Vegas Trip, Foodie Adventures

Day 1 - Black Friday:

• Vegas adventure started on Friday morning. My friend Tanya slept over at my house so we could start off the day early which consisted of us waking up at 8:30am (lol :). I love sleep!). We got ready, packed up the car and headed to Ontario Mills to do some Black Friday shopping. We picked up some pretty good deals. Off 5th had 30% off of their premium denim so I picked up 2 pairs (they now have a promotion for 2 days for 40% off their premium denim so boo.. should have waited but oh well.). Victoria's Secret had BOGO 50% off all their bras so I bought 2 more incredible bras (they are amazing!). 
• We filled up on gas and then hopped on the 15N headed for VEGAS! We probably left Ontario Mills around 12:30pm and got to Vegas at 5:30pm. We saw the most horrible accident at the agricultural check point. A car had rolled off the top part (heading back from Vegas) and stuff had flown out of this SUV. There was also someone on the ground. The accident had just happened so there were tons of cop cars and ambulances. 

View from our seat.

After arriving in Vegas, we checked into Treasure Island (they only have the most comfortable beds on earth!). I thrashed about in the bed for awhile and read up on restaurants on the Strip. After about an hour of looking up places to eat, we decided to eat at Rainforest Cafe at the MGM Grand (this was despite the fact that we wanted to try out a new restaurant. It had been a  long day and we wanted something that we knew we'd like. Their Pastalaya and Onion Stack is what we usually get. It usually hits the spot.). We got to MGM and it was a pain in the butt to find parking! BUT we ended finding a super close spot to the escalators so we were lucky. It was freezing in Vegas, btw. We ended up getting seated right next to the water and their was definitely a light sprinkle.

After eating it was time for our first show, David Copperfield. Ever since I was a little girl, I'd watch him on TV and I've pretty much watched all of his TV spots. I figured this was one item I could knock off my bucket list. It also helped that when I went on the MGM website, the tickets were for the front row! I originally wanted to get the Meet-and-Greet passes but since they were about $200/person, I decided to go a little more on the frugal side and go with just the regular tickets. So we get seated and we are literally right next to the stage (I was using the stage as an armrest basically). They show starts and he does all these tricks I've seen him do on TV. It was as if I was reliving my childhood. It was pretty awesome but the problem with seeing these tricks was that I spent the majority of the time trying to figure out how he was doing these tricks.

The most awesome part of this experience was getting to be apart of the show! At first, he went into the crowd looking for a ring. My friend had told me he would do a trick with a ring so I had worn like 50 rings... ok by 50 I meant 2 lol. But he ended up choosing this other chick who totally looked like she could be in on the trick so the whole time me and Tanya were like "oh this is totally fixed" even though we totally had no idea how he did the trick lol. He then went into the crowd, picked some lady toward the back of the room and I was totally disappointed but at the same time relieved. As much as I wanted to go on-stage, I have terrible anxiety when it comes to being in front of large crowds. He walks towards the stage and then comes to our table and asks me to come on-stage. My hands are sweating buckets at this point (and for those of you that actually know me, you know I'm not exaggerating). So we get on stage and he tells us to put on these thick black rubber gloves. He then tells us to hold onto this tray and in the middle of the tray was this clear box that had a scorpion. Yes... a scorpion. At first I thought it was fake and then it started moving. I was totally freaking out inside. Black rubber gloves. Scorpion. He was totally going to put the bug on one of us! Please not let be me!!! So he takes the clear box with the scorpion and hands it to the other chick. Whew! Just when I thought I was in luck he grabs my gloved hand on makes me reach into the container. I couldn't even look at the box lol. Right at the last second before I could touch the scorpion he says, "just kidding" and I was off the hook! Thank goodness! So down to the actual trick. He gave me a deck of cards and made me choose a card. I chose a card and showed it to the audience. 9 of clubs. He made me shuffle the deck a few more times and spread the cards out with one hand and got the scorpion with the other hand. The scorpion then picked my card out of the deck. And after the trick, I got to give him a peck on the cheek bahahaha (I guess I completed that bucket list item with flying colors lol). Pretty awesome stuff! lol. I hadn't seen this trick before so I had no idea what was happening. After that super awesome experience I obviously bought a bunch of souvenirs lol. Sadly, they didn't allow any photography inside the theatre or I would have gotten one with me and David (yes, we're on first name basis these days lol).

