November 13 – sort of

You know the sentiment: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. We guess that’s true if you get up to shenanigans while you’re there. The Sisters, not so much. As you may know, mostly what we do when we’re together is annoy people with our questions and demands. Just because we’re in Las Vegas won’t change that. In fact, it’s probably exponentially worse the further we are from home. We stayed at the MGM Grand while we were there this time. Our rooms were in the West Wing. It was not presidential. What it was was far. The hallway to get there was about 75 miles long and can best be described as Alice in Wonderland-esque. Ultimately the rooms were cute, European in design and very stylish. They were just really, really far. That gave us plenty of time to review the funny things. Here we go.

1. Las Vegas. This is what we know for sure — Las Vegas at 45 and 50 is considerably different than at 25. Also, it’s really loud. We also believe they have the worst freeway in the county. The road was so awful as to feel like a roller coaster. What we will say for sure is that all the weirdest people are there and every one of them is drunk. And wearing ill-advised clothes. But there’s also fruity drinks and the opportunity to give strangers all your money. Also, as we mentioned above, we’re pretty sure the laws of physics don’t exist in Nevada. Everything seems like it’s just down the street. For goodness sake you can see the sign as plain as day, but as you start the trek pretty soon it turns in the desert version of the Trail of Tears. You say things like, “I’m going to need to have my feet amputated if we ever get back” without irony. On the other hand, you can eat every single dessert at the buffet because you walked 97 miles that day. It all works out in the end.

2. Ka. We saw the Cirque de Soleil show and it was amazing. We all really loved it, but we struggled to stay awake. The theater was dark, and warm, and often the music was soft. Still, it was visually stunning. The stunts were insane and when we were awake we had some genuine concern for some of their safety – swinging on wires and jumping rope on rotating disc hundreds of feet in the air. Many times we’ve thought our two youngest kids were going to end up in the circus and, we’ve decided if that’s a Cirque de Soleil circus, that would be alright. We wouldn’t be at all embarrassed to tell people what they did.

3. Breaking rules. This fellow was an usher at Ka. He told our section often and very loudly that cameras were not allowed. “You may not take pictures,” he bellowed with the conviction of a person with very little power. You can see why that might be a problem for us. We’re not good with rules. Or bossy people. Or bossy rules.

4. Twizzler Liberty. One thing that Las Vegas has a lot of is theme stores. We went to both the M&M store and the Hershey store which is located in New York, New York. We don’t know why the Hershey store is in that particular casino since Hershey is made in its very own town in Pennsylvania. We could only assume it was because NY, NY is closer to Pennsylvania than say Monte Carlo. Whatever. Sometimes we over-think things like this. Anyway, we present to you the Statue of Liberty made out of Twizzlers. As far as Amylynn is concerned, that’s the best possible use for Twizzlers because eating them is wrong. Ava disagrees.

5. The new fountain. The Bellagio has a famous water show. They play music and spray jets of water hundreds of feet in the air all with a coordinated light show. You’ve all seen it famously in Ocean’s Eleven. Imagine how delighted we were when the music was no longer something sappy and melodramatic by Celine Dion. No, indeed, Black Sabbath’s I am Ironman blasted out the speakers. The finale was wholly unexpected and beyond thrilling. The crowd was really pumped up from the music, but we all went completely berserk when the Kraken rose up out of the Bellagio lake. He wrapped his tentacles around the tram going to Caesar’s Palace and pulled it right back into his depths. Bravo, Las Vegas. Bravo.