Things We Learned In Vegas

Yesterday, we ended our Girls Weekend in Vegas. Before you get any ideas, one of us girls is eleven months old. So about the wildest thing we did at night was order Pay Per View movies and sip bottled water. But during the day, we kept up a frenetic pace trying to see all of Sin City in one long weekend. Forthwith, some valuable things we learned in Vegas:

1. The most important decision you’ll make is choosing the right hotel. You can’t possibly see everything and most of what you see will end up being in your hotel. Make sure it covers all the bases: fun theme, good rooms, lots of restaurant choices, spa and good location. We were happy with the Luxor on all counts. And it helps that it has indoor skybridge access to Mandalay Bay and Excalibur. Across the street from Excalibur, you can catch a monorail that stops at most of the big hotels most of the way down the Strip.

2. Most of the hotel spas will give you all day in-and-out health club and spa access if you book a treatment. Schedule your treatment early in the morning, then you have the whole day to go back. This is especially key if you are going to try to walk all the way down the Strip. You’ll need a steam bath.

3. If you want to teach your kids to gamble, take them to the Luxor.

We’d heard kids aren’t allowed at the slots. But at the Luxor, security was so preoccupied making sure people didn’t take pictures of the sphinxes inside, Amelia was able to try her luck.

4. Splash out on one meal at a celebrity chef’s restaurant. There are dozens of them. Last year, Andy and I did Alain Ducasse’s restaurant — and the great man was actually in the house. This weekend, we visited Rick Moonen’s seafood restaurant. The staff told us, Moonen stops by most days of the week. So you could get a Celebrity Encounter with your meal.

This is Rick Moonen’s crab cake with jicama and chipotle mayonnaise.

Here’s Moonen’s grilled shrimp with paella dressed with chorizo oil.

Even those of us who couldn’t eat the food were impressed!

5. On the other end of the dining spectrum, Las Vegas coffee shops seem to feature some of the nicest waitresses you’ll ever encounter. Ladies named Flo or Marge who are especially helpful to diners with babies.

6. The Las Vegas Marathon and Half Marathon let’s you run down the strip which they close to traffic for the event. It’s become an even bigger, more organized event than it was last year when I ran walked limped it.

Even if you think you’ll need to bag out at the last minute and give your race bib to someone else, the Las Vegas Marathon is worth signing up for.

7. Be sure to go see the Fountains of Bellagio, waterworks set to music. They even post the music playlist on the Bellagio website. We were lucky and saw the show to the tune of Frank Sinatra singing Luck Be a Lady. A perfect Vegas moment!

But we could have hit the show when the music was Celine Dion. That would have been a bummer.

And the last thing we learned?

You’re never too young for your first Vegas trip, Baby!