and slots, Chuck and I caught a taxi up to the Riviera for our fist Las Vegas show ever! Crazy Girls! We waited around, disapointed at the bartender making us pay for our drinks even though we were gambling, and finally got into the small cozy "theatre." Topless girls abounded (is that a word?) - it was a good enough show. Chuck really liked it, I thought it was decent. It seemed professional enough, but just looked routine. Even when they got into it, it still felt rehearsed to me. Not a big deal, just a difference I noticed between this show and the next one we would see. It was still fun to watch though! Definitely a new experience! We were pretty beat by the time the show was over so we just headed back to the Excalibur and went to bed.

Thursday morning I remember waking up to the sounds of Chuck showering and heading downstairs. A while later I got up and got ready for the day myself. I got a call from Chuck saying that he had just entered a poker tournament! I went downstairs and wished him luck, then played some (more) video poker until he was booted. It sounded like he did pretty good though - he was out only at about halfway through the tournament. We ate breakfast at the Sherwood Cafe, which I thought was good (although Chuck said his pancakes tasted a little wierd). Oh, and we learned about Keno while eating. There were brochures on the table about Keno. It's basically a casino-specific lottery that runs every 5-10 minutes, and as far as I know all the major casinos run their own Keno games. So we got all interested in that. After food we headed over to New York New York to pick up our tickets for the Zumanity show. We tried to switch to the earlier show so we could go with his parents, but we would have gotten bad seats so we decided to just stick with the 10:30 show. Here's where I finally did some real gambling! Well, if you count gambling with $20 as "real," then yeah. We saw the video Roulette (also known as...Rapid Roulette I believe) so decided to give it a shot. I managed to hit an 8 at one point which brought me up to $35. As the saying goes though, the house always wins. You play long enough, the house will suck you dry. It took the house two hours to suck us dry of our $20 though - I thought that was a pretty good return! Especially for Roulette. Not to mention we each got about two free drinks while sitting there. After that we continued on to the goal for the day which was to go get some giant martinis we had seen people walking around with - a yard long martini or something like that. You knew where to get them as the bar had a giant, 30 foot long, lighted martini stuck on the wall outside advertising. We made our way through MGM ( where we stopped to get super cute photo booth pictures together ( the machine actually took credit cards!)). I ended up with a banana martini and Chuck got a melon one. They were very sweet - especially Chuck's. In fact, his was so sweet it kinda burned a hole in your mouth after drinking for a bit. We headed over to the Hooters casino for lunch with Chuck's parents. I ended up over stuffing myself with the margarita, breakfast, and then my small house salad at Hooters...Karen started feeling pretty bad as well. My stomach really felt like it was about to burst, so I carefully walked back to our room at the Excalibur while Chuck and his parents went to do whatever else...I don't even know. I was so centered on the fact that my stomch was about to spill a margarita-breakfast-salad concoction into my poor little torso. I took a nice nap (slept on the left side for digestion - thanks Jes and Jason!) and felt twelve times better when I woke up. So I ended up at New York New York with Chuck for anouther round of Roulette. This time we both walked away $10.00 richer, which was very satisfying! Then we trekked all the way up to Caesars Palace (which looked goorgeous) for a buffet. I decided we had to go because it included crab legs and prime rib, and wasn't *too* ridiculously expensive. It was verrrry good though. I thought it was worth it. We had to book it back down to New York New York for our show - Cirque du Soleil: Zumanity. This is the sensual side of Cirque du Soleil. Another topless performance, but really really awesome! While you're waiting for the show to start there's entertainment wandering through the crowd. There are two overweight twin sisters dressed in little french maid outfits handing out strawberries. They don't just hand them out though - they squeeze themselves through the rows, leaning right on top of people to stretch the tray to a person a few feet away, bend over right in front of peoples faces. Very funny! And a man acting like a gigilo flirts with the ladies, even so bold as getting them to give him a kiss on the cheek and then turning his head as their kiss is about to land so that it instead lands on his lips. A french woman who made one of the guys in the audience (who was there with his girlfriend/wife) her "boyfriend" and then introduced her more-than-accepting husband to him. And *he* had a jacket full of dildos that he was trying to give to another couple. I could go on, it was really entertaining and full of "dirtiness" (you know, the kind of dirtiness that any reasonable person gets a kick out of - let's face it, we're all human). And the show was great - contortionists doing amazing flips and bends and swirls in a giant bowl of water, super-flexible man, a woman who does acrobatics while holding herself up on silk ribbons, an expert hula-hooper who can spin about 20 at once while hanging suspended by a rope, sexy stripper man with the strip tease, and stripper woman too, and a homosexual cage "fight." I make it sound kinda raunchy, huh? It was really good though. Just amazing stuff that people can do with their bodies. Nothing special after the show though - maybe some Roulette, video poker, etc.

