OnSno.com

Today we slept in. Well… sort of. We had informed Ed last night that we would not be setting an alarm, and that he could call us at 9:30am if he had not heard from us at this point. At 9:15, the phone rang and scared the living daylights out of both of us (with two phones, one either side of the bed, set to full ringer volume). After the mildly rude awakening, and some stern words exchanged, we got ready and went down to the Miracle Mile shops for breakfast. We had seen a breakfast deal – $3.99 – the first day we arrived, and so decided to go check it out in more detail.

Pip shoots...

We ended up at a regular priced restaurant (the mexican breakfast wasn’t quite what we were looking for), and pigged out. This is a dangerous country for weight gain, let me tell you that. After breakfast, we headed towards New York New York, and the rollercoaster that runs around the outside of this hotel. On previous trips to Vegas (ie 7 years ago) we had looked at this ride, but never actually given it a shot. Pip and I decided to give it a shot, and so lined up (Disneyland anyone?) with masses of other people. The queue took about 20 minutes to move through, but it was well worth the wait.

From here we made our way to the MGM Grand to see the lion habitat, but unfortunately the lions were all asleep. We walked north along the Strip from the MGM towards the Coca-Cola shop and M&M’s World, our real focus for today. We went to the Coke shop first, however, as Ed was thirsty so this seemed the most logical. We did find a drink, but didn’t find the Coke fountains that we had seen on a previous visit to Vegas many years ago – which was most disappointing. We didn’t spend too long here, but instead headed for M&M’s World – 4 levels of shopping for M&M’s merchandise. For most people this probably wouldn’t be the most exciting thing, but Pip is a big M&M’s fan so it seemed perfect. We did end up with a bag of M&M’s in every colour produced, but not a whole lot else.

New York New York

We left M&M’s world and headed out onto the Strip again. back towards our hotel. Because of our relatively later breakfast, we decided to skip lunch. We were going to have an early dinner before a show at 7pm, so this seemed fine. We spent a short time back at the rooms, then headed out again to make our way towards the Venetian hotel for dinner. Ed had found a restaurant in his book on Vegas, and so we were determined to find the canal that ran through that hotel at the same time as finding this restaurant. With more luck than the other night (we walked through three casinos looking for the canal before we gave up), we found the restaurant and got a table without too much trouble. The food here at Postrio (an offshoot of the reputable Wolfgang Puck’s line) was incredible – highly recommended for anybody who travels where Wolfgang Puck has establishments.

After our meal, we made our way down to the Blue Man Group theatre in the Venetian – the show which we knew very little about, but I had seen some acts by this group on the TV show “Las Vegas” of all things. Once inside the 1,700 person theatre (we’re talking inside the casino here), we waited for the show to start while reading some very entertaining messages across the scrolling message boards. Such messages included things like: “please turn off all electronic devices including cell phones, pagers, and personal fax machines”, “please no photography. If you do not obey this instruction, we will have to use the ejector mechanism located in your seat” and so on.

One of the Blue Men

The show itself was incredible – very very entertaining, but very hard to explain at the same time. They played lots of percussion and music on big pipes, large drums and other things which was great, accompanied by a very talented band. There was lots of physical comedy, audience interaction and a whole heap of recycled paper. Following the show, we had our programme signed by one of the Blue Men, then made our was slowly back to the hotel. Because it was New Year’s Eve, the Strip was ridiculously busy and it took us nearly 45 minutes to walk the distance between the Venetian and Planet Hollywood.

After this experience, we decided not to spend any longer than required out on the Strip. We relaxed for a while before heading to the casino to put a few dollars on some machines (mostly unsuccessful), then returned to our rooms in time to watch the fireworks along the Strip. We counted down into the new year with the TV broadcast of the fireworks that were outside the window (go figure), and had some company from those back home via Skype.

All in all, compared to a few others, today was a very uneventful (but good) day!

Hope everyone is well back home and that 2010 has been a blast so far! Make sure to check out the gallery and the video mash-up below!