After all that fun at the show, it was time to start the drinking fun at Margaritaville! So the last time my friends and I were at Vegas, we went to PURE at Caesar's Palace and it was so packed that we didn't even get to move let alone dance so we left the place and partied our asses off at Margaritaville. Sadly this time it was very quiet inside and there was barely anyone there. However, we still had a good time meeting up with friends. Good company makes up for everything especially when we are such karaoke whores singing along to all the Journey songs haha. We had a lot of fun trying to tie our cherries into a knot and using sign language to tell each other how we got from place to place lol. After Margaritaville, we were stuffed so we decided to walk it off by going to the Bellagio gardens. Little did we know that the Christmas decorations weren't up yet! Tragic! We made the best of the situation and took some pictures with this one tree that literally looked like the whomping willow. Being the old farts that we are, after that we were pretty beat so we headed back to our hotel and had a good nights sleep!

Day 2 - Eat, Shop, Sleep, Repeat

he liked it AND he put a ring on it

We started our day off with the Wynn Buffet and met up with Lauren & Jason. The first thing we noticed was the huge ass rock on her finger! Congrats to the happy couple who go engaged at one of their favorite spots!

Although I think they raised their prices due to the holiday weekend, it was as delicious as I remember!

So after filling up on food, we decided to go walk around Fashion Show mall. They've definitely made it a lot better since the last time we were in Vegas (last December for a pharmacy convention). They've added this 2 story Forever21 that is to die for! It's seriously the most organized and gynormous Forever 21 I've ever been in. It has the Men's section, Maternity and a Plus Size section too! And they had sooooo many accessories. I was seriously walking around for hours in here and still wasn't finished! I did some damage here lol.

My beautiful pharm-ing gals :)

After shopping for hours, we were completely beat so we went back to the hotel for a much needed nap. After napping, it was time to get ready to go to dinner. This time we actually went somewhere new: Serendipity 3 at Caesar's Palace. One of my friend's had tried the place before and another one of my friends actually went to the place in New York. I actually read about the place online and really wanted to try the famous Frozen Hot Chocolate (which was delicious! btw). So we left Treasure Island at 6:15pm and drove to Caesar's and it literally took us an hour!! Traffic on the Strip is horrible! We even took Koval (which is right behind the strip) but we couldn't find Caesar's parking lot.

Here's some picture of the delicious food! lol On the Left is the Frozen Hot Chocolate and on the right is the ABC Burger (avocado, brie, and caramelized onions) with the Sweet Potato Fries. Yumes.


Delicious dinner. Check. Off to see Zumanity! So I've never been to a Vegas show before. *gasps* I know. There wasn't a better way to de-virginize me than with this show. It was so funny and sexual (obviously lol)! Loved it! After the show we enjoyed some drinks at New York, New York Casino. This was where I lost $20 at a slot machine lol. Don't worry I hit a jackpot on a penny machine and got $2 back lol bringing the grand total lost to $18 lol. I'm such a big risk taker lol. After that we had to finish off the night with pho at Treasure Island haha. Another successful night!

Day 3 - Bye, Bye Vegas 
After one of the best Vegas weekends, it was finally time to say goodbye :(. We left Vegas at 11:50pm after doing some shopping at The Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace and ended up back in LA at 7:30pm. Traffic was a bitch!!

• Shopping: $400
• Hotel: $240
• Food/Drink: $100
• Shows: $467
• Spending one of the  best Vegas Weekends with some of my closest friends: Priceless :)

love, j