Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

As I mentioned before we woke up fairly early with the curtains open. I think the first time I woke up was at around 5am. Some lights were still on others were off and the sky was just beginning to lighten up. It was very cool looking. We didn't roll out of bed until 830am. While I got ready Laurie went to get us Starbucks. Of course our hotel had a Starbucks. But, no T-mobile wifi there. Heh.

We'd actually decided to save the daily charge of the high speed net access and use 1x. That was fine as we didn't use it much anyway.

We then headed out with cameras and Laurie's laptop on my back. We walked south, towards Luxor. We walked through a couple of casinos, but doing so is dangerous: it's much easier to get in than get out. We took a tram to Mandalay Bay, which happened to be where Border Grill was that we'd decided on for lunch. It wasn't quite lunch time but we were thirsty. Once in Mandaly Bay, though, we started seeing signs for the Shark Reef. Of course, Laurie absolutely loves sharks so we started heading towards that.

Nothing is small in Vegas. We walked for quite a long time before finding it. Oddly enough, it was right next to the Border Grill! We decided to do it first, so we got something to drink. While sitting here in a vacant lunch area with only one place open we saw a bird. A normal out door bird. We'd actually seen others and throughout the day we'd eventually see a whole bunch of birds flying around inside Mandalay Bay. It was kind of cool.

After this, the line for the Shark Reef was actually too long so we decided to go eat. We had a wonderful lunch at the Border Grill. I had a mango margarita. We split the rest of the food which included chips, tamales, Chile Rellanos, and a salad. It was far too much food.

After this, we headed for the Shark Reef. The line was long again, but we went for it. We got a double pass that included an IMAX film over at Luxor for only a few bucks more. The Shark's Reef was basically a fairly good sized aquarium with lots of aquatic animals. This was very enjoyable.

When then headed over to watch the IMAX film Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk. It was basically about extreme sports and was mildly entertaining and a good rest from the walking.

After this, we headed off to the Aladdin where dinner was going to be. We got there about an hour early but discovered they, too, had a large indoor mall. This one was a mile long, so we had plenty to do. Not long before the reservations we learned that our friends were going to be a little bit late as they'd been out until late morning.

We decided to hang out at Commander's Palace and have a some drinks before they arrived. We relaxed and drank a little. This was pleasant and our bar tender was quite good, although not fancy.

We had dinner which included yummy food, only one bottle of wine for 6 people, about 10 bottles of water, and a small dessert. After this, we headed out with a couple of friends and walked up the strip a little ways to Treasure Island to check the show times. The last one was at 9pm and it was already after 10pm. They headed out towards Caesar's Palace while we went back to our room. We were exhausted. We'd been walking almost all day.

So we didn't set an alarm again. We woke up, got up, and though it was late since it was sunny. Not so. It was 630am. This allowed us to get out at a wonderful time. Later I would find out that we actually forgot to check out and leave the keys behind. Whoops. ;)

Posted by Shane on March 27, 2004 11:20 PM | Permalink