Friday, April 29, 2011

Maybe We Should Have Partied in Provo...

...because if one wants to have a meal at a restaurant (not fast food) in Las Vegas on a Thursday night after 10:30, then tough luck!  At least that was our experience this week when our son came to visit us for a couple of days. He'd been talking about the music from The Lion King and so I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll invite him down here for a couple of days and take him to see the production here." Plus, you know--I'm The Mom, and I like to have my kids visit, and I've been laying around here so long, and... and...

PianoMan (I'll call him) flew down here from Seattle and we ate dinner at home the first night, and then, no surprise, spent the evening talking about music, looking at music on television, listening to PianoMan play music (piano, clarinet, guitar---we only have three instruments at the house, so he was limited to this). Then, we planned the next day to go a couple of places.

His friends had encouraged him to go get a deep-fried Twinkie (their reaction to him coming here for a few days was predictable:  "VEGAS??? DUDE!!! So cool!! Your parents LIVE THERE???" And then of course he tells them that Mom teaches elementary school, Dad consults for the Navy; we live in an ordinary house; it's up by the mountain; etc. etc.  We don't live at the Mirage, nor go out partying every night; we don't have showgirls for neighbors.)  But, hey, it's still Vegas, Baby---and it's all within a 20 minute drive.

We had lunch at Hash House A Go-Go---really a fun place to visit---waaaay tooo much per serving, but always very delicious. We stopped off and picked up our tickets at the willcall desk. Then we went home and PianoMan went outside to read by the pool and get a badly needed Vitamin D infusion from the sun, which hasn't been seen in the Northwest for weeks.

Later that evening, the valet took the Silverado (we've learned, as adults of a certain age, that the free valet parking offered at Las Vegas casinos is totally worth the $10 tip.)  We worked our way through the Mandalay Bay casino toward the theater, which is a little complicated with the stupid cart, and were seated in our "accessible" area (pretty good seats, actually) and settled back for two and half hours of award winning entertainment. It was terrific---costumes, singing, sets---the whole thing is worthy of all its accolades.

By 10:10, when it finished, we were finally hungry. But, we were also completely done with the casino atmosphere. Loud, hyper, ding-dinging, flashing lights---I really hate being in a room filled with slot machines. So, we knew of a place we'd been a couple of times just a few blocks away. And, hey! It's Las Vegas, we were headed to a brew-pub, and it was before 10:30 P.M. No problem, right? 

Wrong---yes, people were in there eating, but--no, we couldn't join them. We could sit at the bar and drink, but the kitchen was done. So, we got back in the truck ( a 14 step process because of the cart....) and drove down the street to the Hard Rock Cafe---come on! Vegas! Let's eat! Except that this time, we were a little smarter. CoolGuy drove in through the drop-off, put it in "park" and went in to check before we did the whole little cart ceremony again. Nope...once again--you can drink, but you can't eat.

We went to Denny's.

And my point is, that if we wanted to go out for a meal at 10:30 P.M. in Provo, we wouldn't have driven to two different other places first. We'd have known that Denny's would be the only destination possible.

But---LAS VEGAS?? Sheesh.

Here we are waiting for our grub at the Hash House. See the paleness of the Man From Seattle?

They serve their food on platters. I mean it about the enormous servings.

It was a really great production. If you haven't seen it, come and visit us, and we'll go again.

Good grief, Mom, don't keep taking pictures, even if you do have a cool new phone...

Okay, but just one more. You need to show your friends that you took their advice and did something crazy in Las Vegas---deep fried Twinkie at Nathan's Hot Dogs in the Mermaid Cafe on Fremont Street. Hey, if you want to par-tay in Vegas, Baby, you might want to go with someone other than your middle-aged parents. 

1 comment:

cool_guy said...

"Middle aged" is a very kind term in this case....