Blake and Erin’s Vegas Vacation

So as you may have heard, my girlfriend Erin and I recently took a little trip together to Las Vegas, Nevada. This is kind of new for us — I’ve gone to Pittsburgh to visit her several times, she’s come to New Orleans to visit me, and last year we went together to Philadelphia with our friends Mike and Kim for the Wizard World Philly convention. But the Vegas trip is something we’ve been planning to do for a long time for one important reason: getting married by a guy dressed like Elvis.

No, actually, it’s because Erin’s father lives in Vegas, and even though we’ve been together for three years now, I’d never had the chance to meet him. We both took off on a Wednesday afternoon and met at the Vegas airport, where I was startled to discover slot machines in the terminal. Man, this was a different place.

Erin’s dad picked us up and took us on a little driving tour of the strip before meeting up with his wife for a late dinner — and I mean really late. It was midnight there, but I’d just jumped two time zones, and Erin had jumped three. We were both really hungry, and after eating, sleep came pretty easily. Erin’s dad was kind enough to lend us one of his cars while we were there, too, saving us the cost of a rental car. It’s interesting, though — I looked around Vegas a lot, but I don’t think I actually saw any rental cars the whole time I was there. I expected them to be all over the place.

Blake and Erin cruisin' in Vegas

Thursday was the one day of this brief trip we’d get to spend completely alone with each other, just the two of us, and proving once again that I’ve got the greatest girlfriend in the world, Erin indulged me by helping me find two comic shops in the area. She knows that when I travel out of town I like to check out the local comic shops so I can talk about them in my columns and podcasts, and she was more than happy to oblige. After that stop, we went to lunch at one of Erin’s favorite west coast burger joints:

In-N-Out Burger is AWESOME.

If you’ve never eaten at an In-N-Out Burger, I’m not surprised. The company makes all its food fresh at a central location and ships it to all its locations, preventing it from expanding far out of the Nevada/California/Arizona area. I wish we could get some further east, though, because it was delicious.

After this, Erin indulged me again by taking me to one of the things in Vegas I wanted to see the most: Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton

I’m not as big a Star Trek geek as some people I know (and here I am specifically thinking of my sister, Heather), but I am a fan, and with the recent news that this attraction would be closing down in September, I knew I needed to visit this when I had the chance. More proof that Erin is the perfect woman? We were there for four hours and she never once complained. So what did we do with four hours? Everything. We visited the walk-through museum, which includes a timeline of the Star Trek universe and lots of props and costumes used in the movies and TV shows. Then we rode one of the two motion-simulator rides, The Klingon Encounter. This was an awesome experience, not just because the ride itself is fun, but because the pre-ride adventure is as cool as anything I’ve ever seen in a major theme park. I’m not going to tell you here just what it was, in case you get a chance to visit someday I don’t want to blow the surprise, but suffice it to say that Erin kept looking at me and telling me I looked like a little boy on Christmas morning. I know she was right.

After the ride, we went to the gift shop and got a few things, including a shirt for my sister, and then had a drink at Quark’s Bar. This is something else I love about the place — they recreate the Promenade section from my favorite Trek series, Deep Space Nine, for the restaurant and bar areas. Then we hit the casino for a little while until it was time for what we paid the most for — the backstage tour. It was more than I expected, but well worth it. The tour showed us how all of the effects and tricks in the ride were accomplished, then took us down to beneath the ride itself, where we got to watch the simulator car in motion. We also saw the costume and make-up areas, and lots of other cool stuff. (If you take the backstage tour, RIDE THE KLINGON RIDE FIRST! It’ll totally ruin the ride for you if you take the tour first.) Finally, we visited the second ride, Borg Invasion 4-D. The Borg attraction was okay, but nowhere near as good as the Klingon experience. Erin was so wonderful for going along with all this, but I’m pretty sure she had fun too. Here are a few more pictures of us at Star Trek: The Experience.

