VEGAS: 27th August (General)

Day/Night 10: Saturday 27th August (General)

Today was my last full day in Vegas so let's be truthful; days 1-4 were totally amazing, days 5-8 were great but dampened just a tad when results took a slight hit and by day 9 I'd pretty much had my fill and had drastically reduced my playing time at the tables. Regardless of this, I was determined to make sure my last day was special so I grabbed me a can of Fosters and wandered down the strip in a southerly direction.    

After wandering around Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur one last time and noting the extortionate prices on all the souvenirs for sale in the shops inside those casinos, I realised that Walmart (between MGM and Planet Hollywood) sold many of the exact same items for much cheaper and so headed in that direction. Another idea I had by the way, was that on my next trip, instead of collecting $1 chips from each casino I might just buy one T-shirt with the casino name on it from each place. Yep, that'll be around 25 T-Shirts but for around $300-$400 I reckon it'll make a nice collection.

Anyway, I get to Walmart and start splashing out on luxury items for the family. First up, it's a couple of mugs for a couple of mugs (my two daughters). They look a bit like this:

 

The mugs that is, not my daughters. They're not exactly like this as they have palm trees silhouetted in the background and one is the sign at daytime and one is the sign at night time. The daytime one was for the younger daughter cos she's bright and innocent while the night time one was for the older one cos she's dark and evil.

I get to thinking that my generosity knows know bounds and next up, I splash out substantial dollars on this tasteful oven glove for the missus:

And if she's not grateful for that I'll give her a sound thrashing.

For myself, I bought a twin pack of Royals plastic playing cards for my collection. At $5 for the two decks, these cards, made in Taiwan, are by far the cheapest plastic playing cards on the market. They are wafer thin and nowhere near the quality of yer Kems or yer Copags but as they are plastic rather than plastic coated I would take these any day over any plastic coated deck. As an impulse buy, I threw in a $1.99 blackjack strategy card as well. I held back on picking up a nice Las Vegas 100 chip set for $15 as the missus is sick and tired of my chip set collection clogging up the house. (She wears the trousers really.) They woulda been nice though.

 

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With the magnificent gifts purchased, I decide that it's probably about time to play a little blackjack. I may have come here for poker but you can't come all this way to Vegas and not have a flutter in the true sense. I decide to sit down with $100 at one of the few tables that offer $5 a hand - and that's at good ol' Bills' Gamblin Hall. It turns out to be a good craic as I start chatting away to a young German lass who's here with her boyfriend. It really does make the whole Vegas thing more enjoyable when you have a good ol' chat at the tables. I even end up $20 to the good, so there it is.

With the blackjack buzz taking hold, and $60 to the good at the game, it's time to get myself off to the Rio for the Penn & Teller show. Before this though, I remember seeing the $14.99 sign for the Gold Coast's all-you-can-eat buffet from my visit there the other day so I promptly trek across the huge car-parks and main roads to get a slice of their culinary action. Ok, I'm no Cordon Bleu expert or connoisseur of fine dining but in my experience, albeit vastly limited, this buffet is the top when it comes to value-for-money. Tops I say.

Anyway, after I wander back over to the Rio - and proceed to blow all the $60 I had won earlier (at blackjack and electronic roulette), it's time for a bit of Penn & Teller. Now I hate to say this, as I had heard good things about it and was looking forward to it but it turned out to be...well, just a bit lame. Penn Jillett's vocal delivery sounded pedestrian, dull and automatic like he'd been doing the show for ten years (which he had) and, likewise, Raymond Teller just seemed a bit stiff and to be going through the motions. Also, at about $100 a head with a capacity audience of about 1000 people I guess I expected to see them splash out a bit more on the production and props. 

The tricks were good but, by today's standards, fairly bog-standard. With the exception of the nail gun stunt and the magic bullet, the tricks were kind of what you'd might see at an ordinary theatre in a small town being performed by an ordinary magician. And I'm sure they've been done in the same form or other by many magicians of yesteryear. I was also disappointed that at the end of the magic bullet trick, only the "gun experts", that were on stage, checked their mark on the bullets while no member of the audience were asked to verify it. A small point, maybe, but a big screen in the background to film those marks being made and to check them at the end would have made the trick much more believable.

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Anyway, despite all of that, it was a nice touch that when they exited the theatre they stopped outside for autographs and a chat - and I am still glad that I went to see them.

Straight after this, it was the free shuttle ride back over to Harrah's. It was a shame that my stop-loss limit had run out but, there again, I don't think I would have been in the mood for poker anyway. As it was, it was an early night so as to be bright and fresh for the long trip back to London the next day.