Nataliya and Seth's Las Vegas Vacation

My brother, Jared, drove us to Newark airport for our 12:05 PM flight to Las Vegas. The flight was very smooth and while I was able to watch two movies on my portable DVD player, Nataliya spent the time reading through a few magazines and tried to study before giving up and falling asleep for a couple of hours.

While the flight itself was nice, there were a few rude people on board. Some people were conversing across the aisles at levels that drowned out the sound of the jet engines. Another woman in the back of the plane saw me heading for the bathrooms. When I got close, she got out of her seat in front of my path and stood in the aisle as she slowly put on her sweater. The bathroom was three seats back, but she was blocking the path. She then proceeded to go into the unoccupied bathroom I was headed towards. I was very good and I showed restraint, not saying a word.

There was a man sitting next to Nataliya and we struck up a conversation with him. He has a second home - an apartment - in Vegas and he goes there almost once a month. He gave us inside information on buffets, shows, hotels, etc. However, most of that inside information is beneficial if you visit Vegas often. Still, it helped to pass some time.

Nataliya and I got into a debate on whether it's worth paying for a first class ticket if you had the means to do so. I felt that if you had ten million dollars (for example), a first class ticket would not cost you much (in respect to your net worth). Assuming a first class ticket was $3000 and a economy class seat was $300, the person worth $10,000,000 would be spending .03% of his net worth on a first class ticket, while a person worth $250,000 would be spending .12% of his net work on an economy class ticket.

Nataliya felt that no matter how much money you were worth, why pay 10x the cost of a cheaper ticket for a flight that's only 4-7 hours? She doesn't see the value of paying thousands of dollars for a larger seat made of leather and a few shrimp thrown your way. After the flight is over, you walk away and you have nothing but a fleeting memory of a fairly comfortable seat and a slightly better-than-mediocre meal. Sure, comfort can become an issue when you have to spent more than ten hours on a flight, but for domestic flights, she doesn't see the worth or the sense in traveling first class.

We agreed to disagree, but I definitely admired her way of thinking!

Anyway, we finally got to Vegas and took a shuttle taxi to the rent-a-car place. Once we finally decided on a car, we drove to the Las Vegas Hilton and picked up our key card. We dropped off our bags and we met up with our friend Ty. His wife Jen was in class for the day so she would meet up with us later. The Las Vegas Hilton has "Star Trek Experience" and one of the restaurants/bars is Quarks. We each got an appetizer, and Ty got himself a rainbow of beers while I had a "warp-core breach", a rum based punch beverage with a lump of dry ice on the bottom for effect.

We gambled a little bit in the Las Vegas Hilton and then rested in our respective rooms as we waited for Jen to return. Once she came back to the hotel, we decided on going to the Rio Seafood Buffet at the Rio.

We got to the Rio and got on line for the Village Seafood Buffet. After about a minute, we realized we were on line for a show next to the buffet, "Tony & Tina's Wedding". We got on the correct line and soon we got into the seafood buffet. Ty and I had been in Vegas about eight years ago and we remember this buffet being a lot better. Still, it was okay.

After dinner, we decided to hang out at the Rio so we all gambled a bit and enjoyed the overhead "The Masquerade Show in the Sky". The show is a series of overhead floats which run on tracks attached to the ceiling. People on the floats throw down mardi gras beads to the gamblers below who are begging like hungry animals for the beads. Once thrown off, the people scarmble and rush over to collect, often acting as if they're real jewels instead of the cheap colored plastic things that they are. Still we all got our own beads because it's actually a lot of fun!

After gambling (losing) at the Rio, we headed to catch the 10 PM volcano show outside the Mirage Hotel. Nataliya had no idea what the volcano entailed so she was delighted when balls of flame spewed from the volcano and burned in the water. It also helped warm us all up as the outside temperature had dropped a bit.

After that, we raced over to Treasure Island to see the end of the pirate battle. Lucky for us that they had some technical difficulties earlier and had to delay the show. After we got there, they restarted the show so that we ended up being able to see the show in its entirety. Otherwise, we would have waited another time for the show as they run every 90 minutes. This show also featured lots of fire which again helped to warm us up, but there was much more of a crowd present that blocked much of the show.

After the show ended, we got back to the car and went back to the hotel. Once in the hotel, we called it a night.