Hi blog buds!

How is your Saturday going?  I can’t believe my vacation is over already.  I’m always shocked by how fast time flies.  That said, it’s also great to be home (although I could have done without the SNOW!)

Thought I’d recap some of the highlights from the Vegas portion of our trip for you!

First off let me just say the hotel rocked.  MSP was attending a conference there for work, and the hotel was part of the conference package (otherwise, we’d not have the opportunity to stay in such a swanky place.)

The pillowtop mattress was SO comfy and I LOVED the velvet settees at the foot of each bed:

The bathroom had a seated vanity area:

A separate room for the “water closet”  :)

A sunken living room with a sectional, coffee table, TV unit, desk and dining table:

This room had THREE flat screen TVs in it.  One in the bathroom, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.  I was in TV heaven!  They make the rooms so snazzy, you don’t want to leave to see anything else in Vegas!

After we settled into the room, we hit up a great open air restaurant on the strip called El Segundo Sol for a late lunch/early dinner.  MSP and I shared fajitas:  he ate the chicken, rice and cheese off the platter, while I ate the grilled veggies, beans and guac.  If only all meals had the meats and veggies separated like that – we’d save a fortune whenever we eat out!  :D

Tuesday was our only WARM day in Vegas because the forecast was calling for cold and rain the rest of our visit.  (I TOLD you cold follows me wherever I go!)  I made sure to take full advantage of that sunshine while I could.  MSP’s conference started at 8:30 AM so we were up and at ‘em early to get some walking/sightseeing in while the Vegas Strip was quiet.  We put on our tennis shoes, walked to a nearby Starbucks, and sipped all the way down the strip toward the Stratosphere.  That morning on the news, we saw that they were broadcasting from a new ‘attraction’ opening that very day called “Sky Jump“ where you literally free fall 855′ from the top of the Stratosphere to the bottom (attached to some cables, of course!) so we thought we’d see if we could see anyone jumping.  If you’ve never been to Vegas, this is the Stratosphere:

I may have given it a shot, if it wasn’t $100 per person!  Too steep for my checkbook… It looked pretty darn fun though!  I’m typically very scared of heights, but for some reason don’t mind some things where I’m attached to cables and harnesses.

We got back to the hotel at 7:30 AM.  After MSP left to hit up his conference, I decided to go for a run down to the other end of the Strip.  I got in a fun 4 miles, running from The Palazzo down to the MGM Grand, crossing over and then back.  It was so GORGEOUS out!  By that time there were a zillion people out on the Strip, so trying to run was a bit of an obstacle course, which made it even more fun.

When I got back to the room, I enjoyed a perfect post-run orange (that was hand picked from the tree in my cousin’s backyard in El Cajon, CA while we were there.) Kevin, those oranges are perfect!

I met MSP during his lunch break at another open air place called “Stripburger” where I had the world’s tiniest mixed greens salad:

And a delicious brown rice veggie burger that made up for the small salad.  Hidden under the burger are lettuce and tomato, and I told them to hold the bun since I wouldn’t eat it anyway.

MSP was off to the afternoon sessions and I did some more wandering around through Treasure Island and through the Canal Shoppes at the Venetian.  To this day after MANY trips to Vegas, the Canal in the Venetian is still my favorite.

I hit up a coffee shop for a soy chai and a Godiva for my chocolate fix:

Later that night we went to a Dueling Piano bar located in the Palazzo, had some cocktails, and sang along with the crowd.  We liked it so much we went back there a second time.

This lounge is located right next to the entrance to the Jersey Boys theater in the Palazzo hotel, in case you are ever there!  So much stuff in Vegas costs a fortune and/or has a cover charge.  This didn’t cost you anything, unless you wanted to have a drink.  I had a BLAST and swear I still have Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” stuck in my head…

***

Well, I feel like I’ve taken a lot of your time with the size of this one, PLUS I’m aiming to make a dent in the MOUNTAIN of laundry that came back with us from the trip so I’ll leave you with this PART ONE recap and be back again soon with PART TWO.

See you soon!

– Shari B. =)

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