So our trip to Las Vegas was not, alas, what we were hoping nor. Not that our expectations were particularly high. We were going because that’s where the convention was. I had offered to Clancy that the baby and I stay behind, but she deferred.
We are not, it seems, Las Vegas material. The most obvious way this was apparent was that we could never get over the price of everything. It reminded us a big of the Pacific Northwest where we stopped going out to eat because, though the food wasn’t bad, it never seemed good enough to justify the inflated tab.
Since we didn’t have a car, our options were even more limited. We couldn’t stomach the price of the restaurants (or room service) of the hotel, so we ended up ordering delivery. At least that way, for our $30, we were getting a fair amount of food. Other than the bill, that part turned out okay. I got to eat pizza, Thai, Italian, and all sorts of good stuff.
The WiFi was terrible and even the data reception from my phone wasn’t very good.
The epitome of the trip occurred when we realized that we were running low on baby food. The main grocery store option was a Whole Foods that was about two miles away. I walked the two miles and then realized that I had forgotten my wallet. By the time I got back, it was too late for another trip. Clancy decided to walk down in the morning. We finally got the baby food.
If we had to do it all over again, we’d do just about everything differently from better foreplanning to breaking down and going to the market on the first day. Also, just buying a crib.
I can’t remember the last time we were this glad to be back from a trip. The baby is sick with a temperature of 101, but she is at least sleeping in her own (more reasonably priced) crib.
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6 Responses to Las Vegas and Bust
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Dude when you go to Somewhere like Vegas you’ve got to let go of the “real-world” stinginess a little bit. If you’re at the point in your cycle where short on scratch in the first place that can be tough but unless you’re willing to pay the price demanded, it’s going to be a sub-par experience.
(…he said, hoping his tax return arrives in time for his anniversary.)
Yeah, the timing doesn’t work out all that well for us. However, even in flush years it would be hard. I think I might have been more of a voice for splurging on the hotel restaurant, though, if we weren’t having to watch our nickels and dimes.
There’s always the Monorail, however it’s quite possibly the most useless mass transit system in the world. With the possible exception of the Pyongyang subway.
Having used monorail last time I was in Vegas, I looked there first. It didn’t go where I wanted it to go.
The bus was an option, and had Clancy not volunteered to take it the next day, I probably would have gone that route.
Clancy might want to look into online CME. It can be expensive, but it’s not as expensive as the conferences because there are no travel or hotel fees. Online CME can also be tedious to sit through, and it can be hard to clear time to do it during regular work weeks. Conferences do have the advantage of providing opportunities to network for jobs in some specialties, but I have found that not to be the case for mine.
This was a national convention, rather than CME. Some of the travel (hers, though not ours) and the basic hotel costs were covered, so we were not expecting this to be such an expensive trip.