Terrified of Vegas - Day 4

Another day, another breakfast. Breakfast today was going to be at The Peppermill. Do I even need to tell you how we plan on getting there? We're walking it!

The two ways we discovered how we can successfully exit the Vdara was to either cut through Aria or through the Bellagio. Today, since we were headed North back to the Wynn end of the strip we cut through the Bellagio.

We've walked this route several times already, but today for some reason I noticed the fondue fountain, turns out it's the World's Largest Fondue Fountain.

We decided to take the Treasure Island side of the strip walkway today, since we've been walking on the other side this entire trip. I find the TI side less crowded and easier to walk.

As we were walking we came across the site for the Resorts World Las Vegas. Man I'm excited for this property! It didn't look like any construction was going on at the time though.

When we finally get there, I order the Eggs Benedict and she orders Joe's San Francisco special, which sounds great, but didn't look that appetizing and didn't taste as great either.

Once breakfast had concluded we were going to venture further North of the strip to the Riveria, SLS, maybe even the Stratosphere and Circus Circus on the way back.

Our first stop was Riveria.

As per the usual, go up to their players booth inquire. Aside from the typical earn 10 points get $5 freeplay, they had another promo which was use $20 to buy $30 worth of promo chips. So she did that, we went to a table, she sat down with her $30 promo chips and I bought in for $20. We each played $5 a hand. Of her six $5 promo chips, she was only able to win 2 hands and she cut her table loss there, man she has no luck at the tables! I wasn't having much luck at the table either, although at first it seemed like I did 'cause I hit THREE Blackjacks in a ROW! ONE. TWO. THREE! Bam! But of course these were only $5 bets, so it's not like I was going to retire any time soon. Once I brought it back to my original buy-in, we left the table and went to go focus on our slot play.

Man, trying to earn those measly 10 points for that $5 freeplay was almost not worth it in this case, we both seemed to have been losing pretty fast at the video blackjack machine, but of course, I pressed on and we eventually won it. Did a quick lap, couldn't find the Alice game so we just settled on a random game and blew through the $5 pretty quickly.

Up next, SLS! We started walking towards the SLS, but then decided that it probably wasn't worth the walk just to be greeted by another potential small freeplay amount. So we decided to head back towards the South direction as we were going to stop by a Tix4Tonight booth to buy tickets to the Bodies exhibit.

We crossed the street and walked on the Circus Circus side of the street, did a quick lap in the Slots-O-Fun casino, but didn't hear any coins dropping from any of the machines. (Do they even still have coin machines there?)

Saw a tix4tonight booth, but we wanted to pay cash and he said he couldn't take cash at his booth and the next closest booth was at the Fashion Show Mall, which was fine, we're headed in that direction anyways.

Since she only had a light breakfast we stopped by McDonald's for a quick snack. Back on the strip we saw a sign that read 2 Big Macs for $4, we wanted that deal, we went in and was sad to discover that they didn't have that deal there. But to our surprise, they had a Hot N Spicy McChicken for only a dollar each, so we each grabbed one.

We passed by a $0.97 souvenir shop, so we popped in for a quick peek, nothing special there.

We eventually made our way to the Fashion Show Mall and then to the tix4tonight booth where I purchased 2 tickets to the Bodies Exhibit at the Luxor, paid $23 for each ticket. The tickets were valid from 7 days from the date of purchase which was fine 'cause we were planning on using them tomorrow.

From there we made our way to the Miracle Mile Shops, of course we had to stop by the Sephora in there. Don't recall that she bought anything though.

Dinner would be at Pampas Brazilian Steakhouse tonight, as I had purchased a voucher from TravelZoo for $49US. This included the all you can eat meat portion, plus 2 cocktails. I skipped the $6 add on per person for the unlimited gulf shrimp as I figured we could get our shrimp fix from the regular buffets, plus turns out she doesn't even like shrimp!

This would be my second Brazilian Steakhouse experience overall, the first time was located Touro Churrascaria, located in Markham, Ontario. That one was SOOOO much better. How was my dining experience with Pampas? Bleh!

I found the meat to be over cooked and dry, so we both got tired of chewing really quickly. They had the roasted pineapple, but didn't have the caramel sauce to go with it.

Would I eat there again? Probably not.
What if it was free? Still probably not.
We have no idea why there was such a big lineup the other night.

The plan for tonight was to put in more face time with Aria, since this was my final night there to make an impression before checkout tomorrow morning. I was told that since Vdara has no casino, your play at Aria is connected with Vdara.

Since we were fairly close to the hotel, we decided to pop back up to our room, drop off some of our belongings and take a breather.

