If you live in Vegas, you are probably sick of hearing that phrase and if someone utters it in your vicinity you probably want to punch them in the throat. I don’t blame you. The story of my most recent Vegas trip, thankfully, is not an obnoxious one and it can be shared.
A couple weeks ago I went down to Vegas with four friends for what we called a ‘Wallets Only’ trip. No luggage, no hotel room, just the clothes on our backs and the money in our pockets. We flew down on Friday in time for a late dinner, gambled the night away, and then hopped (or in our case, slithered) ourselves back onto an airplane the following morning.
A nice surprise came at the Las Vegas airport as we were leaving the terminal to catch a cab. One of my buddies said, ‘hold on guys, I’ve arranged a ride.’ We strode through the baggage claim area and spotted our driver holding a sign for ‘The Fiends’ (the long-time name of our group of guy friends). We giddily took the escalator downstairs to the VIP parking area where our driver showed us to our silver limousine. Pimp. (Aside: anyone see the episode of The Office last week where Michael, Dwight, Andy, and Oscar rode in the limo? Cracked me up.) Knowing that we had only a short while until our dinner reservation, my limo-ordering friend casually said, ‘the Palazzo please.’
The Palazzo is the new addition to the Venetian and our reservation was at Cut, Wolfgang Puck’s steakhouse restaurant off the casino. Arriving a tad early, we waited in the cocktail lounge for our 9pm seating and for our fifth to show up. He had been taking in the sights all afternoon since he flew in at 3:30pm. After ordering our fancy drinks, our friend walked in carrying a 48 ounce plastic jug filled with alcoholic slurpee. Mmmm.
We were seated and then treated to the best service I have ever experienced at a restaurant. We had an army of waiters/servers. There must have been 10 of them in total. The head waitress came over and explained the specials, and the types of meat they were serving, and tried to sell us on every conceivable extra.
The menu was impressive with a variety of Kobe beef cuts and Wagyu beef, which I had never heard of before. Apparently, Wagyu is a hybrid between traditional Angus beef in the U.S. and Kobe beef from Japan. Most of us ordered the Wagyu and we were happy we did.
The meal was incredible. We split a lobster for the table, shared some sweet potato medley side dish, as well as two macaroni and cheese dishes and a bottle of Cabernet. One of the meat dishes (pictured), not mine, was $145! The damage I did was a little more reasonable, but this meal still ranks up there in the top 3 most expensive in my life.
Following our gluttonous performance at Cut, we headed out to the casinos. The first stop was Casino Royale, a staple in all of our Vegas visits. We managed to survive the blackjack tables, but the craps tables weren’t so nice and a few of my friends left with disdain for the place. The next stop was Bellagio where the craps table kept us entertained for a couple hours. I’m not much of a dice man, so I stayed out of it and wandered a bit, bought a severely overpriced Jack n Coke, and watched people walk by. Following the Bellagio, we made stops at Planet Hollywood and Paris which is where the luck began to run out for me. Since my buddies shared similar bad luck, we looked at our watches and realized it was almost 6am - time for breakfast.
Breakfast was entertaining, I’m sure, to any outsider. We were dead tired, looked ragged, and none of us had made any money at the tables. The orders ranged from soup to burritos to a milkshake (me) and we sure took our time getting that food down. I could barely finish the milkshake, but felt like I had enough so we sat for a few more minutes, watched America’s Funniest Home Videos on the restaurant TVs (is that show always on?) and then went back out to the floor.
Finally my luck changed. I was sitting at a $10 blackjack table and I started to get hot cards. I won a few hands in a row and was pressing my bet with the progressive betting style (increasing the bet one chip every time I won). My initial $10 bet grew to a $45 hand. I had won seven hands in a row and then finally lost when the dealer hit to 21 and beat my 20. Ugh. I played one more hand at $10, lost it, then colored up and left the table. In under an hour I had taken the casino for $175.
We left Paris a little bit after 8am and slowly made our way back to the Palazzo so our friend could get his sportsbook tickets. (The Palazzo has a heckofa sportsbook by the way, I’ll be going back there). Following the brief stop at the sportsbook, we found some chairs near the lobby payphones and rested for a while until we finally decided to catch a cab and go back to the airport (but not until after we went looking for a frozen yogurt or ice cream shop that could not be found).
Upon returning home, I showered and then turned the TV on to watch some college football. I passed out and slept from 2:30 until 9:30! I woke up, ate some mac and cheese, then went back to sleep from 11 until 6:30 the next morning. Perfect!
Overall, it was a pretty fun trip. I won some cash, had some great food, and a lot of laughs. And, it was pretty awesome to walk through the airports with no bags. If the guys are up for it, I’ll do it again.
