vegas

I was in Vegas this past weekend hanging out with my sister and her husband. They were down there for a huge construction equipment expo. We were hoping for sunny weather, which we had most of the time, but it was a bit chilly. It didn't stop us from sitting out at the pool, even if we had goosebumps part of the time. I stayed with Tish and Brett at the Mandalay Bay hotel. It's very nice and of course, has everything you could think of, it is Vegas. We even ate at the Strip Steak, very fancy place. They have a Kobe filet mignon for $190. I wasn't too hungry that night, so only had a salad and some mac and cheese. Both were very good and I'm sure the filet is delicious, too, I just won't ever be the one to tell you so. We also ate at the Border Grill a few times, which is a hip mexican place. I loved the cochinita pibil (which was a marinated pork slow roasted in banana leaf with grilled onions, orange, and cinnamon; served with red rice, organic black beans, plantain orange salsa, and handmade corn tortillas--I found the description on their web-site). I'm not much of a fan for plantain, but everything else was so yummy. So good, I ate this dish twice over the weekend.

It's funny to think about how trashy vegas is. I mean, where else do you see a group of men in their 50s hanging out at 11am in the hotel lobby with their bud light? Vegas has stretch-everything running up and down the strip. I had the lucky experience to ride in this bad boy--stretch hummer. We decided to take a taxi back from our walk down the strip and since a bunch of other people were heading over to our hotel for the big fight, we all grouped together in this monstrosity. It was pretty funny. The guy even had the music real loud with lots of bass. Of course, there were tv screens inside showing the video of the music. I couldn't even fit the whole thing in the picture before he took off.

What's even funnier is how many bridal parties I saw while I was there and I wasn't even trying to see them. We went to the Bellagio to see their greenhouse display (pics below) and while we were over there for about 1/2 hour, I saw three separate bridal parties. Who are these people that want to be married in vegas? I don't understand. At least they had a free backdrop for some pretty pictures. I really like this display at the Bellagio, I've seen it once before around the 4th of July.

The weirdest part of this trip was when we were out and about in the hotel and noticed all the people heading for the big fight at the arena there. It was some Mexican and another hispanic guy that were fighting, I guess a big match-up, but I'm not into boxing. Anyway, as we're watching people walk by, most of them (probably 85%) were hispanic males, there were a handful of asians and some white guys and then a few women. We also saw them all leaving the fight. I'm not surprised at the low number of women, because honestly, who really wants to watch some guy beat up another guy? Not me. But I really thought there would have been more white guys. It was just interesting. I did get a picture of this guy's jacket while we were people watching before the fight. It's awesome. Who knew anarchy could be so blingy?

We rented a car and headed to the Hoover Dam since neither Tish or I had ever seen it before. It was amazing. It's kind of scary looking over the side and seeing how high up you are from the ground.

We also took the dam tour and saw the power plant. Cool stuff. What is most amazing about this dam is that they built the dam in 2 years. I only wish things could be built that fast today.