West Coast USA - Day 5 - Vegas

October 15, 2008

Have a lie in and miss the buffet breakfast so eat in the Luxor cafe. Have a proper American breakfast of Bacon, Eggs over easy, short stack of pancakes all covered in syrup. Di has the ‘Healthy Option’ omelette with egg whites and lots of vegetables (and thinks I’m very strange pouring syrup over my eggs and bacon). $50 bill which we think is a bit steep for breakfast - welcome to Vegas!

After breakfast we start walking through the casinos and buy a few souvenirs for people back home. Also do a little handbag shopping (not for me!). The shop assistants are very persistent (annoying), obviously on commission.

Stop at a nice Japanese restaurant for lunch, share two different sashimi salads with Japanese beer. Continue walking the casinos until 5pm and decide to take a taxi back to the hotel to shower and change as we’re running out of time. We’d booked Ka (Cirque du soleil) before the trip and are really looking forward to it.

We get ready for the show and take another taxi to MGM Grand. Walking through MGM we see a nice restaurant which turns out to be a Joël Robuchon with a Michelin star. We decide to splash out and book a table for after the show.

We have our photo taken together before the show, which turns out to be very good. Ka is amazing, the costumes and stage are stunning. I can’t imagine the costs involved in making the stage as it is a huge hydraulic affair which spins, transforms and moves into the air. We can’t really work out the story line but they get reunited at the end. Have a wonderful time.

We go to “L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon” after the show and take seats at the bar. I have Jamón ibérico to start which is delicious as always. The plate is huge and we find it hard to eat everything. For the main I have the pork ‘special’ which I’m not sure exactly what it is. Turns out to be quite complex and tasty but is too rich for me (obviously clean the plate anyway). Overall the food was good, the wine was superb and we enjoyed it a lot but we weren’t convinced that it was worthy of the Michelin star. (At least not compared to the Michelin star restaurants we’ve sampled in Paris)

After dinner we take a walk around the casino floor and decide it’s time to try our hand at Roulette. We eventually find a table with a $10 limit (lowest we could find) and with two available places and take our seats. We exchange $50 worth of chips each and start to play. Neither of us are having much luck and after a few rounds we’ve not won anything. Di eventually wins on a corner but I don’t win at all. Once we’re out of chips (a depressingly short 15 minutes) we decide gambling isn’t for us and so leave them to it. We weren’t even at the table long enough to get a free drink!

We attempt to get a G&T in the casino bar, but it takes too long and we decide to call it a night and take a taxi home.