After reluctantly deciding that we missed out on taking a week at a resort this year, Dave and I impulsively decided to cash in his Aeroplan miles last week and go to Vegas. He booked the flights at 10 am, and at 2 pm we were taking off. This was all meant to be low low budget, so I used up most of my Air Miles to rent us a shiny red convertible and we booked a room at Circus Circus for $30/night. Also part of my plan was using groupons as we went along but the only thing I prebought was an all-you-can-eat/all-you-can-drink buffet at Planet Hollywood ($46 for both of us) and tickets to a comedy show afterwards, also at Planet Hollywood.
What I didn't take into consideration was that everyone else would also have found that buffet groupon if they had gone looking, and apparently, everyone had. When we got there, the lineup really didn't look that long but it barely crawled along, and I soon noticed that there was a second lineup for people with a priority card -- they could walk straight to the hostess and get seated right away while we stood and stewed. We were in line for probably an hour, long enough to share eye rolls with the people in front of us, and it was truly dispiriting when we got closer to the front and twice had the hostess come looking for groups of 6 and take families out of the line behind us. The third time she came over looking for a large group, the woman ahead of me started waving her arm saying, "Right here, we're six." She winked at me and put her arm around a startled old woman in front of her and said, "Come on Mom and Dad, they've got a table for us now."
Dave gave me a wide-eyed What is going on, do we really need to talk to these people throughout dinner? look and it's a look I'm sure I returned -- we like other people just fine but prefer our own company. We went right to the buffet and loaded up our plates and when we got back the introductions were made -- we were sitting with Henry and Bea of New York City (no duh -- they were sweeter copies of George's parents from Seinfeld, but the accent was the exact same) and to my right, Diane and Jay from "the Bay area". The drinks started coming, and to our great surprise, we had an interesting and hilarious dinner: there was much laughing, and Henry made thoughtful comments to Dave (who he was sitting beside) about the differences between Canadians and Americans (and Bea piped up, "You know, I've lived in New York my entire life and have always wanted to go to Niagara Falls. I've just never made it"), and Jay had many questions for me about how we like our healthcare system and the ways that it might be different from the system they're phasing in down there. Diane, as it turns out, is a Prosecutor who specializes in Environmental Law, and although we didn't talk much about that, it was fascinating listening to her talk about her earlier days as a Legal Aid defense attorney. We talked about our families and dogs and politics and taxes, and how we did laugh, and as much fun as we were having, Dave and I had to eventually leave for the comedy show -- which wasn't nearly as much fun as the dinner we had had.
Early in our trip, we were accosted by someone who bribed us into going to a timeshare presentation -- Keith's sales pitch was slick, asking us what our plans were while we were in town and giving us the inside scoop on how to do everything the best way. We told him that we were planning to drive out to the Grand Canyon and he told us about what a hard drive it is to the West Rim, over an unpaved road, to get to where the new skywalk platform is, and also told us that it's owned and operated by an Indian tribe whose land it's on and they overcharge for every part of the experience (from the shuttle bus they make you take to the pictures only they are allowed to take and then sell to you). Keith advised us where to buy a good supermarket picnic on the way and even gave us his personal cell phone number in case we ran into problems. His pitch was so exuberant, and he shared so much information with us, that we agreed to attend the presentation, for which we would get a free breakfast buffet and tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show.
We were pretty unexcited about the Grand Canyon experience as Keith described it, but once we were back at the hotel I was googling tripadvisor about driving to the Grand Canyon and many people recommended driving the 4.5 hours to get to the South Rim -- we were planning on using up a whole day anyway, so that's the route we took. We left early enough that we weren't too discouraged by the the chilly weather -- too cool to put the top down on the car, but since we thought we were heading into a desert, we figured it would warm up eventually (Dave was actually frustrated that I insisted on bringing him a sweatshirt "just in case it got cold later"). It never did warm up, the landscape was scrubby pines, not desert, but we did hit a giant tumbleweed, originally 4 times this size, that Dave had to get out and remove from the car's grill:
The closer we got to the Grand Canyon, the cooler it got, and by the time we parked, the car's thermometer said 40 degrees. (Good thing we can't convert F into C because we laughed pretty hard when we later learned that we silly Canadians were walking around in shorts in 4 degree weather.) It was breathtaking at the Grand Canyon, of course. Dave said it had never been on his bucket list, but in the end, it was Dave who kept wanting to walk a little further (and a little closer to the edge in areas without a barrier too, the brat), taking pictures and gushing about how beautiful it all was.