I ended up buying a souvenir mug from CVS, which ended up being a dollar cheaper than had I bought it from the $0.97 souvenir shop located North of the strip, which I was surprised about, I thought that it might have been cheaper there. I just didn't buy it there 'cause I didn't want to lug that around with me all day just to save a dollar. Turns out it was a #WinWin for me.

When we got to the Aria hotel, we did a lap to search out for Alice, nope, Alice was no where to be found. This made us wonder how old of a game Alice was. She was sad, she really wanted to spend more time with Alice and make her her b!tch by having her spit out more bonuses.

So she settled on her next best game Cats. She was playing on my MLife card to help me collect the points, I had requested another card after my experience at the Wynn. After watching her for a while I got bored and sat down next to her and popped in a $20 into the Cleopatra II game, decided to give that a shot and earn some points as well. Played for a bit, then finally hit a "jackpot" and won about $15 or so, so I was up to double my buy-in, which I say is good for a slots game, played until I had about $35 then cashed out. When I looked over, she was at about the same level as well.

Time for a slot break. Time for tables! I find a table, buy-in for my usual amount of $300. Table is pretty full, has a good crowd. Seat #1 has a high roller, betting blacks. Seat #2 has this "newbie" he has the basic strategy card printed out and is right in front of him, dealer and pit boss didn't mind. Seat #3 has an Asian Guy with several stacks of greens in front of him. I sit in Seat #4, Seat #5 has another guy in it, he was the "teacher" of the table.

I wait till the shoe ends, then begin my play. Once again, starts off pretty nice, after a few hands I'm up about $100. If you've been reading my TR, you know what happens next. That's right! Dealer change! It's a guy named Peter, luckily this is Erin's table and she is just on break. Table vibe feels pretty good, playing with a decent crowd, so I play on, let's see how this works. OMG. This dealer is magical! He's pulling 20's and 21's....for himself! At one point, he dealt seats 3, 4 and 5 an Ace, but not one of us got blackjack, we'd hit and get a good pull, then he'd bust our balls by pulling a natural 20.

Dealer's showing a face card, I'm dealt two 8's, book says always split Aces and Eights. With the way this table has been playing so far, I know exactly what's going to happen, but I'd be kicking myself if I didn't play it properly, plus a 16 is a very shitty hand against a 10. Even if I know I can't win, best I can hope for is a push to get my money back.

So I split, first card is a ten, so 18. Stay. Next card is an 8. FML! I have to split again, dealer doesn't even need to wait for me to signal and proceeds to split my 8 for me. Next card is a 9, so 17. Stay. Next card is a face card, so 18. Alright, 18, 17, 18, maybe I do stand a chance.

Dealer flips his card over, natural 20. WTF! All that hard work for nothing! Asian guy to my right can't handle it anymore, colours up and leaves, I play another hand, lose that. So I colour up as well.

Time for a table break. We go to find another bank of Cats machine so she can play. I feel the urge to go to the washroom, so I leave my $35 TITO with her and tell her BRB. As I'm coming back from the washroom, I notice that Erin is back! So I beeline it to the table and quickly sit back down.

During the mist of a shuffle, my phone is buzzes, she's texting me, asking me where I am. I tell her I'm back at the same table and for her to keep playing slots and if she wants she can play through my TITO too. She's a little cheesed at me 'cause I was suppose to go back to find her. IDGAF! Erin is back!

All the players are pretty much the same except for the Asian guy, I'm in his seat right now, which opens up my seat for another person. This guy buys-in and he also is holding a basic strategy card in his hand. He's betting between $25-$50 a hand though. (I also have one of those cards tucked away in my pocket and reference it on "difficult" hands).

The "teacher" at the table had an interesting way to play, I guess he followed the book religiously, he would take even money, and would surrender on certain hands. He would say that by surrendering, he wouldn't take the dealer's bust card, which didn't bother me. His money!

The high roller in Seat #1 one hand he bet a black for himself and a black for the dealer. Which means that if he won, it would have just been even money for him, but it was a push that hand. Later when he coloured up, he said "I can't leave like this" and pulled out a $100 bill from his wallet and tipped the dealer that.

The new guy to my left had already coloured up, the high roller has just left, the other newbie to my right had just busted out, it's the end of the shoe. I look at my chips I'm up $125, it's getting late, time to call it a night!


I go back to find her at the slot machine still and tell her that I'm done for the night, she says she is too, time to turn in! But not before I show her who I suspect is a working girl at the casino.

For some reason, I was super thirsty tonight, might have been the steakhouse, so I drank through around 5 bottles of the free casino water, which meant that I had to make multiple trips to the restroom. Each time I would walk by, I would see this one girl all by herself, the first couple of times she was standing there, then afterwards she was just sitting by a slot machine, all alone.

So I showed my friend this girl and shared my suspicions with her. Was she a working girl? We'll never know!