Beer To Go

This is what i love about Vegas, beer in to go cups, walking around the mall with a beer in my hand, sweet...

Hard Rock Casino and Carlos Santana

so after a day of hanging out at the Venus Pool, drinking fruity drinks and beers, it was off to the Hard Rock Casino to eat and see Carlos Santana at the Joint. Sat around the sports book, drinking New Belgium Fat Tires, watching the Yankees and the Rangers. Then it was off to the Pink Taco for mexican food and margaritas and then to the Joint to see Devadip Carlos Santana who preceded to blister my brain with his guitar playing. it was a very good show, they played for more than 2 1/2 hours. After waiting a half an hour for a cab, it was off to the Mirage for some more Let It Ride Poker.

Venus Pool - The Adult Pool

Adult Pool

Caesars pool complex is crazy, there at least 6 pools throughout the pool area but the one pool that i was at three times was the Venus Pool, which is an adult only pool. It is really just a hangout space for the hotel to sell you bottle service liquor, expensive fru fru drinks and food. The place was very casual, no drama no preening, just people hanging out enjoying the day.

The gimmick here is that they have cabanas and day beds that you could reserve with a minimum of several $100's up to $1,000 based on day and time of day. I just hung out in the free lounge chairs and preceded to spend a ton of money on these expensive drinks and beers.

And yes, since this is an adult pool, i did go topless..

Downtown Vegas and PURE

So from the airport, back to hotel to change into nicer clothes and cabbed it down to Fremont Street, which is where the original casinos are, to Nick and Anthony's Steakhouse at the Golden Nugget.

Fremont Street Experience

They closed off Fremont Street years ago and put in this metal structure for 5 blocks that they show animated shows, on the hour every hour, from 8PM until....

We ate steaks and drank martinis at Nick and Anthonys, after dinner we walked and played at the Sam Boyds Fremont, Binions, and the 4 Queens. I found a beer store where i actually found an Alaskan Brewery White Ale to drink while walking around. This area gets very sketchy at late, late night.

Went back to Caesars, and bro, sis and myself went to the nightclub PURE, located in Caesars, and wound up in the VIP Room, drinking rum for hours.

View from the VIP Room at PURE

At 3:30AM we went across the street to the Flamingo to lose more money.

I am going to be hurting tomorrow.

Long Beach Cali

Aquarium

The Pacific

Queen Mary

up and out at 6:30am to the airport, cabbie tries to rip me off by telling me his speedometer is broken and the fair should be higher, as soon as the pen and paper came out, conversation ended. Long Beach Airport is very small, walk down stairs from the plane onto the tarmac before entering terminal which looks like a bunch of trailers butted together. Went to the aquarium, the Belmont Brewing Company for lunch and beers, kind of got lost and wound up sight seeing at the Port of Long Beach and then went to the Queen Mary to check it out before we headed back to the airport for a 5:30pm flight.

I finally got to Cali and saw the Pacific Ocean, very cool

Too Much Info

Boxers vs Briefs

i am a boxer brief type guy but in my frugality i bought briefs because you get more undies for your money. I wound up wearing them once and tossing them out. What the hay, i am living large in the Penthouse suite so i can afford to toss them, ha ha ha

Walking around

went to Mandalay Bay to walk around, wanted to hit Red Square, which is a russian vodka bar with a strip of ice in the bar to keep your drinks cold. They open at 4PM and since it was noon, we wound up at the Eye Candy bar to drink martinis. We then went to the Burger Bar, one of only a couple of places with decent beers, where we had Deshutes Inversion IPA, 80 IBU hoppy but needed a little more malt to balance the beer out, this was probably one of the best beers that they had on tap.

We went back to Caesars and went to the Venus Pool, the adult only pool, hung out, worked on my tan, got a bunch of seats together,  sucking down Summer Fling Cocktails while sucking in my belly so i look halfway decent.

We went to Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris Casino for Steak Frites and Cotes Du Rhone. After dinner we went back to the Flamingo to lose some more money

6AM Do you know where your money is?

I do, it is sitting on a Three Card Poker table where, unbelievably, i am actually winning money.

After coming back from hanging out until 2AM, woke up at 5:30,  needed coffee badly so we hit the strip at 6AM in need of caffeine. Went to Wild Bills Gambling Saloon, grabbed some coffee, walked around the casino, I asked one of the Three Card Poker dealers to teach me how to play, which she did, we decided to sit down and play and on the second hand i hit for 4 of a kind. Nice.

