Las Vegas trip Day 1.5

Meant to put together this entry last night, but was frankly just a bit too tired. That's because yesterday afternoon and evening was our 'day on the strip'. We headed down to Las Vegas blvd a bit after noon and parked our car at the end of the strip where the show we were seeing was. We then walked down to where we had plans to meet up with some other family that live around here and have a nice lunch at a steak frites place.

Of course we had to toss a few bucks in a couple slot machines, which we promptly lost. I'm not a huge gambler, but if I know I'll be at a casino I'll save out a few bucks to putz around with. Between Lisa and I we often can make it last a bit, but not yesterday. I think we finished off our allotment in about 15-20 minutes. Oh well.

The lunch was very good, a beautiful blue cheese steak with crispy frites. By this point though, Lisa had pretty much lost her voice from our illness, so it turned into this funny moment where her relatives are asking her how life is going and she's looking at me to answer. At certain points complicated hand gestures were involved, but I think I managed to convey all the right information!

Afer lunch we headed back down the strip with the goal of hitting a place called M&M World. It's a 4 story store dedicated to... M&Ms (duh). We caught the cheesy 3-D movie that they show to the kids, and did some shopping for some souviners. Personally I was astonished by the WALL of M&Ms. Absolutely huge and included flavors I've never had before. 

On the beer front I did manage to find some craft brew around this town. On our way down to the M&M store I saw a little storefront for Sin City Brewing Company, so I stopped in real quick and got a glass of beer to go (no open container law here...). Then while waiting for our show that evening I found a place in the Monte Carlo that had 100 taps. They also did flights, so I did a flight of local brews that included a really tasty American Brown ale by Tanaya Creek. The cool part is that none of these are beers I can get locally so it's a nice treat out here.

We ended our evening with a Blue Man Group show. I had only seen them in YouTube videos so this was a fun treat. The show was bright and loud and fun. They had some of their traditional music played on percussion pieces made out of pipes. There was a fair amount of comedy, and some really cool light effects. Perhaps the funnest part, was a song at the end where they got everyone in the audience to stand up and shake their butt while the song listed off dozens of euphamisms for your 'butt', such as "The place where all burritos go" and "The reporter at large". Ended up being a good time, and oh, Lisa got hit with Jello. 

We considered hitting one more pub before bed, but decided we were done for the night so we came back to the room and relaxed with some HGTV before calling it a night. The plan today is to hit some other sites, such as Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Then it's back to a Minnesota spring tomorrow.