Actually, I didn’t do too badly in Las Vegas. I have a fairly low tolerance for feeding my hard earned cash to the one-armed bandit, and I’m fairly good at sticking to my vacation budget which includes a line item for how much I am willing to lose. You don’t go to Vegas and expect to win. Well… maybe there are some out there who do, but I’m not playing with the high rollers.

The pic is the view from my window at the Aladdin. Not bad, eh? What this picture doesn’t show is the daylight view. Everything from the Bellagio down to the Monte Carlo is now a big hole in the ground, soon to be filled by a high-rise casino/shopping/condo/timeshare thingy. Every time I got off the elevator, some joe tried to sell me a timeshare. Or, if I wanted, they’d be happy to sell me the whole condo. Sure… I have a few spare millions just lying around. On Thursday morning, sick and in need of coffee, I told one sorry, I’d rather knit. He looked rather startled, and I have to admit it makes no sense to me either. But afterwards, that particular salesman backed away whenever I entered the casino by his assigned station.

I took that picture the first night after I had checked into my room and settled in. Not much sleep came my way that night, and I finally got up at around 5:00 AM with a splitting headache and a pouring nose. Yep. The cold that I had been holding at bay for days and days finally got me. With no energy and flagging spirit, I never made it outside the casino. Ah well. Them’s the breaks.

The Aladdin is undergoing renovation on its way to becoming a Hard Rock Hotel. Part of the casino is walled off while the renovations proceed and a lot of the games have been moved up to the mezzanine level. The better restaurants are closed, also. A few new ones have opened off the mall, but I didn’t try them out. I found that the mezzanine is very quiet because hardly anyone plays up there, and the slots looser than on the main floor. I found a slot machine that payed enough that I could play for a long, long time on $20. I will have Walk Like An Egyptian going through my head for days now, but the quiet and repetitive button-pushing suited my cold-addled brain quite well. The casino nicely comped me some free slot play, and I almost won enough back to break even. Not quite, but close. I consider that a successful casino visit.

The Aladdin has one of the better casino malls, in my opinion. So, a little shopping was done. OK… a lot of shopping, but very little buying.

So now I am home and feeling a little better. I slept last night in my own bed with my own cats piled around me, and life was good.