Five Star Hotel, My Ass! (which is not to say ‘my ass is a five star hotel’)

We’re up early-ish. Sarah feels sick and stinky, effects of drink aside, but she’s a trooper, so we troop on down to the buffet at Paris. There’s a big ass line-up, and I’m more than a little hangry, but we endure the wait and it’s worth it. Your most highly coveted time for a buffet, I think, is the breakfast to lunch transition, and that’s the time we snag. There’s crepes and sausage and twelve variations on the egg to be had, and damn do we ever have it. By the time the lunch section is ready, we’re all belly-sticky-outty, so the many meat and fish dishes are in no way appealing. The gambling to be had at Paris turns out to be pretty crap, so we move on to Bally’s (which is the only casino to have a moving sidewalk that leads you both in and out of the casino–and I’m guessing someone got shit-canned for that design choice). We make an hour of it there, and then head across to the Bellagio, where nothing magic happens, not even the fountains.

Back at Caesars, despite it being three o’clock, our room hasn’t been cleaned. Way to go, Staff at a Five Star Hotel. Sarah wants to try the ultra-swanky whirlpool tub, but we’re deficient in the towel department. The room service cart is just down the way, however, so we frig off for about forty minutes. Coming back, the cart is gone, and our room’s not clean. We say, fuck it. Sarah jumps in the tub, I catch up on trip notes. As Sarah’s drying off, room service comes a knockin’. I tell them we’ll be out in five minutes. We bugger off and gamble downstairs for almost an hour, then back to the room, and it's still not clean. Annoying, but it doesn’t really matter because we just have to get changed and go because we have dinner reservations in half an hour. Of course, the moment I drop trou, room service comes a knockin’. We send them away again, pretty sure the room will never be cleaned until our vacation is over.

We cut through the maze-like Forum Shops and get to Mirage. Just past one of the entryways is a tiger enclosure, where they generally have one of the ex-Sigfried and Roy tigers on display. We’re used to seeing coma-unconscious cats splayed out, but this time there’s a huge white tiger stalking the grounds. And peeing. All over. Apparently the enclosure doesn’t smell sufficiently like him, because he’s spraying up, down, and sideways—and occasionally, doing a happy tail-in-air prance away just after he pees. Dinner is at a place called Stack, which has novel takes on typical American cuisine. We score a pre-show pre-fixe deal, and while the entrees were pretty standard (a nice filet mignon), the meal included tatter tots stuffed with bacon and brie, and tiny, forkable jelly donuts with a creamy dip. Tasty-ass-tasty. After the meal, we leave for our last show of the trip—Love. It’s the newest Cirque de Soliel show, and it’s based on the music of the Beatles. We have the worst (but cheapest) tickets in the house. Nose. Bleeds. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all theatre in the round, and it’s brilliant. We have our doubts at the start—where the stage is cut in five sections by giant dividing curtains, and strangely dressed, hippie-ish people wander around to the strains of tinkle-y, vaguely Beatles-like music—but then “Get Back” blares on and the show explodes into action—the curtain drops, figures on wires float to the four corners of the house, and the cast starts dancing their asses off. I couldn't relate the whole show back if I tried. There are a few narrative threads throughout, but largely it’s a series of acts based either very loosely or sometimes more directly on various Beatles songs. It’s just phenomenal stuff, better seen than described; still second to O, but a close second at least.