we went south

Brian and I headed to Vegas a couple weeks ago for a little getaway. It was wonderful to have nothing to do, no one to feed, no where to be.
I don't have a lot of pictures because I was trying not to vacation for my blog, if you know what I mean. If I wanted to take a picture, and it was convenient, I did. Otherwise, my camera stayed in my bag, or at the hotel. Here's what we've got:

Brian at Cheese Burger Las Vegas.



Me at Cheese Burger Las Vegas.




We tried the soft drinks from around the world at the Coca Cola store. It was fun. Most of them were nothing special.




Here's Brian tasting something. My favorite was Pine Nut from South Africa. Mmmmmm, so yummy. Brian liked Smart Apple from China. There was one from Italy called Beverly. I don't even know how to describe the taste, but it reminded me of vomiting as a child. Brian said it tasted like medicine. It was sick.


So there you have it. Four pictures. I guess I could note a few other happenings from our trip.

• I wanted to go to movies and eat. That was all I had planned. We never got to movies at home, so I wanted to make up for it. Well, there were no movies that we wanted to see. That was disappointing. But we did eat.

• We ate at the buffet at the Belagio. I am so not a buffet person. I am a girl. And a vegetarian. And I am a picky eater, who doesn't mind bland, un-interesting foods. I am a buffet owner's dream. Brian had to hold his tongue when I came back with my first plate full of watermelon and salad. He had a different approach. He ate more meat than I've ever seen that night. Making up for living with me, I guess. All around me I saw plates full of king crab legs. Piled six inches tall. Legs were just falling all over the place. Mostly men, including my husband, kept going back for these crab legs. I decided that I was going to try a bite. I wanted to know what the big deal was. Brian dipped a little piece in the melted butter and placed it in my mouth. I chewed. I tasted. I spit it out. I really tried to eat it. But I just don't like eating animals or creatures of any kind. I don't like it. I still really don't get the big deal about crab legs.

• After a disappointing dinner, for both of us, I decided I was going to get my money's worth in desserts. They all looked so good and I told Brian we would be trying one of each. And we pretty much did. Again, we were kind of disappointed. Out of the twenty or so desserts we tried, we only liked about three a lot. The others were either gross or nothing special. It was after these twenty desserts had been consumed that I looked down at my fork. I held it out to Brian and said, "Please tell me that's not what I think it is." A fly. A teeny, tiny fly on the upper part of my fork. My fork who's tongs were crusted with the dessert I had just eaten. Nice. We decided that since we had forked out a pretty big chunk of money for the gross buffet, we would tell the manager. I mean, if you have bugs in or on or near your food, that's what you do, right? Good news. Free meal! We were kind of really happy, especially since we didn't even like the meal all that much. We are thinking about bringing flies with us when we dine out. My little business.

• Vegas can be boring after a day or two. We don't gamble. We don't drink. We don't party. We don't have tons of money. We walk around. We eat. We look at people. We did a lot of that. I found myself excited to just go hang out in our hotel room because it is dirty and disgusting and busy out there.

• I like to shop on vacation. Brian does not like shopping period, but especially not on vacation. This was a problem. We decided we would take one day to shop and went to an outdoor outlet mall close to the strip. We went in dozens of stores. We bought one thing. A pair of flip-flops for Ellery. We spent three and a half hours shopping and all we had to show for it was toddler shoes. I was not happy about my Vegas shopping experience, and annoyed at outlet malls. Brian was glad shopping was over. We were meeting friends for dinner and so we didn't want to go back to our hotel, so we decided we'd just go to the restaurant, which was in town, not on the strip. We were about an hour early, and I spied a Ross nearby. I told Brian that instead of waiting in the car I was heading into Ross. And guess what? I got my shopping fix. . .in Vegas. . .in Ross Dress for Less. I got a shirt for $3.99. I got some fun heels. I got a skirt and a few other shirts. My total: $36. That's my kind of shopping.

• We had dinner with Molly and Jason. It was so fun hanging out with them and seeing their beautiful home. Seeing them was probably my favorite thing that we did. We only see them about once or twice a year, so it was so fun to get together. They introduced us to Rock Band and Molly made the yummiest dessert. Mmmm, Mol, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need that recipe.

Brian and I decided that, although we had a great time, that was the last Vegas will see of us. The next trip we take just the two of us has got to be somewhere tropical. Or a cruise. But we'll have years to plan this one, so I'm not holding my breath.