Monday, November 28, 2011

In Which the Gift Shop gets on my Vegas Nerve and We Lose Sandy (Hangover Remake Part 2)

As is typical in Las Vegas, you can often find exactly what you need by only walking a few steps forward or backwards. Stores and restaurants abound in any direction and they all seem to carry everything. On our last night, we found ourselves wandering the hotel looking for nothing in particular and finding all sorts of weird thing instead. Like Easy Cheese! Seriously the gift shop at the Bellagio carries Easy Cheese! Why! I’m not actually sure what you do with it. I guess it can be spread on your wonder bread or smeared on your Doritos or whatever. You could probably do a nice acid peel on your face with it too. Or patch the rust spots on your vehicle with it. It buffs up nicely I bet. 

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And someone should tell Dean and Deluca that spicy and chocolate are pretty good together, and mint and chocolate are awesome, but that the three together are gross. What next? Olive and Caramel wafers? Wasabi Banana truffles?

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And guess what I don’t want to eat your little chub no thank you very much no I don’t!

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And for your next wine tasting party, here is an assortment of cookies to go along with the wine. Cuz when you have a really nice glass of wine, naturally, you want a cookie to go with it. Probably the peanut butter chocolate cookie. And maybe some Easy Cheese too. Yeah, that’s it, I’ll have a Wine and Easy Cheese party with some cookies on the side.

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But perhaps you want more than just wine and easy cheese. Maybe you need a balanced meal featuring a turkey snack stick, some BBQ chips, fruit gummies, trail mix and some more cookies. Yep that’s right.

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And how about some gum for dessert. Apple Pie Gum. Why not squirt some Easy Cheese into your mouth at the same time! They like cheese with their apple pie in the states. Probably not this though. yuck.

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I don’t know if any of you watch Breaking Bad but ever since the scene in the RV where Jesse and Walt are stranded in the desert with no battery, and no food except for a few bags of Funyuns, I’ve been curious. What were Funyuns? What did one do with Funyuns? Were they perhaps a type of treatment to be placed in your shoe to make the experience of having bunions better?  You mock me but here in the US of A anything is possible.

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While I was shopping, one of the British tourists was wondering out loud what ‘Hello Panda’ might be. I told her it was the lesser known cousin of ‘Hello Kitty’. She didn’t know what that was either. She also looked at me like I had three heads.

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Speaking of Hello, say HELLO to these un-smarties courtesy of the  black market and foisted upon an unsuspecting buyer for the Bellagio. Actually I made that up. I have no idea how these non-smarties made it on to the shelf but there they were.

Trust me there was a lot more but I will spare you the details and move on to our last morning. Which came all too soon as it meant we had to leave.

We reluctantly packed up and piled in our limo to the airport. Limos are cheap in Las Vegas! Things went smoothly at the airport and we killed some time on the penny slots that can be found in each gate area. We had about 20 minutes until loading and Joanne, Heather and I were sitting at our gate waiting. Sandy remarked that she was going to go ‘walk around’ for awhile. What this actually meant, we learned later, was that she was going to go walk around, come back, sit down somewhere else, and then get on the plane when general boarding was announced and wait for us. In retrospect, it would have been great to know this, as we wouldn’t have then spent several anxious minutes scouring the airport, having her paged, and generally worrying about where she might be and did this mean we didn’t have to leave Las Vegas after all. Finally, the flight attendant told us this was final call and we had to get on the plane as it would leave without us otherwise. It was at this point that Joanne thought to ask if Sandy had actually already gotten on the plane. Lists were consulted and Yes! She had already boarded and we were the final three to get on the plane. We grabbed our stuff and headed down to the plane full of feelings of relief, albeit tainted slightly with  a sprinkling of annoyance and some, I will admit here, disappointment that we did not have a reason to stay in Las Vegas. I was the last to board and as I came on to the plane, I looked down the aisle. Poor Sandy – there she was smiling and waving to us and instead of a relieved smile and refrains of “oh thank God she’s safe!” or “I see her it’s Ok!”, she got me mouthing WHAT THE FUCK! to her. Nice. Sorry about that, Sandy! As we moved down the aisle, various passengers were quick to reassure us that our friend was already on the plane. Good to know that everyone was looking out for us! Sandy good-naturedly endured the comments of what seemed like most of the plane as they agreed with my slightly shrill insistence that, no, I had not considered the fact that she was a grown woman and could get on a plane all by herself.

Things got even funnier when we got off the plane in Victoria and one of the flight attendants made a comment as we passed by to ‘keep an eye on our friend’ or something like that. As we moved toward the baggage claim area, Sandy remarked that she felt like everyone on the plane knew about her getting ‘lost’. Not 5 seconds later a fellow passenger from the front of the plane turned around and said “Oh! I see you’ve found your friend!”

At least we didn’t leave her on the hotel rooftop.

After a short grilling from the customs officer on why it was that I had claimed exactly $400  and that next time I should just claim everything, we were back in Victoria.

It’s amazing how quickly we all had to adjust to the grind again. I had a bit of a hard landing and couldn’t quite get used to the idea that I had to make meals and do laundry so if I snapped at you in the two or three days following my return, please accept my apologies here.

I will definitely go back to Vegas again and indulge in some full-on people-watching. And perhaps a bit of shopping. And maybe a show. Oh and some pool time with the girls. And a few rounds at the gun store, maybe brunch with Mike again. Ahhh. Vegas. You are hope at its worst, and unexpected randomness at its very best. Maybe it’s best not to plan too much next time I think. Just take it as it comes.

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Thanks for reading-

Cheers,

Jane

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