My wife and I go to Las Vegas each summer as an opportunity to get away on a vacation without the kids (though they are all on their own now except our 16 year old son). We love Vegas. We have the boats in Indiana and though they are a good escape they are not Las Vegas. We are small rollers (vp, Pai Gow Poker, and slots). We love the shows, the food and the people. We have stayed at one hotel for the entire trips until last year when I made multiple reservations for our stay. We like the difference in hotels though the moving can be a pain. We also rented a car again this year. Having a car has taken away one thing that we always enjoyed and that is walking the strip and going into all the different casinos and gambling a bit then moving on. Therefore our list of visited casinos is much shorter than it has been in recent trips.

We flew out of Indianapolis on Sat, July 30 at 2:10. Indianapolis has been the cheapest place for us to fly Southwest. Columbus does not have the better rate so the past couple times to LV we have driven to Indy and flown from there. We arrived and checked in with no problems and our flight was on time. Very good flight. Smooth and arrived 20 minutes early. I like the direct flights and at 5:20 LV time we were there. We went to Dollar and picked up our car. Things seemed a bit unorganized at Dollar as a group of people were standing under a tent, no line, no order seemingly. Attendants were driving up cars and would get out and say “mid-size” and whoever needed a mid-sze jumped in and off they would go. A Dodge Stratus came up and I had ordered a Dodge Stratus or “similar” mid-size, so when the attendant asked who wanted a mid-size, my wife and I took our bags to the trunk, put them in and off we were to the BC.

We had stayed at the Barbary Coast last year for three nights. BC is a nice, comfortable hotel. It had one of the best rates for a Sat night stay so I booked it. We also like to gamble there. They have good slots and Pai Gow Poker for $5 ($10 at busy times). We checked in with no problems and were given a 4th floor room overlooking Ballys and the Bellagio fountains. BC doesn’t have all the extras that some of the others have but we like it. It is nice to sit at the window at night and look down the strip. After checking in we headed down to the casino. We were to meet two friends at TI at 7:00 and we wanted to check out the casino first. We sat down at the Pai Gow table ($10) and began playing. As with all Pai Gow games it is a slow sociable game. We like it. It is simple, no pressure, and drink service is very good. We played for about 45 minutes before we decided we had better head down toward TI because our friends would be calling us soon to meet with them. They called as we were approaching Venetian and we finally found them (after searching for a while because the crowd around TI for the Sirens show was still milling around). We decided to go to Kahunaville for some drinks and food. I had heard a lot about Kahunaville on this board but had yet to visit it. We were told it would be about a fifteen minute wait so we went to the bar and had a drink. We were called to a table. I had a crab cake sandwich (outstanding) and my wife had a cheesesteak sandwich (outstanding). Our friends had eaten in mid afternoon so they just had drinks. Kahunaville soon became very rowdy as the bar tenders (one on each side of the bar) began a competition juggling their bottles and putting on their show. The bartender each tried to get their side of the bar become the loudest as they performed their act of juggling bottles and pouring drinks from stacked cups. Finally our side won the yelling match and the bartender began pouring into patron’s mouths. She went up and down the bar pouring a shot right from the bottle into people’s mouths. My wife was able to crowd up to the bar and get a shot. Overall we had a great night. Our friends had been at Vegas all week and were flying back in the morning. We had passed Mystere and my wife and I had seen it last year. When we raved about it, our friends wanted to see if they could get tickets and go see the 10:00 show. They were lucky enough to get tickets so we left them as they went up to the show and we went back down the strip to the BC. We again jumped in on the Pai Gow table and played till about midnight. One thing about Pai Gow is that you get can win slowly and then you can lose slowly. It is a good break from slots and vp. We ended the night around even with our Pai Gow play. (more…)

Hi all. I just wanted to post a few notes regarding our trip from the 16-19th.

1. Stayed at the Luxor for about the 5th time. Stayed in the East Tower, thought it was pretty nice. Didn’t mind the walk since I don’t really like the pyramid rooms.

2. Ate at our usual places of Cal Pizza Kit, PF Changs and Paris Breakfast. I still LOVE Paris’ bfast buffet. The crepes are out of this world! Also ate at Hamada’s of Japan on Flamingo. It was o.k. Not as good as our Ichiban here in our town.

3. Only had 1 celebrity sighting (if you can call it that). We saw Greg Raymer coming out of the Wynn poker room on Monday.

4. Gambling- played lots of hold-em in Aladdin, MGM, Luxor, Excalibur and Wynn. We are small gamblers and mainly play $2-4, $3-6 or even $4-8. Hubby and I finished 3rd and 4th respectively at the Luxor 10:00 am tourney on Sunday. Didn’t pay much, but it was a lot of fun! On Monday night at the MGM we won about $450 between us on a $3-6 table. I’ve never seen more idiots on a poker table in my life. It was VERY easy money. These people would call you down to the river with middle pair with flush and straight draws on the board (and other bettors were capping the bets and they would still stay in!) The dumbest thing I saw that night was a woman who was betting in between 2 men who had capped the bets on the turn and the river. Of course, both men had the nuts with a straight to the King (no flush or boat possible) and she’s betting with 2 pair. Unbelievable! On the way out we stopped at Terrible’s and played craps. I had the best roll of my life and won $600 in 30 minutes. I am a small bettor, so you know how great this roll must have been! We ended up bringing home the majority of our money back which is winning to me!

Can’t wait to go back! I want to play in more tourneys next time (i.e. MGM’s daily tourney or Aladdin’s). They are a lot of fun!