A weekend in Sin City, with miminal sin

I met up with my Mom and Sister in Las Vegas last weekend. We all flew in on a Thursday and headed home on Sunday. The trip was mainly funded by my parents. The trip was my Dad's idea - he thought his girls needed some time to hang out with one another. Of course, he proposed this idea a couple years ago but it took a long time to find a weekend that all three of us could be there at the same time. My schedule is a lot more flexible than my Mom's or Megan's - I don't have an office-job or a two-year-old or church activities or coaching or anything, really. I waited until they both had a free weekend and then let Megan book most of the trip, since she had the strongest opinions of where we should stay. We stayed at the Paris hotel/casino, which turned out to be a good location in terms of the Las Vegas strip and walking around sightseeing.

One of the things I believe about Las Vegas, more than most other vacation destinations, is that the people that you travel with really dictate what kind of a trip you're going to have. I've been to Las Vegas once before, in April of 2006. On that trip I was with three female friends all about my age and all single. (Well, one of us wasn't exactly single, but she enjoyed flirting with the guys we met regardless.) Needless to say, that trip was a little more wild than this trip with my mother and my 20-weeks-along pregnant sister. But I enjoyed both trips equally, if for completely different reasons.

We had a room on the strip side of the hotel, meaning our view was the replica Eiffel Tower and the Bellagio. The three of us were mesmerized by the fountains in front of the Bellagio. I could sit there and watch them all day. I'm not sure why they're so fascinating, but I appreciate the artistry and engineering that combine to make the water perform in sync with the music. And, honestly, how can you not smile when it's nighttime, the strip is lit up like electricity is going out of style, and columns of water are swaying in rhythm to Frank Sinatra's "Luck Be A Lady"? (Disclosure: I have a soft spot for "Guys and Dolls", the musical my high school performed my senior year. I wasn't in it - I never had the nerve to try out, a lasting regret - but I had many friends who were in theater and they were just terrific, especially in that production.)

We spent Thursday afternoon relaxing and catching up. We booked massages at the spa in the hotel and let the masseurs work out some of the kinks the flights had introduced to our bodies. We even went down to the casino to play some Blackjack, or "21" as Mom insists on calling it. My sister can usually win money playing blackjack and I usually break even so blackjack is our game of choice. Really, the only other casino game I know how to play at all is roulette and, as I mentioned about the trip to Lake Tahoe, roulette is a giant wheel of evil. I wasn't sure what mom was going to do while we gambled since mom never gambles save spending $1 on a lottery ticket every now and again when the pot gets big. That's her equivalent of living life on the edge.

So it was quite to my surprise when Mom sat down at the single-deck blackjack table with Megan and me. I figured she'd watch for awhile and then retire to the room to catch up on some leisurely reading. But no. Mom sat down, cashed $100 in chips and joined in. Luckily we had a great dealer who was willing to teach and have a good time. Megan and I lost our daily gambling budget, but Mom came out $20 or $30 ahead. Megan and I were delighted for her, not so much for ourselves. We also made some Canadian friends while we sat at the table. They were barely 21 and when the dealer asked them for ID, they tossed out Ontario drivers' licenses. We told them we were from Minnesota. They smiled and told us Minnesota was "Canada light." They aren't far off, actually. Though they were a little inebriated, they were more amusing than irritating. I think one of them was trying to hit on Megan, but apparently he missed the wedding ring and pregnant tummy on her. It was funny to watch though.

Friday we walked one half of the strip, went back to the spa for manicures and pedicures and then went to our first show, La Reve, at the Wynn hotel/casino. We had wanted to go see Cirque du Soleil's "O", but tickets to that show were sold out. I was surprised. I could foresee Cher, or Celine Dion or Elton John or the like being sold out, but "O" isn't a new show and could (in theory) be performed for many years to come. The aforementioned performers will expire, at some point. Their shows, I mean. Their shows. Not the performers. Although I suppose they will expire too at some point. (On that note, I saw that Don Rickles is still performing a show and he's in his 80s . . .)

We hopped a cab down to the Encore (next to the Wynn) to get some supper before the show. We settled on a restaurant that was mostly empty in the Encore. Apparently our desire to eat supper at an entirely appropriate Midwestern-time of 5:30 is unusual for Las Vegas. Our waiter approached our table and offered us something to drink. As he handed us the wine list he asked us, "Would you like some Pellegrino or Fiji?" I shrugged, looked at Mom, since Megan's pregnant and can't drink, and asked her if she was going to be drinking any wine that night. She didn't recognize the wines he offered us either. We discussed it briefly and I told our waiter that we would have to look at the wine list for a few minutes before deciding. Our waiter looked a little confused and then said slowly, "I think you may have misunderstood me. I was offering you water."

Cue uproarious laughter from Megan, Mom and me as we realized that he had rattled off names of bottled water.

"We'll have regular water, thank you," we informed the waiter. I guess that's what happens when you grow up somewhere (like Minneapolis) where the tap water is so clean and tasty that you don't ever drink bottled water. We were just three unsophisticated, tap-water bumpkins. We laughed for a good long while after that. I have no idea what the waiter must have thought of us at that point. I explained to him later on, as a peace offering of sorts, that we didn't drink bottled water and as a result were unaware of the brand names he had thrown out. (Now if he would have mentioned something like Aquafina, I might have caught that. But even that seemed a little low-class for this restaurant.)

After eating our supper we headed to the show, which was pretty good. It was a Cirque-style show, with water elements like "O". There were aerial acrobatics and strong men and lots of diving into water from ridiculous heights. And synchronized swimming - quite a bit of that. I've never seen synchronized swimming in person, and I'm quite sure these performers had access to some sort of breathing apparatus under the water, but it was still impressive. I did still have to giggle though, thinking of that old Saturday Night Live skit with Martin Short, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest, which is one of my favorite SNL skits of all time.

After La Reve we headed back to our hotel and crawled into bed, because it was almost 11 and we were beat. (Again, this was a different trip than my 2006 trip.) We watched a little Olympics and the called it a night. The next day would bring more walking and another show.