Not a bad Sh*ttle ride

Hunnybear drove me to United Shuttle’s Terminal 8 LAX in record time, about 10 minutes door to door including the vaunted jet landing overhead at Lincoln & Sepulveda. In the Pontiac convertible it’s quite an impressive sight, and in fact last weekend we circumnavigated the airport to get the jets taking off and landing from every angle. Unquestioned best was parking on the sidewalk on Airport Road directly under the landing pattern and about 50 meters from the end of the runway. We were sure a Delta 757 was going to land right on top of us. Fortunately it stayed aloft an extra few seconds and missed us. Those jet stains are murder to buff out of white paint.

Today, however, just as Hunnybear dropped me at Terminal 8 I realized I had forgotten my envelop with stuff for the trip, including valuable coupons redeemable at various hotels for valuable consideration. So, since, I had plenty of time before the flight, I just hitched a ride back to the apartment, enjoyed the California sunshine once again from the Pontiac, found my stuff, and took a cab back to the airport ($12). There was no line at the Premier/First Class counter and three agents working so I checked in right there even though I had no baggage to check. I took the secret escalator up to the gates, got my extremely suspicious-looking laptop bag sniffed at security as usual, and reached gate 81, still 20 minutes early for boarding. I don’t recommend getting there early as there really isn’t much to do in Terminal 8 other than buy Starbucks coffee or Burger King Croissandwiches.

I had seat 2B on the Shuttle. My seat opponent was a nervous European guy who spoke no English and would have been a natural to cast as the suicidal maniac who brought a bomb aboard to blow us all out of the sky. Fortunately his bomb failed to ignite or I would have missed the best Shuttle service of my life. The all-male crew, clad in white polo shirts, greeted everyone boarding, did a great drink service, and really seemed to be enjoying their jobs as they personally interacted with the passengers. The purser actually brewed a second pot of decaf for me because he pointed out, and I agreed, that the first pot was a bit weak. Especially when drunk from a Styrofoam cup. We touched down in Vegas 16 minutes ahead of schedule and ended up at the gate eight minutes early.

The Last Harrah’s

The line for cabs was about 20 minutes, but I soon got a typically great Vegas cab driver who sped me to Harrah’s. I had the good promotional rate of $40 from a coupon they sent me, but when I arrived I remembered that Hunnybear and I hadn’t liked it much last time we stayed there. There was a 35-minute line to check in, according to a woman whose husband had just reached the front, so I went to the information desk and showed the clerk the letter inviting me to come stay and asked if this got me out of standing in line. Unfortunately not, she said, unless I was Platinum or Diamond. I wasn’t but I told her that I wasn’t prepared to stand in a 35-minute line to check in and that the solution was either to check me in now or refund my money provided I could find another hotel to stay in that wouldn’t make me stand in line. She got the manager, to whom I repeated the same spiel, and she looked me up and then invited me to check in at the Platinum counter, which I did. A side benefit of that was getting VIP stamped on my charge card so that I wouldn’t have to stand in line at the hotel restaurants.

I had asked for a room on a high floor with a view, but the only thing available was on the eighth floor with a pool view, or I could wait till three o’clock and get a room with two queens and a mountain view. I didn’t have the energy to press it, so I took what she had. The room looked like a corner room with two windows, but behind one of the curtains was just a blank wall and behind the other was a tiny window with a tiny view of the pool. It smelled like mildew and had the sparsest amenities imaginable: one tiny bar of soap and one mini-bottle each of shampoo and conditioner. The alarm clock was flashing 12, had wires hanging out of it where the battery used to be, and was the model that won the 1988 “least intuitive user interface” award. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to set it (the round thing on top that looks like a snooze-alarm button is actually a dial that must be rotated to set the time).

I hated this place but decided to stick it out for the night. I fired up the Toshiba laptop and, as I caught up on my email, used Expedia Price matcher to bid a four-star hotel on the strip for $55 a night for next month. It spit back congratulations and gave me two rooms at the MGM Grand, a lion of a hotel, for the agreed amount. Pretty good! I called Harrah’s reservations and cancelled the free room I had booked for the same time. I see little reason ever to set foot in this place again.

