some Vegas highlights

• surprise, my dear darling daughter (aka the spirited one and only) and I went to Las Vegas last week for six days, five nights, staying at Caesar's hotel.
• Caesar's. hmm what to say. Disappointing.......
• The 8 pools I was so excited to spend my mornings at? Well, two were automatically out of the running as one was European and one was pay to get in for "partying", then one was basically if you wanted to gamble while in water at the bar and three others only had fancy seating you had to pay to use. And pay, I mean, pay... up to $350! I didn't even ask how much the cabanas were. So we had two pools to use and only went in the circular one which was nice enough, bath water temperature so great to cool down in. Pool service was limited so after one day I went and brought my own drinks in.
• The overall service of the hotel was poor. Rudeness all around. Only a couple of staff members were polite and curteous and helpful, the others, well, rude. I had an incident with a taxi driver (he drove us late at night around a empty parking lot to bump up his meter and when we got to our hotel I gave him only $1.5o in tip, only because I didn't want to stay around getting the change back. He demanded more of a tip and my daughter and I walk away with this taxi driver chasing us down the sidewalk yelling. I got my daughter to keep going and I tried to talk to the Caesar's taxi driver bell hop guy but he didn't want to listen, he was too busy getting people into cabs. I was quite shook up about that.
• Now for the good things....
• We spent the mornings by the pool. My daughter is very brown now and could handle the sun much longer than I could. I'm a nice shade of pink. Yes, with lots of sunscreen. I loved to be in the water and just walk around and be able to stretch out more and be "light" in the water. The daughter met a lifeguard who took her fancy so I tried to give her some private alone time, which a few days later became an issue, but that's another story... You had to get to the pooldeck early at 8am to find seatting because everyone wanted to be as close as possible to the pool, right behind those big damn beds that laid empty for the most part.
• We did lots of shopping and my daughter was happy about that. I loved the clothes she picked out. Myself, I treated myself to many many Pandora charms, some Crocs (I know, how boring), some uniforms (even more boring) and two purses that I just *heart* I didn't buy any gifts for any family or anything like that this time. I am so happy about my Pandora charms..... just just love love my bracelet! Thank you for the beautiful girl Rocketgirl - it just keeps on giving! (to me) :)
• Had some awesome meals. My favorite of course is my Luau Salad at The Cheesecake Factory and Godiva Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake. We ate there twice, had a French meal at Mon Gabi Ami; some sort of French Lemon Chicken and I even ate some of the green beans (ask my daughter for verification!)..Northern Chinese Restaurant where I had sauted noodles with chicken which my daughter insists was "chow mein" but I merely am repeating what the menu stated. Also a funky Cocounut Lycee cocktail which was, interesting. Also had good meals at the California Pizza place at Fashion show mall and lunch complete with famous Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity 3. One night we had the obligatory room service and it was alright; just fun to do it.

That's it for now; it's the middle of the night and I'm dealing with a bit of a pain crisis. Changing one poison for another and it's a bumpy ride.