Spring Break trip to California and Nevada! - Days Six and Seven

Driving out of Las Vegas is something I've never done before.  A check of the hotel folio showed a final total of $115.65 (88.44 was two night's resort fees, which I would now get waived since I'm Gold status), and the remainder was the overage of my $50 F&B credit and tip from America.

We stopped at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, although we were leaving.  People just like to get in lines, I guess, . .

Why, people, why???

So since we wanted a photo from the backside of the sign anyway, we just walked around.

The drive back to California was uneventful.  I did stop in Baker (no, I wasn't pulled over by Gary Busey).  I hindsight, I wish I took a photo of the large thermometer there (I didn't know it was a local icon).  We were staying at the Hilton right across the street from John Wayne airport.  We made one additional stop on the way, at Din Tai Fung, since last time I was in Las Vegas, I took a photo of the collection of stuffed. . . dumplings at Aria, and my wife asked if I could pick them up for Tessandra.  At the time, I was told they didn't sell them at the Aria location (they do), but I knew there was a restaurant near the hotel.  They were sold out of one of them, but we did get the other.

We have Shao Mai, we just need Bao Bao!

I had to drop the car off at the rental facility after I went to the hotel, so we had to figure out what we were going to have for dinner.  After going through a few menus, I believe we settled on pizza (or at least Italian).  There was a pool at the hotel, so we had one last pool time.  It was nice at first, we were the only ones there, so Tessandra was in the pool and I was in the hot tub.  Later, around four people came and went in the hot tub, so I went to the main pool for a bit before we headed back to the room.

Time to relax!

Her private pool.

My alone time in the hot tub.

We had a 7:20 AM departure, so no staying up too late.  Even though we are right across the street from the airport, we had to make sure about the timing of the shuttle.  We could have walked if there was a crosswalk right where the hotel was to the airport, but I discovered last night after dropping the car off, there was no easy way to get directly to the hotel from the airport by walking.

We had a connection in Dallas Love, which was delayed an hour.  That did mean we were able to enjoy a somewhat leisurely lunch.

As we were getting close to the airport, the pilot announced that we were approaching Dulles International, which I thought was strange, since we were supposed to be going to Reagan.  He corrected himself, but looking at the flight app, I'm not so sure. . .

Sure looks like we were going to Dulles. . .

We were almost exactly an hour late.  I called the Courtyard Marriott to get the shuttle back to the hotel and we picked up our car.  We got home a little after 10:00 PM.

Spring Break trip to California and Nevada! - Day Five

 

Tessandra wasn't sure if she wanted to go to the pool today. I told her if she did, we needed to get on the list as soon as possible (8 AM).  Finally around 10 AM, she decided she wanted to go.  I texted the wait list and it was going to be about four hours.  Ugh.  Well, at least we had tickets for the Shark Reef at 2:00 PM (it was all timed entry due to COVID), so we went to have lunch.

Places were busy and many places required reservations, so I made a quick reservation at Slice of Vegas pizza in the Mandalay Bay Shops.

The meatball sub I got. . .

We finished in time to walk over to Shark Reef in time for our entry slot.  It was nice that it wasn't too crowded due to the timed entries.  Unfortunately due to COVID, the touch tanks were closed.  We had been a few times before, but it was still nice to walk around.

As we were exiting the Shark Reef, I got a text saying our pool access is ready, how fortunate.  We had 30 minutes to get there, which wasn't a problem.  I asked Tessandra if she wanted to wait and go on the lazy river again, but she said we could just go in the wave pool.

The Wave Pool!

Since we were staying at Delano, we went to the "private" Delano pool.  I used quotes because it wasn't private, they were letting anyone in.  It was a bit less crowded than the other Mandalay pools though, plus Tessandra made a friend.

We had 7:00 PM reservations at Hugo's Cellar for dinner, so we got cleaned up and headed over.  I was going to play on an offer at Binion's, so I booked a room there so Cath and Tessandra would have a place to hang out while I was playing.  Check in took a little while, and I had to call Hugo's to let them know we were running late.

We had a tiny room (compared to my last stay), but we weren't staying the night anyway.  We walked over to Hugo's.  Cath had been before, but Tessandra hadn't.  Cath and I earned $100 vouchers playing the old Binion's slot app game.  Frankly, since we were unsure when the next time Cath and Tessandra would be going to Las Vegas, we worked this side trip in from California.  I also have a $50 F&B comp with the room I booked at Binion's.

I invited a local friend to come, but she had to back out, and I was wondering how the three of us were going to spend the $250, but when I asked Tessandra what she wanted for dinner, she said, "crab legs"!  Whelp, it's "market price" on the menu, but why not, right?  She also wanted steak (of course), so I got the Hugo's cut prime rib and shared that with her as well.  Hugo's is always a treat, with the bread, salad course, palate cleansing sorbet(which Tessandra wanted more), the main course, and dessert.

Thank you, Binion's slot app!

The butter!

The fancy plates.

Right in the bread basket.

Ready to eat!

Making the salads!

Salad!

Raspberry sorbet (yes, the kind you find in a second hand store).

The Hugo's cut!

ZOMG, crab legs!!!

The fancy desserts.

Yeah, we went a bit over the $250 (like $85 over, but that includes tip), but you know, we're on vacation (and we're worth it)!

We went back to Binion's and they went to the room and I went to do some quick play.  I didn't want to stay too long, so I played $1 VP.  I had $80 in free play, plus if I earned 800 points, I'd get another $80.  Playing dollars, things can go well or poorly pretty quickly.  I played my free play into $60 and kept going.  I hit five regular quads on bonus poker and a straight flush (but no bonus quads), and after earning 805 points in about an hour, I cashed out a ticket for $650.  I played my $80 free play and lost most of it before hitting another quad and cashing that out for $105.  I put a couple of hundred points on Cath's card to see if she would get offers, and lost $175.  I guess I should have waited until I had more time to put more points on her card, but oh well, poor planning on my part.

Yeah, that would have been nice. . .

This was nice!

It was about midnight, so we headed back over to Delano (although we could have spent the night at Hotel Apache.  Nah. . .).