March 9, 2003

Got up at 7am which seemed very early to me to catch an 11am flight. I'd been having some anxiety about traveling and all the headaches involved. Saturday night I was starting to wonder if the Vegas wedding idea was even a good one. But I managed to get myself out of bed and into the car and we were off to the airport.

Had no problems getting to the airport and through security with the boarding passes we printed off the Alaska Airlines website. That's a wonderful feature! It saves tons of time if you don't have luggage to check. The downside is that we were at the gate at 9:30am and had to just sit there for an hour and a half waiting.

I was a frequent flyer at my previous job, so I've had my share of airport hassles. This was my 2nd trip since, the Dept. of Transportation took over airport security last year, and I'm happy the security procedures at airports are both better and faster than prior to 9/11. Where they used to have only two or three metal detectors at a gate entrance, they now have about a dozen, and half of them seem to open when I'm coming through. The security screeners themselves, once the butt of late-night talk show jokes, are more professional and no longer appear to be scraped from the bottom of the hiring pool.

Until now, I haven't had any complaints about Alaska Airlines. For me they've always provided great service at competitive fairs - like Southwest - with reserved seats and better food -- until this trip. When I flew Alaska last December, I was given a lunch consisting of a small roast beef sandwich with cheese (OK - a single thin slice of cheese, but at least it was a sandwich), foil packets of mustard and mayo, a granola bar, and a small apple.

So this time we board an 11:00 am two-hour Alaska flight expecting lunch, and what do we get? A bag of tasteless pita chips and a container of roasted pepper humus - that's right - cardboard and pepper flavored mud. Come on!

We had been assigned to row 30 on the plane which happens to be right in front of the engines on the MD80. IT WAS A VERY LOUD FLIGHT. Despite the "lunch" being something they called a snack and the crowded plane, the 2.5 hours went by very fast and voila, we were in VEGAS BABY!!!

There's nothing to get your blood pumping like the sounds of the bing bing bing of the slot machines and coins clanking as soon as you get off the plane. It was great! For the first time we were arriving in Vegas on an airline that wasn't Southwest so I had to get my bearings and navigate the new terminal. We quickly found the way to the Dollar counter and saw a sign saying that Fastlane members could go straight to the shuttle.

We got to the curb just as a shuttle closed its doors and drove away. Grumble.. grumble.. Patience is a virtue, Sonya. :) Another bus arrived about 5 minutes later and we were off to Dollar. We got our silver Dodge Neon SE and headed off to the Rio.

We got to Rio and after some confusion managed to find the wedding chapels. One thing I can never get used to in Rio is that you have to go downstairs before you can go upstairs. I hate that steep escalator in the Masquerade Village and I find that I'm always on it. :)

The chapels were being changed over from wedding seating to a banquet style for some meetings they were having early in the week. I knew about it from my phone calls to the chapel, but they promised me that I'd be able to see the smallest chapel if I got there by 2:30 on Sunday. They were right. The Gardenia Chapel was still set up for weddings.

The chapel didn't excite me too much. It was the first one we had seen in person, but there wasn't much special about it. The people were nice enough, but didn't seem too interested in helping us. They just pointed us around the corner towards the chapels. We toured on our own. Nobody offered us brochures or additional information.

I stood up on the altar of the Rio Chapel and pictured myself next to Sonya with our families watching from the chairs. This gave me a warm feeling and I was almost ready to say "Let's do it here!" But Sonya was less enthusiastic, and I have to admit the room was rather plain. I knew that I would see many of these rooms over the next two days and should reserve such judgement until then.

The chapels have nice warm colors, but are basically not too much more than big rooms with rows of chairs and a podium up front. Dan and I went through a door off the left of the "altar" and found two dressing rooms for the brides.

Dan loves the Rio Hotel. We've always had a good time there, although we haven't stayed there since they linked up with Harrah's so I'm not sure how we'd like it now. I didn't see anything in the chapels that made me too excited.

We asked at the desk if we could see one of the honeymoon or bridal suites, but they didn't have anything available to show us. They said to come back later in the week and they could show us something so we made a note to return.

We walked over towards the front desk to see if we could see a Masquerade suite, but the lines at check in were huge so we decided to forget about that project until another day.

The cardboard and mud airplane snacks were not going to hold us over forever, so we stopped at Bamboleo's for a quick bite. We just split a plate of taquitos and dug into the chips and planned the rest of our day.

After our bite to eat, we left Rio and headed down Flamingo to Paris. We parked in the self-parking and lugged our stuff through the shopping area and casino to the reception desk. They have one of those "every man for himself" check in areas. I much prefer the one big line and then the first person goes to the next available spot instead of people just milling around and jumping at the first open window.

I asked the clerk if there were any upgrades available and she said there weren't. I asked if we could get something with a nice view of the Bellagio fountains and she said she had a good one. I was happy to see the "P" on the room number when she handed us our keys.

We headed up to room 1625P. It was on the 16th floor at the FAR end of the hall towards Aladdin. We had two windows, one looking out past the Eiffel tower to Bellagio and the other over the Arc de Triumph and valet area to the Aladdin. The room was large and comfortable and served us well during our trip.

