Sin City

So I had to be in Las Vegas for work last weekend.  For the first time ever, we visited (in fact, stayed in) the historic downtown district. I loved the old (mid-century) neon signs, which have been preserved and installed by the Ne*n Museum. I was so exhausted on Friday (I'd had that looong day of shopping on Thursday with  retired colleague here in sabbatical-land and had then gotten myself up at the crack of dawn to drive the 5+ hours so that I could hop on a plane w/TH),  that I wasn't sure I'd be up for any fun that night. BUT, our hotel (recommended by a Vegas resident) was right there next to the "Frem*nt Street Experience," so we couldn't stop ourselves from going. It was an (entirely unexpected) blast. Small stages featuing exotic dancers, musicians/tribute bands, and comedians; costumed Vegas strip characters-of-old (Sinatra, Elvis, etc.); tourists flying overhead on ziplines; casinos and neat old neon signs all under the cover of a huge 3 or 4 block long LED-light covered roof. Everynow and then, the lights would go out and Queen (band of the night?) would appear on the screen overhead--while their music would blast from the loud speakers. Everyone would sing and dance in unison for the duration of the song. We ate at a good (non-casino) seafood restaurant--truly decent food and drinks.  The next night, after a long (long) meeting on campus, we hopped on the Deuce and rode to the Strip. Last time we were in Vegas, we ate at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill (Caesar's Palace) and then at Mario Batali's Enoceta San Marco (Venetian) and the Eiffel Tower restaurant (Bali's Paris). All really, really good. This trip we went to Wolfgang Puck's Postrio (right across from Enoceta). Mmmm.  Delicious. We splurged and got dessert (mine, posted below, was S'mores). I think I was able to finish about 1/2 of it. So rich and deliciously gooey. And (as an addendum to my last post on retail therapy) since we had to wait an hour or so to be seated, we did some shopping on St. Mark's square. TH bought me a  bracelet from Bright*n (I love their costume jewelry--we can actually afford it) and we spent a lot of time in the most amazing rare book store, ever.  Ever. Right off St. Mark's Square ("with locations in London and New York"). Decidely UN-Vegas-y, but oh so fascinating to browse through. I did not take my camera on this trip, so these are iPhone images.

And now, I shall get back to work....