Vacation Report!

I don't have a whole lot of time, but here's my quick vacation recap (fair warning - long post ahead):

First off I had to go to TX to be the best man for my brother's wedding. Texas sucks. It's boring, it's hot, and it's ugly. But we weren't there for vacation so we get everything set up for the wedding, and decide to spend the night (Friday) before out drinking - apparently the only worthwhile spot is some crazy honky-tonk bar called Whiskey Town or something like that. It's huge, pretty cool, and while I definitely am not a country fan - I was glad to hear them playing moderately listenable 'authentic' country rather than the terrible country-rock crossover stuff that is so popular amongst country fans and stations these days. Then the drinking starts. Now, I wouldn't say that I have a drinking problem. I don't drink often - honestly I drink 'for real' less than once every other month. My problem is that I only seem to be able to have two drinks or two hundred drinks. So I'm fine when I decide to just have a couple - I stop there and I'm happy. We were partying though. I won't go into some of the details but something set me off and after being already way too smashed for my own good, decided to angrily go and order a double shot of Bacardi 151 (those of you who care about alcohol tolerance may want to note that I'm a very infrequent drinker and I only weigh about 140lbs, so I'm the very definition of a "lightweight")... The 151 is the last thing I remember. Next thing I know I'm being woken up in a puke-soaked bed being told to jump in the shower to get ready for the wedding. I was later told that I not only drank the 151, but also had another 6 or so drinks that night - not including the additional ones I ordered for myself (and I know I did since my CC statement shows me closing out not one, but TWO more tabs). I had apparently been thrown out of the TX bar after falling off the stool with such force that I scraped the entire right side of my face and trying to get into a fight with one of our friends. Story goes that I was puking pretty much non-stop from that point on until 5 am, and puking up blood at that (there was talks of taking me to the hospital but apparently none of them knew whether or not I had insurance and they didn't want me to get charged). So anyway I'm puking nonstop literally until one hour before my brother's ceremony (and it's worth noting that I have never ever thrown up from alcohol in my life - heck, I haven't thrown up at all in about 15 years), but I was so determined not to ruin it for my brother that I summoned all my resolve and toughed out my role as best I could - supposedly I did well enough that nobody could tell I was still drunk. On to the reception I sat quietly saving my strength for my speech/toast, delivered it as I hoped, then went to sleep in the still-somewhat-puke-scented rental car. We spent one more uneventful night in TX before getting on our morning plane to Vegas...
So early Sunday morning we arrive in Vegas - I'm still so sick from drinking that I can't even handle food - I couldn't even manage to drink water until just now. But I'm in good spirits (an unintentional pun! ha!) - we're in Vegas and the lobby to our hotel (the new Planet Hollywood - formerly the Aladdin before the restoration) looks absolutely beautiful - trendy and cool and not at all cheesy like we were expecting (have you ever been to a Planet Hollywood restaurant? Super tacky - thank God the hotel/casino felt NOTHING like that). We sign up for early check in and they tell us they can have a "great room" ready for us in 3 hours. Cool. We leave our bags and head into the casino.... Wow. I mean, wow. This is far from my first trip to Vegas, and I'm been in a lot of casinos - from the sleazy Sahara to the luxurious Wynn... and honestly the casino level of the PH is the best I've seen. It's open, welcoming, and almost too trendy-cool for it's own good. We're instantly in a good mood. This place definitely isn't for everybody, but Theresa and I really felt like it was right for us. We gamble a little bit, but I'm more of a table player than a slot guy, and it's too early for most tables to be open - so we explore some more. The entire public area of this place is gorgeous. Even the parts still under renovation with their obviously Aladdin influences somehow manage to fit in and look fantastic. Seriously kids, next time you're in Vegas, be sure to stop by. Anyway, we eventually get our room which is also beautiful, despite the two Stallone pictures adorning our walls, and I am totally ready to get some sleep. Napped, energized, and finally ready to get some food we set off for this Ellis Island Brewery and Casino I'd heard about which was off the opposite street corner one road