Imperial Palace
I wasn't really financially prepared to go to Vegas again after going in April, so I was looking for a cheap hotel room. (Ok, not really cheap since I was still looking for a room on the Strip, but I was looking for a cheaper hotel room.) The Imperial Palace had relatively cheap rooms and they're located at the center of the Strip, so it seemed like a good deal. I knew the Imperial Palace was one of the older hotels on the Strip, but I'd never been there before so I didn't know what to expect. I went to their web site and since their rooms rates were so low I decided to spring for a "love tub" package that included a room with a large bathtub, a bottle of champagne, and other stuff that I wasn't planning on using.
Our flight arrived and we took a shuttle to the Imperial Palace. When we entered the lobby I was surprised; the hotel looked better than I expected, and it didn't have that stale smoke odour I've come to expect from old Vegas hotels. We checked in, went to our room, and when we opened the door the first thing we noticed was the large tub off to the left that looked like it could probably fit four people comfortably. I examined the tub, and saw that two of it's walls were mirrors. Looking around at the rest of the room revealed that it was pretty large. The bed was the four poster variety, and when I flopped on the bed and looked up I saw a mirror on the ceiling! Yep, it was definitely worth the extra $20 a night.
The Strip (part 1)
It was after 10 pm when we arrived, and it was a little after midnight when we were ready to leave our hotel room. DJ, who arrived long before we did, joined us as we walked around the Strip looking for some food. Contrary to what you may think about Las Vegas being a city that never sleeps, it might be true, but it certainly doesn't eat well after midnight. We couldn't find any restaurants of consequence open. (The only place that I saw open was Denny's, and I just wasn't in the mood for it.)
We continued walking and I was getting more irritable by the second, so someone mentioned the TCBY in the Barbary Coast (or some other hotel I can't remember the name of). I'm not a big fan of frozen yogurt, but at that point I was willing to eat practically anything, even Denny's (assuming I didn't have to actually walk back to it). The TCBY was a TCBY/Subway combo shop, and when I tried to order some piece of crap frozen yogurt thing they told me they didn't serve the TCBY stuff after midnight. WTF!? There were three people working there and they couldn't make a shake for me?? Disgusted with them, I left. (I guess I wasn't hungry enough to eat anything. Even in my weakened state I was still able to turn down Subway. Of course even if I wanted to eat there I wouldn't have on principle alone.)
I was ready to call it a night when someone noticed that the Ghirardelli Shop was open. I don't care for their chocolate, but this shop was also serving ice cream. I quickly ordered a banana split and was soon devouring it. The banana split was tasty and I could feel myself becoming rational again. With good sense restored I decided I was ready for bed.
Tsunami
After a late night the first thing I wanted after I woke up was lunch. We called DJ and he woke up at about the same time as we did so we didn't really have to wait for him to get ready. We weren't sure where we wanted to eat lunch, but I naturally wanted to check out the Davidoff store in the Venetian. We went to the Venetian, but we were really too starved to want to do anything other than eat, so we headed to Tsunami since we knew they had good food.
When we got to Tsunami they weren't too busy, which was good since we weren't in any condition to wait around for a table. Once we sat down we ordered a tempura combo, kaibashira roll, spider roll, philly roll, teriyaki chicken, and Thai beef salad. The tempura was excellent (the best I'd had actually), as was the kaibashira roll, and the beef in the Thai beef salad. The salad part of the beef salad was ok, but the greens were too bitter. The spider roll sounded better than it tasted, and I think philly rolls are always a bad idea. DJ didn't like the teriyaki chicken because it was far blander than teriyaki usually is. After all of that food I was still up for dessert so I ordered the ginger creme brulee. It was as tasty as it was last time.
