First day of 2023.
Ogii and Monica comparing face pressing thingies.
Checking out the Resorts World buffet.
Crumpled money art.
Some food over here.
More over here.
The food was somewhat upscale.
And what I really wanted was something more lowscale, just bacon and French toast like these guys had ordered, but that wasn't on the buffet.
Room service came by.
We walked to the Westgate, which was a few blocks to the west. We walked by the giant convention center.
The monorail goes by here.
At the Westgate.
The entrance.
They had a cheaper buffet. And I bet it had bacon. We should have had breakfast here instead.
The giant sportsbook area.
With beer and soda and hot dogs and pizza and wings; this is definitely the style I'm in the mood for today.
More food options over here.
Neat stained-glass arch in front of the poker room.
Lots of TVs inside the poker room.
We played the noon tournament here. Ogii had fun stacking her chips vertically.
A big had for me. I had queens, Lance had tens, and another guy had fives. I won and knocked them both out.
The tournament ended up being a few tables.
Another big hand for me. Again, I had the larger pair with aces, a man had sevens, and his wife had tens. And again, I knocked them both out.
Sarah, Lance, and Ogii all got knocked out of the tournament, so they played cash.
I was still in the tournament. This was a crazy hand. I had AJ, raised, and a woman called. The flop was AA6, so I bet, she went all-in, I called, and she had 66. Great flop for her. Good thing she didn't have too many chips and I had a lot.
It had a smaller buy-in than the tournament Ogii won, so the total prize pool was smaller.
I still wanted to play well, though. Although a lot of it wasn't playing well; it was just the dealer giving me good cards and another player slightly worse cards. Like here; I had aces against queens.
Although every once in a while the worse hand here, like when I had AK, the other guy had QJ, and he hit a queen. Again, though, I had more chips, so I was OK.
It got down to four of us.
So we decided to chop evenly.
So I "won" this tournament.
Through the end of the tournament, the 49ers vs Raiders game was going on, and there were a ton of fans of both teams just outside the poker room in the sports book area. Which made it a lot of fun, because it was a really close game, and every score, the fans were really loud.
We grabbed some lunch.
Including a really big hot dog.
We were going to walk back to Resorts World, but even though people think of Las Vegas as really hot, and it is in the summer, in the evenings in the winter, it's very cold. So Lance and Sarah gave us a ride.
Ogii in some trees at Resorts World.
A heart.
And egg.
Some roses.
We took this elevator all the way to the top floor, 66.
Which has Alle Lounge.
People looking at the strip.
The Enchant maze.
The strip to the south.
To the north.
Nice lounge chairs.
A cheap video poker screen by all of the expensive wine.
Then we stopped by Gatsby's Cocktail Lounge.
If you click on the QR code in the bottom corner of the menu...
...a secret menu pops up on your phone.
With a few different drinks.
We got the champagne bubble bath.
With little ducks in it.
We walked from Resorts World, which had this sports bar with giant beer pong...
... to Wynn, which had a much more upscale vibe.
People at Westgate were in t-shirts and jeans, people at Resorts World were a bit dressed up, and people at Wynn were in all designer clothes.
Much more expensive stores.
That's just weird.
A miniature town.
A giant bear.
Lit-up trees.
Another town.
A carousel.
More expensive stores.
We were trying to get to the Awakening show, but where Google Maps put it wasn't even close.
We finally found it.
We had bought four tickets, two for us and two for Kat and Kendra, who had planned to come today. However, Kendra was feeling sick, so they didn't come. Rather than trying to sell them, we just gave them away to two people, which was pretty easy to do in the app.
The theater.
We had front-row tickets.
It was a great show; lots of visual special effects, and very little magic or acrobatics.
Cool dragon at a restaurant.
The poker room at Wynn.
It was much busier than Resorts World, even though Resorts World is only across the street to the north.
It also had games with much higher buy-ins, all the way up to blinds of $25/$50.
Ogii with a peacock.
One last town.
And back at Resorts World.
Peace.
We had wanted to go to the Here Kitty Kitty Vice Den, along with this guy, but it was closed.
Walking by the poker room.
Somewhat busy, but not nearly as busy as Wynn.
Up the next morning and time to go back home. This McDonald's is just to the north of the hotel, but it's actually a bit of a pain to either walk or drive to, so we'll get breakfast elsewhere.
Enjoying the view while Ogii packs.
We could also see the convention center from our room.
This guy was walking back and forth in the parking lot. I hope he finds where he needs to go.
If you get up early, there's no delay on the road back to LA. It's 9am now, and there's a 1-hour delay.
At 9:30, the delay had crept up another 20 minutes.
However, if you took a bit longer route to the east, you'd actually save about 30 minutes, so that's what we did.
A big Joshua tree.
A lot of other drivers took the route we did, but we were all still moving very quickly; there was almost no slowdown.
It's almost 11am, and the delay is even a bit longer now. Glad we took the alternate route.
Now back onto I-15 and a lot more traffic.
Although unlike the shortcut, sometimes this traffic slowed down a lot.
Although at other times we moved quite quickly.
These guys locked their keys in their car. What a pain; hope they get it unlocked.
A giant dump truck.
By the 20 Mule Cafe, where we stopped for lunch.
Nice mural.
A small aerospace museum.
Interesting clouds above the mountains.
Giant thermometer.
A train which consisted of only three engines.
Ogii napped while I drove.