For such lovers of Las Vegas, I’m suprised that the last time we wrote a post with this title it was September ‘05. Being in Texas makes it very tough to make it out to the gambling capital of the world, but last weekend we had a great excuse to go: Ellie was in the Las Vegas wedding of her old co-worker Crystal. Sweet!

Unfortunately, the major theme of this trip was the difficulty in getting to Vegas. Anybody who knows us knows that we are very lucky to fly cheaply (although standby) thanks to my dad’s airline employee discount. Well, we picked a bad time of the year to fly standby. It turns out it took a flight from Austin to San Jose, an overnight stay in San Jose, a flight to Orange County, and a car ride to Las Vegas for us to arrive 30 minutes before the wedding rehearsal (26 hours after we started). Although we were glad to make it in time for the rehearsal, we were very sad that it took a day of Vegas fun away from us.

The rehearsal was cool and we got to meet plenty of cool people. After that we checked into our aweful hotel off the strip (we were trying to save money when it come to accomadations. Lesson learned: pay the extra money for a place on the strip).

After enjoying the opulent luxury of our room for a bit (not!) we decided to head to the Rio. We’d never been to the Rio and the 2006 World Series of Poker was going on, so hey, why not stop in and see all the poker stars? Ellie and I were very impressed by the size of this event: it was poker tables for as far as the eye could see. We even sat down in the bleachers to watch a final table being filmed (Event #29: $2500 pot-limit hold’em…maybe you’ll see us on TV whenever it’s on ESPN). It was really cool to see last year’s champ Joe Hachem at the final table.

Although we were very impressed, the reality is that watching poker live is about as interesting as watching paint dry, grass grow, etc. I always knew this would be the case. We love to play the game and it’s really great to watch on TV when it’s been edited down to the most exiting few hours, but we actually skipped out fairly quickly.

Enough minute details. The wedding was great, we had fun playing slots and being together. The flights were aweful on Sunday, so we decided to stay an extra night at the Excalibur, our favorite place to place to play poker. Well, they were booked so we went across the street to the MGM Grand and we booked the most awesome suite that we have ever stayed in Vegas. It was an ultra-modern king sized suite with amazing sheets and a crazy features like a flat-panel TV built into the bathroom mirror! Thanks to our poker play at the MGM Grand, we also go 20 bucks off the room, so it only cost $70 dollars (It’s amazing how much cheaper rooms are in Vegas Sunday-Thursday. Our junky off the strip motel was $65 a night for Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday we had this amazing suit for 5 dollars more)

So we really lived it up. We played some great poker and thanks to Ellie’s skills (she learns from the best), we made about 200 dollars that day. We decided to see a Hypnotist at the Excalibur, but when it was time to go in, we realized we only had one ticket! There is more to the story, but in the end we found the ticket and ended up getting our tickets refunded thanks to the nice people at the Excalibur ticket sales desk. Instead of the show, we ended up playing more poker and winning more money!

Ellie and I agreed that the MGM Grand had easily the worst poker players we had ever seen, which was good for us. We’re definitely staying and playing at the MGM Grand in the future. And we’re coming Sunday-Thursday where we can get an awesome suite for cheap.

Getting home Monday was also very difficult. Our most direct flights were full, but we managed to get on a flight to Chicago which would connect to Austin. Well, our seats were in the last row and the flight had fairly heavy turbulence, so that was miserable. Fortunately, the flight had to stop in Lubbock to refuel, which actually isn’t that far from Austin. We opted to deplane in Lubbock and just rent a car for the last leg of our journey.

This was a long post. So let me sum it up with how we felt when we got home: Wedding fun, Vegas fun, MGM Grand awesome, Need to come back soon.