behind our hotel.... and we proceeded to have one of the greatest meals we've ever had. Seriously. This place is off the strip, so they need to use classic Vegas tactics to get people in to gamble: put out some really fantastic food for unrealistically cheap prices. I had a gigantic roast turkey dinner (the special) with mashed potatoes, corn salad, and gravy that could have easily fed myself, my girlfriend, AND a guest all on it's own. It also came with the uncontested best bowl of chicken noodle soup on earth. Now I know that chicken noodle is boring - I think so too - but this soup was so amazingly fantastic that my eyes were rolling back into my head while I ate it. The single best thing I ate in all of Vegas. And I ate at Tom Colicchio's Craftsteak!! But I'll get into that later... My whole dinner cost me $6.99 plus about a buck for micro-brewed root beer. The girlfriend had a $5.99 burger that was plenty good, but not really special enough to warrant saying much about it. She did say the Ellis Island in-house brewed hefeweizen beer ($1.50 for a pint) was really good, but I was no where near ready to taste anything alcoholic. Also, we got to watch some old lady in the restaurant almost die from choking. Seriously somebody was giving her the Heimlich for like 4 minutes before this 18 year old looking kid came up and finally got her throat clear after another couple minutes of Heimlich. Seriously, she was turning blue - we were certain we were about to watch her die. It was really, really intense. Not much else happened that night though - pretty much all of our time was spent winning money at the video roulette machine back in the PH. Monday was our "big" Vegas day: the only day we were there morning till night, the day we were eating at Craftsteak, and the day of our ridiculous timeshare tour. Yes, we had to do a tour - but hey, I only paid $100 bucks total for both nights for a 4 person room (our friends decided they couldn't make it) in a newly renovated hotel! The tour sounded great and honestly if we had any money to spare we really might have purchased a timeshare there (it was currently being built, literally as a part of the PH - the only timeshare with a casino inside!), but of course the overly aggressive final sales push at the end was horrible. But I'm immune to pressure sales anyway, so we just sat there and said no the next 30 minutes worth of varying offers they threw at us. Lol. After that we gambled a bit more, had an utterly amazing chicken florentine sandwich at the Earl of Sandwich in the PH and went back to our room to rest for a bit before our big dinner (hey, I was still feeling drained from my bout with alcohol poisoning... and the gf had been drinking early that day - we were both in need of some napping).
...Now you remember way back when I mentioned the desk clerk getting us a "great room?" Well here's a tip for you - any time a hotel desk clerk happily gives you a "great room," be wary and ready to demand a different room - because she's probably happy to be unloaded the crap room on a rube like you. We get into a room and just lay down for the much needed nap when we're awoken by a sound that you should never have to hear in any hotel you're staying at... a jackhammer. I'm not kidding. And no, the jackhammer isn't outside working on the timeshare construction... IT'S IN THE VERY ROOM NEXT TO US. Turns out they're still renovating a few rooms on the one side of our floor... And they put us in the absolute worst room they could. The gf calls down to the front desk to complain about the noise and they respond not with apologies, but rather with "they'll be done soon." Unbelievable. Frustrated and not yet ready to deal with making a larger issue out of it, we change into our dinner clothes and head towards the MGM Grand and Craftsteak. We gamble to kill time, but gambling in and of itself isn't very interesting - so on to dinner. Honestly, I was so looking forward to eating here I could barely contain myself. The place is beautiful. Probably the best restaurant atmosphere I'd ever seen, and I've eaten at my fair share of nicer establishments. We get one of those inset somewhat-private booths along the wall where we can look out into the whole of the place. We place our orders and enjoy the bread and delicious imported butters while waiting for the first course. The a la carte style salad arrives - we ordered the mixed lettuces and the artichokes... Ug. I am so disappointed. I'm an artichoke fanatic - I like them on everything and prepared just about any way you can... but these were terrible. The artichokes themselves were unrealistically bland to begin with, but then they came completely drenched in some odd cream dressing that would have been strong enough to drown out the most