Eating My Way Through Las Vegas and Other Fun Stuff

Hi there. I thought about coming up with a title that would be different from the NOLA post, but in truth most of our trip was based around food so why change?  My mom and I drove up to Las Vegas on Monday the 21st of August. The point of the trip was to celebrate my Mom's 60th birthday which was August 22nd. The drive up was pretty uneventful. We did make a quick pit stop in Picacho to check out the eclipse, which involved pulling off the freeway, getting out of the car, passing one pair of eclipse glasses back and forth for a couple of minutes and then getting back in the car and back on the road. At the same time we were driving up, the GH was driving back from Vegas after spending the weekend at Psycho, a three day metal festival. Once past Phoenix it's actually a fairly pretty drive. For an added bonus we were driving towards the rain which gave great sky.

                                          Somewhere between Wickenberg and Vegas

                                                       Road trip outfit. I do own shorts!

Once we got to the hotel it was time for a drink. I had spent 20 minutes wandering around Total Wine in Tucson looking for Lillet, or someone to point me to the Lillet and the only one they had was the red one. Mom was slightly disappointed. It was still pretty, and yummy though.

                                                            Gotta have the orange slice.

Dinner that night was at Rao's and we has an order of meatballs and the anitpasti platter to split. If that doesn't sound like a lot of food the meatballs were as big as my fist.

Very large meatball - I should have put an olive next to it for scale.

                                                     The most lovely antipasti platter

On Tuesday, Mom's birthday we headed down to the Mandarin Oriental to have tea. We had done high tea at the Bellagio before but had not tried the Mandarin's yet. It was wonderful! The Tea Room is on the 23rd floor with floor to ceiling windows and a great view of the strip. The room itself was incredibly peaceful, which can be hard to find in Vegas.

                                          My outfit for High Tea. Dress hand me down from T

     
      The view from our table                             The view of the table

The tea itself was lovely, I had a pot of Jasmine Earl Grey. The food that came with the tea service was also lovely.

                                                                    Food on full display.

                    The savory tea sandwiches. The cone had a divine curried chicken salad.

            The scones with clotted cream, peach marmalade and strawberry preserves.

                       The sweets. The yellow was filled with passionfruit and was amazing.

               The vending machine outside of the tea room. I did not actually check the prices.

After tea Mom and I took the tram to the Bellagio, had a bellini and then I went back to the hotel while mom gambled. We decided that we would try Gordon Ramsey's Pub in Caesars for dinner. It was good but way overpriced. The best thing about it was the variety of pub ales available.

     
         Wexford Irish Cream Ale                                Boddingtons Pub Ale - On tap!!

We both had the fish and chips, which was good but not worth $30.
     
              Fish and chips                                Lemon berry tart for dessert

On Wednesday we went to Joe's Seafood for lunch. Since we had been there before we knew exactly what we would order. This classic two course lunch comes with crab legs, roasted sweet corn, Potatoes Lyonnaise and Havana Dream Pie for dessert. It's more food than the two of us can finish.

                                The potatoes are covered in caramelized onions, sooo good.

I kept throwing the word birthday around to see what would happen and at Joe's it got mom a decadent brownie with ice cream and fresh whipped cream with a cherry on top of course.

  
                  Havana Dream Pie                                                  Birthday Brownie

This was also our night to see a show. When planning the trip Mom had thought we would see Rod Stewart but changed her mind at some point and we got tickets to see Britney Spears instead. Not that one needs an excuse to dress up in Vegas, but I used Britney as my excuse.

                                                    Dress: Recent hand me down from T

I took around 15 pictures of my ticket while waiting for the show to start.

                                                          Our seats were pretty killer.

                I also played around with selfie taking and Google Photos made me a collage.

Thursday was the day we went home but we had to pop into Payards for lunch so that Mom could have her Croque Madame. I missed getting a picture of it but I did get my Eggs Benedict.

                                                    Eggs Benedict on a croissant, so decadent.

After lunch it was into the car for the drive back home. The only interesting thing about that drive was what I saw in the Starbucks parking lot in Kingman.

A lonely bong in the middle of a Starbucks parking lot. How did it get there? Who knows, why did they leave it there is what I want to know.

And that was what we ate in Las Vegas. We're going back in February for a double celebration, T's 40th and J's 21st and I am very much looking forward to it!

See you soon.