CIRQUE DU SOLEIL DAY
We are finally starting to get some sleep, though the air conditioning in the room is doing its best to thwart that. And it’s not the temperature, it just has a weird odour. Not bad, just not of clean air. But at least we managed a lie-in this time.
Anyway, we decided to head south down the Strip, back towards the "Fabulous" sign, to check out Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur. We’d found an Irish pub at Mandalay Bay that did a reasonable looking breakfast – Ri Ra and had our fill. It was 10 in the morning and the Guinness was already flowing for the Americans sat at the bar. Apparently all the Irish food and drink is shipped over from Ireland!
Mandalay Bay is a massive hotel that seem to go on along the sidewalk for a mile or more! Thankfully, there’s a free monorail that runs from Mandalay Bay, down to Luxor and on to Excalibur, which puts you across the road from NYNY.
Our bus tickets from yesterday were still valid for a few more hours so headed for a bus stop across the road from NYNY. We managed to jump on the bus that was waiting at the stand and off we went. But not for long. Somehow, the driver didn’t see the construction fencing in the road on the approach to the next stop and drove into it, dragging and snaking the fence along with it. Minimal damage to the bus but that was the end of our bus ride. Rather than wait who-knows-how-long for the next one, we continued on foot.
On our previous visit to Caesar’s we noticed that we’d just missed a mini show in the shopping mall on the death of Atlantis. Scheduled for 2pm each day, we headed back to the casino to get a spot to watch it. It was not worth either the trek or the wait! The fountains and the pyrotechnics were exciting enough, but the animatronics seemed very amateurish! I guess, being the world-famous Caesar’s Palace, I expected some high quality show but it wouldn’t surprise me if, under the “skin”, the characters were just wooden puppets! The show supposedly tells the story of who should succeed the king of Atlantis and how, because they couldn’t agree, the city sank into the ocean. It sounded fun but if you can’t make time to see it on a visit, it’s not worth returning to Vegas to catch it!
After wandering the shops and the casino floor a bit more, we headed to Trevi, a restaurant in the Caesar’s mall next to a mock-up of the Trevi fountain. Happy hour on food and drinks runs from 5pm to 7pm, but you can’t book, and it’s limited numbers as you have to be willing to sit at the bar to eat and drink from the much limited menu. But for $10 each for a pizza and $7 for drinks, it was by far the cheapest meal we’d had and you if there was any sacrifice on quality we couldn’t tell. Oftentimes any bar or waiting staff are just going through the motions and aren’t particularly attentive or engaging, which I would kind of expect if you're getting 20% of my bill as a tip. But at Trevi the staff were willing to chat and usually had an eye on your drink and whether you needed it refreshing. I accept that this is probably to encourage you to either move on to make space if you’ve finished or get you to the finish sooner, but it was still some of the best service we received all week!
With a bit of time still to go until our show, we headed to Treasure Island early and had another little flutter on the virtual tables. With some conservative gambling, we were finding that we could win a little and lose a little, win a bit more and lose a bit more. We’d started the holiday with a couple of hundred dollars between us that we were willing to lose so being “up” or “down” didn’t really impact the enjoyment.
But Treasure Island is where the Cirque du Soleil show – Mystere – is performed. There are quite a few Cirque shows happening around Vegas – our own hotel has “Mad Apple”, but we decided on Mystere and we weren’t disappointed. 90 minutes of comedy acting, death-defying stunts and acrobatic sequences that beggared belief. Some parts were so dumbfounding that we just sat there gawping, forgetting to applaud! I don’t know how you get a job on the Cirque team, but I can only assume you need to be a gymnast who was considered too skilled for the Olympic team.
In our hunt for free entertainment, we’d found that, outside The Mirage, there was a volcano show hourly from 8pm to 11pm. We made our way to a good viewing spot ready for the show to begin at 10pm. As the time ticked passed the hour, anticipation mounted, and the show had begun. Or had it? There was some rumbling and a few lights, then some equipment emerged from the water, then nothing. Quite underwhelming so far. Until murmurs worked their way through the crowd that there was a technical issue. This was confirmed when we noticed someone climbing through the undergrowth of the stage and we figured they weren’t part of the show. Deciding we still had a couple of days to catch the show, we gave it up as a bad job, hoping for better luck tomorrow (and not a re-run of the Atlantis disappointment).
We made our way back to NYNY but, on our way, we noticed that a fountain show had started in front of the Bellagio, so we stopped and watched the end of that. The show is only 5 mins long or so and set to a different song or piece of music each time. We caught the second half of Katy Perry’s “Firework”, but the view wasn’t great, being side-on, through a window from an access route into the Bellagio. Knowing we’d come back and watch a full show, we weren’t too disappointed and carried on. But the length of the Bellagio lake is so long, and the sidewalk so busy from people stopping to either get a good spot for the next show, or watching various street performers and buskers, that it was pretty slow-going. So slow, in fact, we hadn’t cleared the lake by the time the next show started. So we hung back and grabbed a spot that opened up (who leaves just as the show is about to start??) and got the full show to Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance”. And it was AMAZING! The fountains, the lighting, the music. I would really wonder why you went to Las Vegas at all if you went and never saw the fountain show.
Another day done and with an early start tomorrow, it was time to head back, but not before we stopped by Walgreen’s – a minimarket on the Strip. Knowing it was an early pick-up it was either get up really early and grab breakfast at America, or give us some extra time and eat a sandwich from the shop on the drive. Armed with a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and some fruit juice, we headed up to our room for a beer and some sleep.
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