This room was on a corner, so we had windows facing two directions. The view north was largely blocked by one of the Bally's towers, as we couldn't see past Caesar's. The view from the other window was dominated by Aladdin, looked down onto the Paris Balloon and south to Monte Carlo. This was similar; though not quite as good as the views from the Treasure Island room we had several years ago. The best part was that when we opened the air vents we could hear as well as see the Bellagio fountain shows.

We unloaded our luggage and checked out the room and then headed down to see the chapels at Paris. The one we looked at was the Chapel du Jardin, the smaller chapel. It was decorated nicer than the one at Rio with flowers and arches painted on the wall. Also there was pew seating as opposed to chairs. The whole facility was nice and comfortable.

There was a larger chapel with the golds and cherubs on the ceiling, but not only was it too large for us, but it was totally not my style.

We walked through the door off the chapel into a hallway where we found bridal dressing rooms again. We were taking pictures (these had bathrooms in them and we were a little disappointed to not find a bidet in there, after all it is Paris) when we heard a voice saying "Can I help you?" A woman was standing at the end of the hallway. We told her that we were just looking at the chapels and were taking pictures of the bridal dressing rooms. She told us that "guests are not allowed in the administrative hallways" and she promptly shooed us back into the chapel areas. Oops! We got "le busted" by the hallway police at Paris. Now I'm not sure if I'll get shooed out of there if we plan to get married there, but the whole thing sort of put us in a snit.

We asked if we could see the Le Rendezvous Lounge as a possible reception site, but there wasn't anyone available to show it to us. We could return the next day at 2pm to see it if we had time available in our schedule. We made a note to return.

We left Paris and walked next door to Aladdin. Up across from the London Club we found the wedding chapel. The chapel has a huge glass window on one side that looks out to the spa entrance and London Club. You can close the curtain, but it wasn't as nice as some of the other chapels we saw.

It also had the painting on the walls like Paris, but I didn't like it as much. We waited for the wedding coordinator to get off the phone and we asked a few questions that we had. They didn't have a suite to show us that day, but we could come back and see one later. Do you see a trend developing?

From there we walked over to Tremezzo and asked to see the private dining room. They said that the room would hold 20 people, but there is no way. Maybe 12-14 people could fit in there if they were tiny and very friendly, but never 20 normal people who hardly know each other. :) They also showed us a patio area that was lovely. Our concern with the patio was the late afternoon sun that bakes down on the front of the casino. They have big umbrellas out there and misters so maybe it wouldn't be so bad on a warm day.

We then stopped at Elements and saw their private dining room which was a much better size for our 20 people. We had hoped to find time to eat at one of these two restaurants but we never made it back there.

That was all we had on our list for Aladdin, so we headed back to Paris and to check out Mon Ami Gabi. We took pictures of their private dining areas and decided to have a bite to eat. Our intention was to just have an appetizer because we had eaten at Bamboleo's just a few hours earlier, but changed our minds when we saw the menu. I guess we'd worked up an appetite with all that running around.

We put in our names for a patio table and went up to the room to drop off the camera and my notebooks and for Dan to change from shorts back into long pants. When we got back down they gave us a beeper thing and we sat in the bar for a few minutes until it went off.

We were given a table at the far end of the patio, almost all the way to left if you're looking at it from the Strip. We were right at the fence with a light post right behind me. The menu looked wonderful and we decided to go ahead and each get an entrée. I had the paillard of chicken breast with lemon butter and pepper and pommes frites. Dan had the trout grenobloise and a glass of wine. Our food was quite good and we really enjoyed the fountain shows across the street as the sun set on Las Vegas. We saw the Pink Panther and Con Ti Partido shows. It was a warm evening and a perfect Vegas dinner.

After dinner we sat down at some video poker machines by Le Caberet stage area and listened to the music and did a little gambling. I ended up a little and Dan was down.

When the band took a break, we went up to the room to watch TV. I knew that Fear Factor was going to have their Vegas show while we were in town, but I wasn't sure which night it was on. It wasn't Sunday. :) We watched a little TV and I took notes on the wedding stuff we'd done that day.

At about 9:30 we decided that we'd like to go have some dessert or a drink somewhere. Olives and Fontana Lounge were on our list, so we hoofed it over to Bellagio. We took the walkway from Bally's over to Bellagio. The place was packed. There was an hour wait for a table on the patio at Olives, so we kept walking. Then there was a long line and no hostess to be found at Fontana so we gave up on Bellagio. We did stop in the conservatory to see it partially dismantled. They were taking down the Chinese New Year decorations and there was a large, headless Oriental man in the garden. Now that's not something you see every day.

It was the first time I'd seen them changing it over. I wish we had brought the camera because I thought it was interesting to see all the containers you can't see when the plants are all in there. Or maybe it's not really that interesting and I'm just weird. Or maybe it is interesting and I'm weird anyway. :)

We started our walk back to Paris, feeling our "Vegas legs". Not a good sign on the first night. We took the moving walkways down towards Aladdin and ended up riding the walkway back up towards Bellagio so we could watch the Singing in the Rain show from there. It wasn't as good as seeing it from the street, but it was different.

We got an ice cream at the little shop right by the elevators in Paris and went upstairs to watch some news. Dan was asleep before it was over and I read my book and watched the fountain shows from our window until after midnight.