Phantom in Las Vegas

Our drive was relatively uneventful until we got to Las Vegas.  Rather than use the directions that I printed off from Mapquest, I decided to use the GPS on my phone instead and it led us smack dab into the middle of an office park off of the strip.  Since we had never been to the Venetian before, we looked around but knew that there were no buildings around that were as large as what we imagined the hotel would be.  And we were right!  We did finally find the Venetian, parked in the self park lot and began hauling all of our luggage into the hotel.  Or course, we got lost and ended up dragging everything around in the mall that is part of the hotel until a security guard finally took pity on us and directed us to a different floor, into the casino, and finally into a long Disney land-like line to check in.  Check in went smoothly but then we had to haul everything to our room which was pretty far away.  Once we got to the room though, our frustration and irritability disappeared quickly because the room was beautiful!  Not sure I have ever stayed in a room this nice before.  Besides the living area, the bathroom had an oversize tub, a glass enclosed shower with several water faucets at different levels and a marble floor (or at least marble looking...).

After dropping off our stuff, we went to visit a friend of Kim's who was setting up for a million dollar wedding.  We saw the wedding suite (over $10,000 a night!) which had two master bedroom suites, a massage room, exercise room, barbershop/beauty salon room, walk-in closet and bathroom that is bigger than my condo.

Flowers were everywhere, including  rose petals in a heart shape on the bed, and more rose petals in the master bath and in the hot tub on the veranda.  Apparently a HUGE fireworks show was planned for later that evening to be seen from the veranda.  The groom was a high roller from China and looked a little like Shrek in his pictures (but not green) and his bride was beautiful.  Apparently worth billions of dollars...

We had dinner with Kim's friend and I had fried chicken and waffles.  Thought it sounded good ever since seeing it on a Food Network food challenge.  Was good but not sure I would ever order it again.

Our tickets to Phantom were for excellent seats!  I loved the show, probably better than other times I have seen it.  The chandelier coming together in the beginning and all the curtains dropping to reveal the box seats in the opera house was incredible and quite beautiful.  Mesmerizing music, voices, and special effects...  I couldn't have asked for it to be better.

There were lots of other good shows at the Venetian-- would love to go back for Jersey Boys and to see the Blue Men group. Our worries about finding a quicker way to the car (and worries that we might never find the car again..) turned out to be unfounded.  By following directions... we found a fairly direct way back to the garage that probably only took a few minutes.  No wandering thru the casino or the mall or anything...