I then headed over on foot to one of my favorite hotels, the Venetian, where I sat at the bar in the Grand Luxe Café and had a huge Joe’s Scramble ($9.95). I held my own at Pai Gow Poker for a few hours while I waited for John to finish setting up his trade-show booth and meet me for drinks and dinner. We had an overpriced round at Paris Vegas, where he was staying, took a pull each on the million-dollar slot machine at Bally’s, and then headed for our 7 p.m. dinner reservation.

Hole in the Wall gang

Dinner was at Battista’s Hole in the Wall, a restaurant that came highly recommended by several FlyerTalkers as well as various restaurant reviewers. Behind the Flamingo, it was truly Old Vegas. Memorabilia covered every square inch of the walls and ceilings. Black-and-white photos of every celebrity lined the halls. An ancient accordion player named Gordie walked among the tables playing 20-second renditions of anything requested. Our waitress was a playful pixie who brought us complimentary carafes of red and white wine immediately as we sat down. John, being right at home in an Italian restaurant, ordered calamari even though it wasn’t on the menu and it arrived with a ramekin of marinara sauce. “A place like this has to have calamari,” he told me.

We both had sausage cacciatore, recommended by our waitress, which was superb. In addition to the wine, dinner included soup or salad, garlic bread, and a cappuccino that tasted like hot chocolate. Total for both of us was about $50. During the meal John noticed a middle-aged woman dining by herself and invited her to join us. It turned out she was here from Wisconsin by herself, celebrating her 55th birthday. Her husband had died six years ago the day before her birthday. We had a nice time chatting with her and soon John was best friends with everyone in the room. It turned out everyone but me was either originally from or now living in Ohio. When Gordie came around he started playing everyone’s college fight song, including Ohio State’s “Down the field with Ohio hail hail, the gang’s all here” or some such. He didn’t know Harvard’s fight song so I didn’t tip him.

After a memorable dinner it was off to Bellagio to show John the Chihuly ceiling art and the conservatory. He judged that the air in the conservatory was the best smell he’d ever experienced, thousands of flowers perfectly cared for and replanted five times a year. It smelled finer than any perfume. We didn’t stay but walked to the Excalibur and took the tram to Mandalay Bay, where I showed John the catwoman fetching wines at Aureole, the scene at Rumjungle, and the anticlimactic ice bar at Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshots). We then found the $5 craps table and held our own for an hour or so while enjoying the free drinks.

What an experience!

John wanted to see the Fremont St. Experience but I wanted him to see the Four Seasons part of the hotel so we found the incredibly obscure connecting door and felt the mood shift instantly from Vegas Strip to fine hotel. He was wondering about the room rates just as a well-dressed man approached us and asked if we’d been helped yet. In my best hillbilly accent I said, “Hah much duz it cost to stay heah?” The man, who turned out to be an assistant manager, didn’t blink. He offered to get us a rate sheet but said they started at $240/night. He then asked where we were from, guessing the southern part of the United States.

On reason to go downstairs to the Four Seasons lobby is that it’s the easiest place in Las Vegas to catch a cab. We told the doorman we wanted to go downtown and after conferring with his colleague told us that the hotel car would take us. The hotel car was a BMW 7 series. We watched as the airline navigation system guided us to the Fremont St. Experience. I tipped the driver $5 but later wondered if that was enough.

The Experience was one of the best I had seen, a compilation of legendary vocalists who had played Vegas. It included John’s favorite Louis Prima and concluded, of course, with Sinatra singing “Luck Be a lady” from Guys and Dolls. Afterwards we had $1 frozen drinks from the place advertising them and then played some of the World’s Most Liberal Blackjack at Las Vegas Club. I finished exactly even and we decided to call it a night, hopping a cab back to Paris and Harrah’s.