Viva las vegas!

Some highlights of our trip to Vegas:

1) Seeing Elton John at the Colliseum in Caesar's Palace. He was amazing, and very funny, and he really doesn't like Celine Dion at all (she's also on in Vegas, sadly Barry Manilow wasn't there yet). There were lots of images of random nude women on the screen behind him, we were warned about this (some "female nudity") when we booked the tickets, the explanation was that "well this is Vegas". Oh righty. Entertainingly both hubbie and I were expecting showgirls dancing round Elton's piano, but no. He was surrounded by 4 long haired grizzly rockers instead and the nudity was all on the screen behind them. Elton didn't even take his top off.

2) The audience at the Elton John concert. They were mental. First of all there were 2 men in the row in front of us. One was very small and the other must have been well over 6ft, he reminded me of Crazy Legs Crane who used to be on the Pink Panther. Hubbie said he looked like a spider. When he sat down his knees nearly took out the person in front of him. Anyway. For the 40 minutes before Elton took to the stage, they argued and argued in hushed whispers. They were clearly having a domestic about the bottles of Bud that Crazy Legs was drinking with abandon (plastic bottles in case anyone is worrying about Elton's safety at this point). But then 2 songs in, they both bawled like big old girls, and this carried on to the end of the show. Bless.

Then there was trailer trash lady behind us. Most people had dressed up for the occasion, I mean, the tickets weren't cheap. This girl had a shellsuit on and the minute Elton started tinkling the ivories she was up on her feet whooping and hollering and singing along very badly out of tune, and at least 2 words ahead of Elton. At one point she declared very loudly, "Gee that kicked ass!". I am sure Elton was very proud.

3) Getting a VIP pass for the buffet in the MGM Grand hotel. We spent a lot of time here, it's our favourite casino. And one day Raymond who was in charge of the roulette tables, came up and gave us the pass as it was our anniversary. We weren't even staying there. It was amazing. I have never seen so much food in my life, and they even had sugar free cakes which hubbie could eat. He would have cried with joy but the 2 cakes he was stuffing in his mouth were taking up all his attention. And we got to go up the VIP line and bypass all the other people. One lady waiting in the queue said loudly to her husband, "they just walked past us all" so I looked at her and said "we've got a VIP pass". So stick it lady!

4) Winning the 1000 jackpot on the Wheel of Fortune twice!! Sadly we were only playing with quarters, but we still got nearly $300 from a $5 play. The Wheel of Fortune is great, if you're lucky you get to spin the wheel at the top of the machine, and win anything from 25 to 1000.

5) Putting our last $3 in a random machine and winning $50 back. We won so much this time round, that we must have spent the money we took with us, then the same again and then some more. On our second to last day we thought we were going to have to hit the atm machine, but then we couldn't stop winning. It was great. Not huge amounts, hubbie wanted to win the big old jackpot by this stage, but enough to keep us going for another day or so.

6) On our actual anniversary we went to a posh restaurant in the Bellagio. It was lovely. Though despite the "smart dress" requirement, it didn't stop them letting any old person in. Typically we got 4 trailer trashers sitting next to us, all blinging it and wearing shades even though it was NIGHTTIME (what is it with that?). One girl announced to the entire restaurant that "I only drink champagne dahling". I think in Vegas, you can't be sure who has got the money, most of the eccentrics are probably millionaires, so be nice to everyone!

7) Drink of choice? Long Island Ice Tea. Mmmmm......