The Strip (part 2)
After lunch we stopped at the Davidoff store so I could buy some cigars for us to smoke later that night. We were in the walk-in humidor when a really cute sales girl decided to help us. Normally I hate dealing with sales people, but she was really cool (and the fact that she was really cute didn't hurt either). Anyway, I picked up two Ashton Aged Maduro "No. 40"s for DJ and Lynn (since they didn't have any "No. 20"s), one Drew Estate Natural "Root" for myself (since I was still on my Natural tasting quest), and two Ashton Virgin Sun Grown "Torpedo"s (just because they can be really tasty). Since I had taken the last two VSGs in the box the sales girl asked if I wanted the box. I told her sure since I've never had a cigar box before. (I have yet to purchase a box of cigars since I just don't have that kind of storage capacity.)
[After the trip I was telling Steve the story about the cigar box and I told him that the sales girl was flirting with me (just to pull his leg), and then I asked Lynn to verify it (hoping she'd play along), but to my surprise Lynn said she was, and meant it. Wow. I'm so oblivious I didn't even know the girl was flirting with me. Lynn added that the sales girl was probably only flirting with me since she was there. You know, catty girl stuff, but I don't believe it for a minute.]
After we were done at the Davidoff store we went to the Mirage to pick up our "Mystere" tickets. While we were in the Mirage I saw more fine chicks wearing bikinis than I'd seen in a while. (Ok, it was more like more than I've ever seen.) We picked up our tickets and on our way to finding the exit we ran across an arcade and the pool (which seemed to have acres of women tanning themselves). When we passed the arcade I noticed they had House of the Dead 2. When I see zombies it's on! I decided to only get change for $2 since it was almost time to get ready for dinner and I didn't want to take too long. Well, if I had $5 change we probably would have finished the game; as it was we got pretty far. After a good time of zombie capping I was ready for dinner. (Actually I was ready to kill more zombies, but Lynn would have killed me if we were late for our reservation.)
Emeril's New Orleans Fish House
The three of us arrived at the New Orleans Fish House, looked at the menu, and decided the tasting menu looked pretty good. Lynn and DJ both got the wine pairings too, but the memories of almost getting sick from drinking too much wine on the last Vegas trip were still pretty vivid in my mind so I hardly tried any of the wines.
The first course was a lobster remoulade salad. It didn't do anything for me.
The second course was seared diver scallops with chive lemon butter sauce and spinach gnocchi. The scallops were great! They were seared on both sides, but they were just barely cooked in the center. To make things better, the chive lemon butter sauce was amazing. Lynn and DJ liked it so much that after they finished their scallops they sopped up the sauce with chunks of bread. Me and Lynn thought the spinach gnocchi were sort of tasteless, but DJ liked them.
The third course was creole mustard crusted sable with succotash and hushpuppies. I didn't like the hushpuppies (which is just wrong because I normally love hushpuppies), but I thought the sable was just delicious. The fish had a crisp crust, and the flesh was very light and tasty.
The lighter sable course was followed by a heavier bacon wrapped monk fish over grilled vegetables with balsamic meat juice. I really didn't care for the monk fish and I don't remember anything about the vegetables.
The fifth course was a filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes and homemade worcestershire sauce. The filet was really tasty, and the homemade worcestershire sauce was absolutely brilliant! After I finished all of my filet I stole half a filet off of Sonia's plate. [To this point I haven't mentioned DJ's sister Sonia and it's just best that I don't otherwise she'd get an entire section of her own if I did.]
Dessert was homemade vanilla bean ice cream on top of a peach/raspberry cobbler. The cobbler wasn't that good, but the vanilla bean ice cream was just as good as the best homemade vanilla ice cream.
Cirque du Soleil "Mystere"
After dinner we took a cab from the MGM Grand to the Mirage to see "Mystere". We sat through the show, but I wasn't impressed. I even fell asleep right before the grand finale. The emphasis of "Mystere" seemed to be a little more on comedy than "O" was, but I thought "O" was a lot more entertaining. One thing I did like about "Mystere" though was some of the things they did with the stage. It's difficult to explain, but trust me, it was cool.