flavorful 'choke, much less these poor excuses for the heavenly vegetable. I was so disappointed I honestly felt like crying. I ate about three mouthfuls of salad and a total of about 4 of the tiny artichoke quarters. Then the entrées hit the table - knowing that the two of us aren't the biggest eaters we had agreed to simply split the 16oz grilled T-bone with the a la carte side order of wild mushroom risotto. The steak... wasn't spectacular. At all. I have a sort of food pet peeve - I want the main component of any dish I'm eating to be the main flavor I'm tasting. The steak (which was served 'warm' at best) was covered in a small forest worth of rosemary and tasted of nothing but the herb even after I scraped all of it off the steak the moment it arrived on the table. Admittedly the texture was superb - the T-bone was more tender than any cut of filet I have ever had - but the damn thing was just so damn rosemary tasting that I couldn't help but feel somehow robbed. Thankfully my gf's mushroom risotto saved the meal. It was perfection - silky and creamy but still al denté enough to give you a nice almost-crunch. And the massive portion (honestly, it was large enough that it alone could easily have fed three or four people) was topped with what seemed like close to a pound of absolutely perfectly sautéed mushrooms. We actually ended up leaving a bit of the steak on the plate in favor of getting our fill of the risotto. All in all, I feel almost heartbroken over my Craftsteak experience. Somewhat downtrodden, we headed back to the PH and gambled on until bed time. Tuesday was our last day in Vegas and started out with us being woken up by what sounded like plumbing work in the under-construction room next to us (oh I had forgotten to mention all of the concrete dust footprints we saw heading in and out of that room from the point of the jackhammer on) and a second call to the front desk to complain (we mentioned the many various little problems in our room as well - none of them major, but there was really more issues than should be acceptable). This time they offered to extend our 11am checkout to 2pm, to make up for lost sleep. Wow, how very generous. Ug. So we headed down far earlier than intended to get breakfast and spent the next many hours gambling. Up to this point we were pretty much breaking even on our gambling money. About an hour and a half into our Tuesday gambling (mostly roulette and video roulette) we were up over $200. Two hours after that however, we had lost not only the $200+ but also the roughly $160 combined we had set aside to gamble with before the trip. Ah well, c'est la vie, non? We did accrue a lot of points on our PH player's club card though - at this point enough for three of the four potential "first 48 hours" rewards - $5 in free slot play, $10 off the award-winning buffet, and another $10 in free slot play. We'd also accrued a whopping $7 in cash-back money. Woo-hoo. We instantly blew threw our free $15 and very much enjoyed the extensive upscale buffet for lunch. Then we checked out and headed out to the Venetian - I'd never been and really wanted to see it more than any of the other casinos. Eh. It's cool, but nothing is really cool enough to write about. We came back to the PH to get our bags, realized we had another hour to kill, and gambled some more. Didn't really lose or gain any more than we already had, but we did happen to get enough player's points to earn the final of the four rewards - $25 in free slot play. And this time the player's club clerk pointed out that we'd been earned food comps as well - we didn't even know about that perk. So our very final act in Vegas before heading to the airport to head back to DC (via Newark airport in NJ - ick) was spending our $20 comp coupon at Earl of Sandwich getting yet another delicious sandwich and plenty of snacks for the plane.
Not much else to note after that - I seem to have gotten sick on the flight to Newark, which I attribute to my alcohol-weakened immune system - and we spent another couple days back in our old hometown of Northern Virginia (it's always easier to just say DC, but really I'm actually from about 45 minutes outside of the city proper). Had a really great time all in all, even despite my silly drinking mistake and my major food disappointment... but I am glad to be home!

Still have a lot of unpacking and such to do here (alright fine, really we just need to watch all of our new TiVo'ed shows before they get deleted to make room for even more junk), so I think I'm done with this entry for the night. Sorry if my story was somewhat less than interesting, I just wanted to be sure to include all the relevant parts.
And don't worry Smartie, the Wii post is still coming - I'll probably get it up tomorrow.