September 2, 2005

• Viva Las Vegas Day3

  
  

  Mixygirl and I started the day out with a great breakfast at Tableau, a restaurant open for breakfast and lunch exclusively to suite guests.

  
  

   

  
  

  The meal began with an assortment of pastries (my favorite was the banana turnover)

  
  

   

  
  

  Mixygirl had blueberry ricotta pancakes with maple pecan butter (DHS),  I had a take on eggs benedict consisting of poached egg on top of kobe beef short ribs, and a potato pancake (Super DHS).  The meat was exquisitely tender and richly sauced, just an amazing way to start out the day.  After that we chilled out at the pool, waiting for Toro to fly in from LA.

  
  

   

  
  

  When Toro arrived, we headed to Caesars to calm her hunger pangs.  We stopped off first at the Seahorse bar which is my favorite bar in Vegas and I've never had a drink there.  They have a cool tank with tons of seahorses.  This time not as many as last time.  Some of the seahorses were apparently pregnant also.  One, that Mixygirl was trying to point our attention to, looked like it had a hard boiled egg in its stomach.  Unfortunately I had better pictures last time, but they got wiped off with the hard drive crash. 

  
  

   

  
  

  To Toro's relief, we left the seahorse bar and sat down at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill for lunch.  The bread basket was awesome, and the Southwest style bacon and hash brown quesadilla was excellent.

  
  

   

  
  

  I had the blue corn encrusted halibut.  Mixygirl had the always excellent spicy chicken and sweet potato hash (DHS).

  
  

   

  
  

  Toro had the New Mexico spiced pork tenderloin sandwich.  Despite her professed hunger, she couldn't finish it, and even tried to hide the photographic evidence!!!  Admittedly this is not the best Mesa Grill dish, and we should've remembered that when Jober ordered it in March, it wasn' t that good. 

  
  

   

  
  

  After lunch, we headed to the opulent Forum Shops to do what else, Shop!!!  My purchase highlight was a red-neck style Corona shirt.

  
  

  

  
  

  To my shock, while I was outside the Nike store I saw a huge crowd gather towards the Cheesecake Factory.  None other than Shaq, was having lunch there!!!    Another highlight of the forum shops was having an early dinner at Joe's stone crab claws, bloody marys, and sharing a slice of keye lime pie.

  
  

   

  
  

  After Caesar's we walked through Bellagio.  I have to say that I saw the worst ever Bellagio atrium display.  It was a USA theme.  They had these horrible animatronic baby eagles.  To add insult to injury when we went outside, there was no fountain show because some guys were repairing it.  Toro swore she had to go back later because apparently she is obsessed with the Bellagio fountains.  We did manage to see an art exhibit from the MFA in Boston at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.  It was mostly so-so impressionist landscapes.  Fortunately they had a few excellent Renoirs and Monets. 

  
  

  

  
  

  I was also psyched that they had my favorite painting from the MFA there, Van Gogh's "Houses at Auvers".

  
  

   

  
  

  So after Bellagio, we headed to the Hard Rock to see the Odd Men Out tour at the Joint, their live music venue.  The venue was pretty cool.  Great sound, perfect size, and easy to see the performers.  Ben Lee opened up.  I have heard of him for many years but for some reason never got into his music.  His set was pretty fun.  It sounds mainly like mellow folk-pop.  He finished with a great song on his new album called "We're all in this together". 

  
  

   

  
  

  Next up was Ben Folds.  He was clearly the crowd favorite of the night, and turned in a great set of songs from his solo stuff, and old favorites from the Ben Folds Five days.  I particularly liked "Bitches Ain't Shit", his gangsta rap song.  Rufus Wainwright (whom we adore) closed out the night with a fantastic set.  Not as strong as the one we saw last March at UCLA, but still excellent.  Highlight for me was definitely his cover of Leonard Cohen's (Jeff Buckley also does a pretty famous version) song, Hallelujah.  After the show MG and I were pretty tired so we all headed back to the Wynn to crash.  We did get some Chinese food from a restaurant in the Wynn to eat as a late night snack.  I guess cause we didn't go clubbing or bar-hopping afterwards, Toro dubbed her visit the Not-So-Wild Vegas trip. 

  • 8:41 pm
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