Cigars on the Balcony
Lynn and I returned to the Imperial Palace after the show, had the champagne that was part of the "love tub" package delivered to our room, met up with DJ, and sat on our balcony to smoke our cigars. Earlier we tried to find some Coke at the convenience store in the hotel to go with the cigars, but all they had were Pepsi products. We settled for Pepsi Twist (which is one of the few Pepsi products I can even stand). Lynn and DJ smoked the "No. 40"s and I smoked the "Root". All of the cigars were good, but they all burned unevenly. Lynn brought up the fact that the last time we bought cigars from the Davidoff store they also had an uneven burn, so she suggested that it was the fault of the store. Remembering how often the doors to their walk-in humidor were opened and closed in the short time I was there I had to agree that it was a definite possibility. I also learned that Pepsi Twist doesn't go nearly as well with a cigar as Coke does, although it wasn't a surprise.
The Frigid Love Tub
When we were all done with the cigars DJ went on his way and we started filling our tub. When I started running the water it was cold, but I figured it would eventually heat up. It didn't. The tub was a quarter full and it was ice cold. I called the front desk and they told me that one of their water heaters went out and they were currently fixing it. He offered to put us in another room, but I wasn't in the mood to change rooms at 2 o'clock in the morning, so I just let it be.
Champagne Brunch (Ok, really just champagne)
We woke up and we once again had a bottle of champagne that I didn't want to waste. It was only the Imperial Palace house champagne, so I didn't expect much, but I thought it was at least worth a try. The champagne was too bitter for both of our tastes, but at least we didn't have a repeat of the last Vegas trip.
Imperial Palace
We gathered up our stuff to check out and discovered one very bad thing about the Imperial Palace; not enough elevators! After waiting about 10 minutes for an elevator that wasn't full, we decided to carry our bags down 12 flights of stairs to the lobby.
The Palms
After we checked out of the hotel and checked our bags, so we didn't have to carry them around before we hit the airport, we walked around looking for lunch. We wound up in Caesar's Palace, and we were starving at that point, but we weren't starved enough to eat at Caesar's buffet. We stopped at the first restaurant we saw in the Forum Shops, the Palms, and their menu looked pretty good so we went in. We were seated and given the usual basket of bread. The sourdough was ok, but their dark rye bread was pretty damn good. I scarfed a couple of pieces, and I don't even like rye!
We had ordered a couple of soups and a salad, so naturally I had to try them all: their lobster bisque was decent, but a bit salty; their beef barley was a much tastier soup; and the mixed green salad was decent.
My lunch was the citron chicken with asparagus. When it arrived it was a whole chicken breast with bits of asparagus and thin slices of ham [prosciutto?], and fries (which were more like potato chips). The chicken was decent with a really salty/lemony sauce, but the ham was gross. It ruined the entire entree. The fries were good though.
I had a slice of pecan pie for dessert. It was a bit heavy on the pecans so it was chewier than normal, but still pretty tasty.
Airport Shuttle
We scheduled our return airport shuttle the night before, so we were sure to get back to the hotel about 15 minutes before our shuttle was supposed to arrive. We waited for our shuttle to show up and when we finally saw one it was from a different shuttle company. We waited some more, and another shuttle arrived, but it was also from a different shuttle company than the one we booked with. Eventually a shuttle from our company arrived, but it was only there to drop people off. I spoke to the driver because it was already five minutes after our shuttle was supposed to pick us up, and he insisted that it would show up. We waited about another ten or fifteen minutes when another shuttle from our company arrived. I spoke with that driver, and he too was only there to drop people off. I asked if he could pick us up, since I had already lost confidence in the shuttle company's ability to keep to a simple schedule. The driver said he couldn't pick us up right then, that he had one more drop off just up the street, and that he'd come back and pick us up. (Apparently the company has some sort of policy about not picking up people when they're dropping off others. It doesn't seem very efficient, but that's just me.) True to his word he was back in less than five minutes to pick us up, but it was still about twenty-five minutes after we were scheduled to be picked up.
Needless to say that I'll never schedule a return shuttle ever again. (I actually do enjoy coming in on the shuttle though because it gives me a chance to look around and to possibly chat with people about restaurant recommendations and what not.)
