July - August Las Vegas Trip - Day Five

Saturday, July 31

Today I move from Four Queens over to Golden Gate.  We'll have having the MPT (Mattress Poker Tour) tournament this afternoon, so I'll need to have some time to get ready.  I also want to take advantage of going to Stadium Swim an hour before it opens to the public (9:00 am).

I got up around 6:45 am.  I showered and sent Kip a message telling her if she was awake, she could come over for coffee and possibly flat mimosas.  About a half an hour later, we discovered that the prosecco was still quite bubbly and we finished it off.  We talked about yesterday's play and plans for the rest of the trip.

After about an hour, I checked out of Four Queens and walked up Fremont to Golden Gate.  I had already checked in yesterday, but Bob was staying there, so I tried not to wake him when I got to the room.

I wanted to get to the pool closer to 8:15 am, but I arrived there around 8:45 am.  There wasn't a line at all, but it is quite a long walk from the casino area to the pool area, going up a long escalator that reminded me of escalators in the Metro stations in Washington, DC.

I got up to the pool area right around 9:00 am.  I took a lounger in the shade at near the bottom pool and the hot tub:

Stadium Swim!

A view up at Circa

Just chilling out!

  

It's interesting that they have this sign, considering that you have to be over 21 to enter the casino (and pool).

The pool was a bit chillier than I was anticipating, but I still swam a few laps across the pool.  I got in the hot tub, and found it was not too hot either.  I found the water temperatures to be quite disappointing.  After showering off a bit, we took a quick photo shot and then I headed back to the room to get cleaned up for the MPT.

Enjoying my time at Stadium Swim!

After a quick shower in the room, it was time to grab lunch.  Bob and I went back over to Circa and picked up lunch at Saginaw's Delicatessen.  I got a brisket sandwich, which was okay.  I'm a pretty plain eater, and there was some sort of mustardy sauce on it which I didn't care for (and also a few too many onions for my liking).  The chips were good though.

 At Saginaw's!

We had a decent field of eleven players for the MPT.  I started okay, took a dive, but managed to hang on to finish second.  We started close to 1:00 pm, and we had dinner reservations at Andiamo at 5:30 pm, and we were worried about making it, but we managed to get there on time.

I've gone to Andiamo almost every trip I've taken to Las Vegas for the past few years (probably because I get $150 monthly comps to use!).  I typically always get the lobster bisque, and then figure out what steak to get.  This time it was the porterhouse. . .

 The lobster bisque!

The pasta side that sometimes they bring, sometimes they don't. . .

 The porterhouse!

Kip and I had our $75 monthly free play to redeem.  We found some machines to play, and I ended up with $65 in cash.  Kip took a bit longer, and I went over to see what was going on, and I just saw she had a quad, but I also noticed her credits were pretty high.  Turns out she was playing DOLLARS!  So her $75 free play turned into $178.75!  That's a pretty good mistake, but could have easily ended up poorly.

Kip and I were going to get 500 points at The D, so we parked ourselves at Vue Bar, one of our favorite places to play downtown.  I've been getting a lot of bonus quads with kickers while playing bonus poker, and tonight was no exception. . .

 Well, at least I'm getting 10 credits for every two pair. . .

So six people had dinner, and the total was $345, which three people were able to cover with comps.  I used around $20 for lunch, so that left me with $130 in comps to use before midnight.  I asked our bartender, Jason, what pricey alcohol we could get.  I knew they had MacCallan 15 year (I got it a few years ago), but he said they just got Clase Azul Reposado.  Since it's "free", I said let's get it (since I do like a good tequila).  Kip and I got the tequila and Bob got the scotch, and we had $92 worth of comped drinks!

Cheers, baby!

I had to make sure I got one more before midnight!  I think Bob left shortly after midnight, but Kip and I were getting our 500 points, which we calculated would take us to about 1:00 am.  We were about right as we finished up around that time.  We were doing pretty poorly, but Kip did manage a recovery hit:

Kip and I headed back to Golden Gate (she checked in earlier that day) and we went to her tiny room to do some tallying and chatting.  For our 500 points each, we were down a total of $7.75, which isn't too bad for putting in $10,000 coin-in!  As we often do, we chatted for quite a while, and we discovered it was now around 3:30 am!  I needed to get to bed, although we didn't have a super early start planned for the next day. . .