This old villa
I finally talked Pluto into joining me in Sin City so I booked two round trips on National Airlines as Pluto met me in Los Angeles for dinner prior to the trip. Pluto’s flight was right on time and TripTalker, Hunnybear and I picked him up and headed straight to Long Beach for the infamous Omni Award dinner. Today we took a nice walk up Venice Beach to Santa Monica for an always-great lunch at Border Grill. Hunnybear had taken the red-eye last night to Toronto so she was unavailable for play. We recovered from lunch in time for dinner. TripTalker had booked a reservation at the very exclusive Matsuhisa, celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s Beverly Hills location.
We used Expedia Maps to find our way but it was too easy as there were only two turns involved in getting to Beverly Hills from Marina del Rey. The restaurant was unpretentiously typical for a Japanese restaurant and directly across the street from Ed Debevic’s, which competed for Nobu’s clientele by offering their famous meat loaf. To our surprise and delight, Nobu himself was there and greeted us as we entered. We had the master decide on our meal and ordered the $90 prix-fixe mystery menu. They also had a $70 menu but what kind of meal could you expect for only $70? I asked the waiter what the difference was and he said with the $90 you get better ingredients, like toro. “Of course,” I said. “How could you get toro for only $70?” We ordered dry cold sake and were off to the sumo races.
Dave the Zipcode Man joined us and had just a couple dishes because he wasn’t too hungry. Our meal was five courses, starting with twin hama-hama oysters topped with caviar. Then came a Caribbean-style shellfish ceviche, followed by a tempura stuffed Maine lobster claw. The toro came as advertised, seared and piping hot. Finally came five pieces of the best sushi I had ever tasted. As a rule I don’t eat dessert but they served three Western-style treats that we shared: chocolate roulade, tiramisu, and chestnut mousse. They were superb. Burp. Dinner came to $112 each. I remembered I don’t like paying for dinner.
TripTalker drove us down La Cienega all the way to the airport as I checked flight schedules on my cell phone. The pervious National flight had been delayed, offering us a perfect opportunity to jump aboard. We gave TripTalker a passionate belly hug goodbye and proceeded to National’s gate 61. I asked Carla, the friendly agent, if they had two First Class seats available. She said they did and I asked her to switch us from the midnight flight. “How are you going to pay for the upgrade?” she asked. Apparently I was the only one who had ever purchased a full-fare First Class ticket on National so I explained that the upgrade was included in the ticket price. She blushed and apologized and I pish-tushed her and told her to think nothing of it, but that she had better develop a little more unfriendliness if she ever hoped to work for United.
We had the best seats on the plane, the starboard bulkhead with cutouts for puters and two full-sized windows. One has to be careful when booking 1D and F because some of National’s planes have no window there and one actually has no seats there. As always we got our preflight drinks in real glasses because the FAA that United claims doesn’t let them serve drinks in glasses is not the same FAA that National uses. I wrote to United suggesting that they switch FAAs but they haven’t responded. We were delayed another half-hour on the ground past the original delayed time, which got us to Vegas over 90 minutes early from our perspective. The snack was toast with pear compote but neither of us partook given the reverie of our Nobuesque repast.
Stephanie, the only female limo driver at MGM, picked us up in a gold house limo and whisked us to the hotel. Pluto gave her a generous tip and we proceeded to the VIP lounge to check into our two-bedroom penthouse villa with a south Strip view from the airport to New York, New York. The entry opened onto a marble foyer with steps down to a formal dining room to the right and a bar and living room to the left. The usual embarrassingly huge gift basket was waiting with a love note from my host. This was the biggest and best room I had ever been given as I requested to blow Pluto away. Pluto was appropriately blown away. A private elevator removed the need for us to lug our luggage up the circular staircase to the twin master bedrooms, each with an enormous shower, dressing room, twin vanities, and Jacuzzis big enough to catch moderately large sea bass in.
We played a little craps and finally I had a little success betting wrong as nobody could make a pass to save their souls. We got to bed around two.
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