Chuck woke up early once again. We ended up going to New York New York (seems to be our favorite casino) for breakfast with Chuck's parents. It was pretty decent I thought. I even went healthy and had oatmeal. Played a little more Roulette after that - lost $40 pretty quickly... So that made me sad. We all four headed up the strip to Casino Royale for some $3.00 Craps. Lucky for me there were no tables available right yet - we would have to come back at 12:00 noon when the next dealer would be in. I've never played Craps before at this point, and so I'm all nervous about doing so, so I was somewhat relieved about this setback. We heded to the Venetian (which was closeby) for some shopping. I bought my obligatory "Las Vegas" pin for my small "places I've been" pin collection. Everything else was a bit out of my price range. Karen got something she had been wanting though and headed back to the hotel on her own to stash it away. Meanwhile, Chuck Jr., Chuck Snr. and I headed back to Casino Royale for another shot at a Craps game. We waitied patiently at the table with a number of other people until the dealers arrived. The table was full before the game even opened. I just followed what Chuck and his Dad did basically. Started with $50, played it a bit safe. Got the hang of it. It was hot hot hot for the first 5 or 6 rollers - points all over the place! The table was hooting and hollaring, we're cheering each other on. It was a lot of fun actually. Everytime I had more than $50 in chips in front of me I pocketed the excess so I wouldn't gamble it away. This strategy netted me $86 dollars - I walked away with a total of $136. I was proud! I could feel the table getting cold too...lots of 7's, no points... So I think I made a good decision when I did. I figure it's beginners luck though, so now I can never play Craps again. I'm sure I'll just lose! Naw, we'll see. Maybe one day. By the time we finished up Karen had already joined us back at the casino. We all walked through Harrah's and took the Monorail down to MGM. After some lengthy "discussion" we decided to eat at Emeril's for a nice dinner. Let me tell you, it was very nice. It was amazingly delicious. My small bowl of pasta was almost worth $35. Everything was so delicious. But after that I managed to lose another $40 to Roulette. I hate Roulette...stupid game... We all just hung around for a while waiting for the Dueling Pianos show to start at New York New York, but it was feeling kinda late. So Chuck parents said a tearful goodbye to their wonderful son and myself and we parted ways. Chuck and I wandered around New York for a bit, then headed over and wandered around Excalibur for a bit. I was ready for bed, but Chuck wanted us to have at least one late night out I think. So I insisted on a pretzel and a Root Beer and we wandered some more. After buying a cheapo watch, we ended up playing some Keno which was kinda nice. Just sitting together in the somewhat empty sports betting area, watching the Keno numbers come up every five minutes. Watching us basically lose all five of the games we played. I really liked just sitting there with him doing a fairly passive activity though. Somehow we managed to wander around playing various little video-gambling games until 1:00 AM. After putting money on a few more Keno games we finally went to bed. We'd have to wait til morning to see how our Keno went.

We woke up and checked out. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Check out took us all of 30 seconds I'd say. So speedy! I insisted Chuck check his Keno numbers to see if they won (they were technically his because he payed for them with his personal gambling allowance). And lo and behold! He got $26! Doesn't quite make up for all our Keno-ing, but makes up for about half! I thought it was pretty good. Oh, the night before this, as we were wandering, Chuck kept stopping to watch a game called Let it Ride. He was verrry curious as to how it was played. I kept urging him along because I think the guy we kept standing behind was getting annoyed with us... So! Chuck tried the game out after we checked out. I opted to play video keno and made $15 - Chcuck came back a little bit richer too, if I remember right. We spent our earnings on the breakfast buffet. It was huge. Pretty good - it was a buffet. Lost some money at craps, earned some money at more Let it Ride, lost money on video Keno. We headed over to MGM for some photos, then headed to the M&M store. Four floors of M&M stuff! Crazy! And a wall of all sorts of M&M colors! And a little M&M museum which was very cute. There was one room that was a walkway through a rotating tunnel of M&M's painted on a black background. I have never been thrown so off kilter while standing stock still. I was impressed. Just next door was a Coke store, where we got a special called "Flavors of the World." Very cool. We got to smaple 16 different kinds of soda from all around the world. Just for your interest, I will list all the ones we tried right here: Lilt (UK), Kin Cider (Ireland), Stoney Ginger Beer (South Africa), Fanta Mandarin (China), Fanta Kolita (Costa Rica), Mezzo Mix (Germany), Fresca (USA), Smart Apple (China), Fanta Orange (China), Smart Watermelon (China), Passion Fruit (Argentina), Kinley Lemon (Israel), Fanta Tropical (France), Krest Gingerale (Israel), Mello Yello (UA), and Lift Apple (Mexico). It was a lot of soda, and needless to say we did *not* drink it all. We just had sips of each flavor. I checked out a souvenir shop after that, trying to find a CSI hoodie. They only had sweatshirts. It made me sad... So to pick me up from my wallowing depths of despair we headed over to New York New York (*again*) to get some of the delicious looking Sirroco's Pizza (I think that's what the place was called). Whenever we had passed by it there was always this long line heading out the door, and thick, delicious looking squares of pizza coming out of the other end. So we stood in line, got chatted up by the 2 ghetto-trying-to-act-normal-between-their-ghetto-talk couples behind us (they were actually nice though), and got a delicious piece of pizza. So good, I actually crave it right now still. Thick, lots of dough, not too much sauce, good amount of mushrooms, delicious. After that we headed back to our the Excalibur and played some video Keno before regretfully catching a Taxi back to the airport. Oh, this time we tipped the baggage guy $5.00 when he got our baggae for us, so hopefully we're on their good side now. It was a really great trip though - we will definitely be going back to Vegas.