Erin beneath the Voyager

Quark costume

Blake samples the Romulan ale

 

We're pretty sure these are four perfectly ordinary beers with Star Trek-ish names, plus one perfectly ordinary beer with food coloring.

A trek-style casino. Way cool.

After leaving the Hilton, Erin wisely suggested we buy a monorail pass to take us down the strip. Without a pass, you can spend the entire day walking from one place to another. With the one-day unlimited ride pass, we could take the train to about seven stations, and virtually everything we wanted to do was within reasonable walking distance of at least one of them. We rode down to the MGM Grand to begin the second part of our day, walking around the casinos in that area.

The MGM Grand

New York, New York Casino

The Excalibur

And one of the most important stops of the day? The shops at Mandalay Bay. Erin had put up with my obsessions all day, so it was time for me to share one of hers:

The Lush store in Mandalay Bay

Lush, a company that makes gourmet soaps and cosmetic products, is one of Erin’s favorite things in the world, but there’s no store in Pittsburgh. Whenever she travels, she looks for one. This makes Lush stores in three states I’ve taken her to so far, including the New Orleans, Louisiana store, and the Atlantic City, New Jersey store. We’re going to get a map to stick pins into.

We wound up at the Luxor Casino — the giant pyramid — for dinner, and had a nice time at the buffet, then walked down the strip a bit more, stopping at one of the places my aunts Mona and Nancy told me we simply had to go while we were in Vegas:

M&M's World!

M&M’s World! A four-story store full of M&M’s toys, clothes, dinnerware, Christmas ornaments, postcards, collectibles and, of course, candy. I really loved this place — it was full of movie posters re-done with the M&M characters, lots of cool displays, a wall where you could make your own bag of M&M’s with any colors you wanted (if you felt like spending ten bucks a pound), and they even pumped the smell of chocolate through the air conditioner. That was just playing dirty.

Green M&M as Marion Ravenwood

SuperM!

M&M Nascar Racer

Finally, our feet got the better of us, and we caught the monorail back to the Hilton and hopped the car back to the hotel. At least, that was the plan — we thought the monorail station was in the Paris casino, but it was actually in the neighoring Bally’s. No big deal, though, we saw the Paris Eiffel Tower up-close and heard a few songs from a really great band in the casino. It was worth the detour.

Wanna ride to the top of the tower? Just $17 to get on the elevator. Erin and I were content on the ground.

The next day, Friday, we met up with Erin’s dad and his wife to see The Dark Knight. I may be a bigger comic geek than Erin is, but she’s such a huge Batman fan that I’ve been anxious to see this movie with her almost since it was announced. About five minutes into the movie, she had the same look on her face that I had in the Star Trek attraction. The movie made $158 million in its opening weekend, and after seeing the movie, I can only assume the only reason it didn’t make more is because there just weren’t enough seats in the theaters. If you want an in-depth discussion, you can listen to our spoiler-filled review that we recorded as a special 2 in 1 Showcase podcast. I always love having her on the show.

Although still a-tizzy from the movie, we headed back to the strip to see a few more attractions. We started at the Bellagio, where she wanted me to see the incredible fountain show out front. We wound up watching from the car, though, stuck in traffic. When we got there later, it apparently had already shut down for the night. This was something else I started to notice about this time — Vegas really plays with a person’s sense of time. Part of it was the time difference from home, but there’s also the fact that this is a town that never closes. The casinos, restaurants and clubs are all open 24 hours, and they’re always busy. Before the first fully day there was over, I’d already begun to lose the ability to sense what time it was. We’d get home at 2 o’clock, while my body was still at 4 a.m. Louisiana time, and it felt like something else entirely.

The Bellagio has a great little display inside — something like the Rose Bowl Parade, with dioramas and animatronics completely covered in plants, flowers, and seeds. There was also a cool little dancing fountain show, similar to stuff I remember seeing in Disney World the last time I went.

We also took in the Caesar’s Palace casino that night — a nice place to visit, and Erin learned she liked slot machines that have spinners at the top.

