Sue's Blog - Some assembly required.

Blogging again.

This is where we stayed in Las Vegas.
The Excaliber.
We have stayed there before and it is one of our favourites.
Las Vegas was fun but it has become so expensive.
It used to be so cheap to eat and drink there as the casinos jostled for your custom.  Each one wanted you to stay so you would, hopefully, lose your money in their machines and on their card tables.
So, they all had cheap food and drink.
Not now.
The hotel/casinos have been taken over by conglomerates.
Luxor, Excaliber, MGM and New York, New York, for example, are now all owned by the same company.  They no longer need to compete.
So, they all charge the same.
$18 for a breakfast buffet !!!!!
That would be ok if it was a super, duper, deluxe breakfast buffet.
But it wasn't.
It was awful, limited choice and the food was cold, dry, overcooked and almost inedible.
We paid for it once.......and I tried to eat it........failed and finished up with a banana.
Evening meals were very expensive.  It cost us over $90 per evening to eat.
Drinks...ha...they used to give them away.......now it is $12 for a vodka and tonic or a whisky.
Ridiculous prices.
We still had a good time.
The weather was fab and I spent a couple of afternoons around the pools.
Outside the entrance to Caesars Palace.
Can you spot me at the back?
I have a black t.shirt on.
Inside Caesars Palace.

They do have a lovely fish tank inside too.



This is inside The Venetian....yes I said INSIDE.
The gondola rides are very expensive but the gondoliers do sing beautifully all the way round.
The ceiling in The Venetian.
Absolutely astounding.

Can you guess where this is?
I bet you can't.
This is actually inside the airport, by the gate as we were waiting for our flight back.
They don't want you to take any money home with you.

We don't gamble as such.  Philip had a couple of flutters while I was having a swim and I think I spent 50 cents in a machine. 
We went to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary.  We got married in The Candlelight Chapel.
We made a pilgrimage to visit it......it was gone.  Pulled down and something else was under construction.
The hotel we stayed in when we got married - gone.
They had built a McDonald's where it once stood.
We were a bit sad about all that but it didn't stop us having brilliant memories of how Vegas once was.
The plane going and coming back was packed.
Coming back it seemed everyone around us was coughing and sneezing.
We left warm, sunny weather weather and arrived to minus 10C and the ground covered in snow.
I then got sick.
I wasn't totally surprised.
That, and the fact I have portrait orders to complete, have stopped me blogging.
I have been really poorly though.   I haven't felt this rough in years and today is the first time, since I got back, that I haven't fallen asleep in the afternoon.  Not me at all.
Then yesterday, Sunday, was The Day of The Tornadoes.

posted by Sue Banks @ 1:33 PM