When it's just too complicated to go to Paris for the weekend, you settle for the other city with an Eiffel Tower.
I went in to work in the morning, but didn't really get much of anything done. Next week will be slow and I can do some organizing and catching up on building reference materials and so on. We pretty much shut down around noon, which was perfect as it gave me time to grab a quick lunch before heading to the airport.
The metro was running on the normal weekday schedule, meaning trains far apart in the middle of the day. A long wait when changing trains at Rosslyn meant the Orange Line train got to West Falls Church just a bit too late to get one Washington Flyer bus, but I'd left myself lots of time and the next one still got me there about two hours before my flight.
I'd been apprehensive about traveling on such a busy day, but it turned out to be no problem. I'd printed my boarding pass from United's website, but it looked like the check-in lines weren't too bad. And there was pretty much no wait at security. I killed time by browsing shops and reading.
My flight was full, of course. I had an aisle seat and was reasonably comfortable. I still don't understand the difference between Ted and regular United flights, though. Is it just the different livery? At any rate, we left only slightly late and made up the difference, arriving in Las Vegas more or less on schedule. I took a taxi to the hotel. Despite intending to go to Paris, for various reasons too complex to go into, the reservations were actually at Aladdin. It's more or less the last chance to stay there, since it's being converted to the first ever Planet Hollywood hotel.
The check-in was surprisingly efficient. The room proved to be large and reasonably extravagant, with a luxurious deep bathtub. The one deficiency proved to be rather ironic. Namely, the lamps were inadequate. Aside from there not being enough of them, one worked only if you pressed the button extremely hard (as in it took both hands) and the other was so hard to turn on that I gave up on it after the first try. The other two worked fine, but no genies magically appeared, alas.
The Desert Passage shopping center was new since the last time I'd been to Vegas and worth a browse. There wasn't anything fabulously worth buying, but there are decent restaurant options. Since I'm generally deprived of Mexican food at home, I opted to fill that deficiency. Then I did my first bit of gambling, settling in at a video poker machine and ending the evening up by ten bucks. The new system where you put bills in the machines and they pay out in vouchers instead of coins is a bit weird. I can understand why the casinos like it, though, since they need fewer people to tend the machines. In practical terms, it means that I don't just throw my pocket change into the nearest slot machine.
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel