The REAL city of lights

First day back from a weekend trip to Las Vegas. Doesn't it seem like the day after vacation always sucks? I'm spilling liquids on myself in the car, I hate my outfit, I can't tune the radio to my favorite station...the list of atrocities goes on. Maybe this week seems so terrible because the weekend was so very fantastic.

I always like to blog about our trips not so much because anything significant happened but because I will likely forget it in 6 months if I don't write this stuff down.

So the following is a list of highlights and lowlights from Vegas 2011:

• Hotel room was nice; hotel (Excalibur) itself a little ghetto. But the price was crazy low so I guess I can't complain.


• Weather was beautiful. Sunny and warm during the day, little chilly at night.


• We saw two Vegas shows, which we never do (probably because we're super cheap and prefer free shows). We saw Zumanity by Cirque du Soleil and Penn & Teller. Both were amazing in their own ways. The first had a lot more nudity than the second, which is probably best.
  - extra highlight from Zumanity: the midget who flew around the room holding on to a curtain.


• We ate at First Food and Bar, which is pricey but very tasty. We also ate at Bouchon, which is pricey and completely overrated. It sounds like it should be amazing, but I was even disappointed by the chocolate croissant. Seriously, how can a French restaurant screw that up?
  - extra highlight from Bouchon: the middle-aged couple seated next to us kept staring at us and listening to our conversation. The wife finally made up a reason to talk to us and proceeded to point out the "celebrity" at the next table, who was nobody famous and she was a little delusional.


• We hit the buffet at the Rio and the Bellagio. Bellagio won, hands down. We tested the limits of human consumption and loved every minute of it.


• We saw The King's Speech. Amazing. Highly recommend.


• The worst part of the trip was our car trouble, wherein my Honda would not get into gear while we were driving down the Strip...MEGA scary. But even that wasn't a huge crisis. We drove to an auto parts store (entirely in second gear) and bought some brake fluid, which provided a temporary fix and meant that we were headache-free for the rest of the trip!

I'm facing several weeks of intense school and work commitments, so I'm very grateful we had this opportunity to get away. I'd love to make this an annual trip if possible; midgets will be optional.