Saturday we got together with more of Erin’s family — her father and his wife, her Aunt Karen and Uncle Dee, Uncle Derek and his son Josh, and her stepsister Britany and her boyfriend Cedric. It was my first time meeting any of these folks, and I’ll admit I was a little nervous. It was a lot of fun, though — they were all really nice and I enjoyed talking to them. They had a lot of questions about Post-Katrina New Orleans, which I expected, and I was more than happy to tell them the truth about the area, as opposed to what you see on TV.

As we left, we took a slight wrong turn, neither of us being familiar with the area. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, though. After we figured out the mistake and turned around, we saw this campaign sign on the side of the road:

Stefany Miley or Stefany SMILEY?

As soon as we saw it, we at in stunned silence, shouted out, and Erin hit a U-turn while telling me to get out the camera. I was already halfway there. We thought for a moment that maybe this was a poster put up by the movie studio, sort of a viral marketing campaign. Then we saw other posters for this poor woman all over the city. I guess some enterprising fan saw the sign and just couldn’t resist making a little change.

Afterwards, Erin and I went back to the hotel to clean ourselves up and change. It was our last night in Vegas and we were going to do something special: a nice dinner at the Grand Lux Cafe in the Venetian Casino. All of Vegas was fun, but the Venetian was hands-down the most beautiful place we saw. The casino has indoor canals and beautiful architecture that simulates Venice. You can even take a Gondola ride indoors and visit an outdoor sun-lit marketplace in the middle of the night.

Erin visits Venice

We wanted a Gondola ride, but the line was enormous. We decided next time we'll go for a breakfast buffet and get an early ride.

The Venetian Marketplace. Can you believe this is INDOORS at 11 o'clock at night?

After dinner,  we did our last bit of wandering, visiting the Wynn and the Treasure Island Casino, both of which were nice. The best bit, though, was that we got some girls who wants us to take a picture of them in front of the Wynn waterfall to return the favor. Although we’re both shutterbugs, it seems Erin and I never manage to get enough pictures of us TOGETHER.

At the Wynn Waterfall

The next morning, it was time for me to go home. (Erin was staying a few more days with her dad.) The rough part was that the hotel’s internet connection had been out for two days, and I couldn’t pull up my return flight information. We wound up sitting in a Starbuck’s parking lot glomming off their wireless connection. (Kids, remember, don’t do that.) We wanted to stop for breakfast, but IHOP was packed, so we set out in search of an alternate. Boy, are we glad we did. We wound up at an awesome little restaurant called “The Egg and I”, a breakfast/lunch place that’s open from 6 am until 3 pm. I had the “Piggy Skillet,” a mix of eggs and cheese with bacon, ham, and pork sausage, served over ranch potatoes. Erin had the French Toast stuffed with egg, cheese, and bacon. Both were delicious. If you’re in Vegas, you’ve GOT to check this place out for breakfast, it was one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had.

Leaving Erin is always hard, and this time the airline didn’t make it any easier. First, my flight to Denver was delayed and I was going to miss my connection to New Orleans, so they put me on another airline, which sucked. Then I got picked for “additional screening” (i.e., stand there like an idiot while a guy swabs my shoes and electronic devices with cotton then waits for a machine to confirm I didn’t have any explosives on them) and rushed to the plane. In Denver, I had to run through the terminal, take a tram to a different concourse, then run through THAT terminal and made it just in time… then got home only to find my luggage never made it to the second plane. Coming home sucked harder than ever.

But being with Erin was better than ever. Whenever we’re together it’s like a whole different universe where everything is better, happier, more realthan the real world. We’ll be together again for Thanksgiving, then for Mardi Gras, then we’re hoping to plan a Disney World trip with Chase and Jenny for next summer. It’ll never be enough until we can be together all the time. But we both know that day is coming. As always, Erin, I love you with all my heart, and November can’t come soon enough.

Want to see more of our trip? Check out our Las Vegas 2008 Flickr Album!