Walked around the Flamingo Hotel, where i lost too many times during the week, never going back to gamble there, and they had real flamingos in the back gardens.

After walking around for an hour or so we went back to our Penthouse Suite where we ordered in room service and had the butler set everything up for us. Sweet

Caesars Palace, Morning Glory, Silly Human Race

so after having out flight changed to a longer flight, waiting for connection passengers and luggage through customs we finally land in VEGAS Baby and Caesars Palace, our base station for the week.
We get to the Registration desk to check in, M starts flirting with the young man behind the desk and the next thing you know, we are getting a FREE upgrade to the Penthouse Suite. This room is 3000 square feet, far bigger then my house and at $10k a night, the room for the week costs more then 2 years of mortgage payments. This place is ridiculous.

I am in "Hangover" city. Where is Mike Tyson and the dude with my $80,000 in chips?

Went to dinner and started hitting the tables. Around 1:30am i had my first attempted pickup moment by a drunk woman/prostitute. Since this is Vegas I am betting that she was working.

Back to the Penthouse Suite to try to sleep.

Bloody Mary

Hash A Go Go Bloody Mary

Nothing says Vegas better then a 9AM Bloody Mary

afternoon with Belle

Belle

so my Belle came home today, i heard my middle guy is somewhere around town, everybody is home to go to a celebration for a lost family member.

So i met Belle in the village, went to get cat food, for the cat, coffee, for belle, we finally went to a bar together for the first time together in Manhattan,  we went to McSorleys, one of the oldest bars in NYC, 1854, a place where i spent a lot of time when i was way younger. We stayed for the prerequisite two beers and then moved on to the Strand, a huge used book store on Broadway, went to USF liquor store for some free mescal margarita samples, then went to Mae's for some sushi.

Big Saturday, lots of stuff to do, hopefully it is a good day.

My Cat - Diggy

someone told me that they didn't think i was a cat person, i didn't think so either until Diggy Claws was brought into the house. This very good looking cat of mine is caught in hunter mode, climbing trees and chasing birds and squirrels. A real cat.

La Folie 2011

2011 La Folie

one of my favorite beers, you can't get them on the east coast. I have a 2007 caged and corked bottle aging, this one was a surprise find in some beer store in Milwaukee, 2011 version. Was going to age it but WTF, i drank it today and enjoyed every sour, puckering moment.

Pat's Hubba Hubba

Texas Burger

My Own Personalized Seat At The Counter

"The Fucker"

So we drove over to Cornwall HS today to see my little guy run for the first time in two years, in which he did alright for such a long layoff. After watching 3 out of 4 kids ran track for 10 years, today made me feel old. I realized that as the years go on, i get older and the track kids stay the same age.

We then drove down to Port Chester to the Clay Arts Center to see some art opening where once again I embarrassed myself by having a brain fart and knocking my own wine glass out of my hand, duhhh. My son told us about Pats Hubba Hubba restaurant which is really a small and narrow, counter seating only cheap burger joint with good chili. There were four big dudes working behind the counter, dancing around each other in a 30" narrow space and one dudes belly had to be 48". It was a decent cheap greasy burger meal with greasy fries and onion rings. I was thinking that i should have a second one but i am tying to be good, but then three ladies come in for take out and they ordered three burgers each, made me feel weak but i stayed the course and stuck with my one.

$3 Beer Near Yankee Stadium

so we were going to our first game of the season, three friends from home where driving down, i was heading uptown from downtown. some other friends had tickets and they told me that they were meeting at the Dugout, a bar right across the street from bleacher section of the stadium that had $3 PBR pounders. WHAT, the Dugout where two years ago i soaked for $40 in shots of Patron before a yankee game at the old stadium has cheap beer. As much of a beer geek as i am, i don't expect to drink anything good when i am up in this hood, the old good beer bar on 158th st is closed so i am in cheap beer mode.

due to the the first rainout in my 40+ years of going to games, we never left the bar, causing the case of drinking too many beers and spending too much money. Around 9PM, the game was canceled, so it was time to go home.

The Dugout is the Yankee bar to go to before the game, it is a huge space with 3 bars and a lot of young waitress' getting beer for you. Stan's is still the ultimate destination but they slam you in and you wind up paying too much or the same bad beer as the Dugout.