You'd also think he'd never seen a real live animal before by the hundred pictures he took of some wandering elk, but his enthusiasm was adorable.
We had many more interesting meals, using groupons when we felt like it, including some turkey burgers and margaritas at Fatburger and it was impressive to me that every restaurant had a special ipad or smartphone that scanned the vouchers right off my own phone (it's just such a difference with the way that servers up here write down the voucher numbers and check them against a master list -- things are always more organised and high-tech in the States).
We did end up going to the timeshare presentation, and as promised, we were given a breakfast buffet (meagerly served out by assistants), but our personal salesman, Ryan, sat with us, talking and asking questions, the entire time we ate. The main presenter started talking, and although his spiel was persuasive, it really didn't apply to me and Dave -- he said that the average American only gets 2 weeks holidays per year and most of them don't go anywhere, but Dave gets 6 weeks and we spend at least half of them travelling. I totally had on open mind, since we do travel and I understand the benefit of making an investment now to save money in the future, but when we got down to the dollars and cents, Ryan couldn't show me how buying a timeshare was a better deal for us than the all-inclusive resorts we love going to (the main point for us, as Canadians, is that all-inclusive trips also include airfare -- any timeshare we bought that meant we had to get flights and still pay for food and drinks didn't save us anything). He brought over his manager, who also said that it probably wasn't for us, and we were released.
The upside was that we did get to go see Ka for our time and it was epically epic. We were told that it's the most expensive stage set in the world at $85 million and it looks every penny of it. The story was hard to follow but it didn't matter -- from a beautiful shipwreck to a crazy rockwall ballet to the guy jumping rope on top of a double-ended spinning cage thingy that made me hide my eyes behind splayed fingers, it was a gorgeous and thrilling show.
Now, since Dave bought last minute plane tickets with his points, he was initially disappointed that the only flight home would entail a 9 hour overnight layover in Washington D.C. To me, that's just more adventure! Despite the warnings from some American friends that it's not generally safe to go walking around D.C. at night, I couldn't let the opportunity go to waste, and Dave and I rented a car and drove to the monuments. We parked, despite Dave's mild objections that it would be easier to drive to each site, because in my mind the Mall was more compact than it actually is -- and in the end it was a 3 hour walking loop to see everything from the Washington Monument to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials (stopping at all the smaller ones -- the wars, FDR, MLK, etc -- along the paths on the way), down past the White House and back to the car. Even though it was shortly before midnight when we were done, there was a nonstop procession of tour buses at the monuments themselves, and although the walking paths were actually pretty dark, all we passed were couples like us and families -- I was never scared and was glad we didn't listen to the nervous nellies (and of course more glad that they weren't right to be nervous for us).
Overall, this was a great trip -- just what Dave and I needed -- and is a valuable reminder about why what the timeshare presenter had to say didn't apply to us: Dave and I do play together and intend to stay together. We don't need the bright lights of Vegas to excite us (as much as we appreciated Vegas' warm weather), and actually, our most memorable experiences were walking along, hand-in-hand, at the Grand Canyon and through the streets of D.C. The timeshare presenter was trying to sell a lifestyle -- a dream -- and we weren't buying because we're already living it.
Know what I like most about this ^^ picture? Dave's wearing the sweatshirt I insisted on bringing for him -- the same sweatshirt he had to buy himself at Disneyworld last year when we showed up in shorts and tshirts on a pretty cold day. Silly Canadians.
