Wonder Boogie!

Sunday 10 August 2008
Las Vegas, still hot :D

We stayed at home in the morning. I have been sleeping in most mornings, so this suits me nicely! Part of that is because I've become semi-nocturnal due to the temperature dropping once the sun goes down. Since I usually go to bed rather early it has been quite an adjustment, and my friend has been quite shocked at how much I can sleep.

Around 3.30pm we went back into town, to the Strip. We walked around some more hotels:

• New York New York - this is the hotel I remember the best because it had a rollercoaster on top of it. We were thinking of riding it but weren't so enthusiastic at the time so we skipped it. The casino in this hotel


• Excalibur - I don't remember much specifically about this hotel, but we went to a dinner show there. More details later.


• Mandalay bay - apparently the newest hotel on the strip.


• the Luxor - egyptian themed, shaped like a big tinted-glass pyramid which shines a light out of the top at night time. Apparently the light is so bright can be seen from outer space. I know that I could see it from the edge of town...

After wandering around and trying to make a choice we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in New York New York. We sat 'outside' which had a nice feeling, particularly because people couldn't smoke since it was actually inside a building. There was a bar nearby that had 'duelling' pianos (much like Elton John and Billy Joel) with good music and lots of laughter. After we finished dinner it was nearly time for the dinner show at Excalibur. Yes, the two meals turned out to be a bit of a mistake. I think we ended up having the first meal because we thought the second one might be too late or something.

We stopped by Coyote Ugly for a quick drink on our way to the show. I had a bit of a chat to the bouncer on the way in because he had a very good look at me and my passport. He said that they turn away about 50 people a night for fake IDs or IDs that are real, but not theirs. It was ‘happy hour’ so we got a free shot out of a bottle, from a girl standing on the bar...something pink with practically no alcohol in it. After that my friend ordered me 'something girly' so I got a Sex on the Beach. It was also pink, but had substantially more alcohol.

Heading back to Excalibur the dinner show, we saw a hummingbird! How funny – we had been so many places with forests and the place we see a hummingbird is in the middle of Las Vegas - a location not well known for it's wildlife.

There were places advertising “Get free tickets for [insert show name here ] – Ask us how!” I think they were selling time-share homes or something like that, and you had to listen to the demonstration. I've only seen about those things from a computer game I played once, but here it is in real life. Around the sides of the hut thing were the ever-present water misters. Anywhere people might be stationary outside for more than 5 minutes had these misters – standing in queues, around the outside seating at restaurants etc.

The show at Excalibur was called Tournament of Kings. It was a medieval style dinner show. We were still pretty full, but I managed to fit some of it in. We had tomato soup in a bowl, then a plate with a bread roll, small roast chicken, jo-jos (wedges), broccoli and carrot. Did I mention we had no cutlery? In the true medieval fashion we had to eat everything with our fingers. It was quite fun.

We were seated in ‘country’ sections – Norway, Ireland, France, Russia, Poland, Hungary etc and it was all pantomime style. We were taken through the basics of “Hear hear!”, "Huzzah!" banging the table and sculling our drink by Merlin and his jester friend. Then the show mostly consisted of the kings of our countries riding around on horses, overseen by King Arthur and occasionally interrupted by Mordred.

This was our night to go out dancing – we headed to . The band playing there was called wonder Wonder Boogie and they played disco covers. Oh they were so funny and good too, they played their instruments and sang and danced and generally put on a great show. People danced around in a conga line and two people had a dance-off.

It was so funny, there was one older guy (maybe late 50s) and another younger guy (early 20s). The old guy was basically doing finger-point dancing but disco-style with good shoulder movement etc. The younger guy was doing...energetic looking dancing. At some point they were close together, and then everyone just made a circle around them. I don't think I've ever seen a spontaneous dance-off before and it just cracked me up. I think the older guy won because the young guy was trying to do too much and got puffed.

Maybe you just had to be there.

Anyway... what else happened... oh yeah I had a Coors light and it was horrible.
Good food, good dancing, good night!