Sin City Las Vegas

What a difference to yesterday: Today we are sitting in a suite of the Venetian Hotel, 19th floor, with a bottle of champagne and fruit delivered to our room as a welcome present. Cozy warm beds, a bathroom the size of our livingroom at home, 3 TV sets, 3 phones, fridge and a view towards the strip. Sometimes our job can be fun, too!





After a fitfull sleep in our Motel 6 - caused by thin blankets, thin pillows and a hard matress – we left Beatty early (and probably never will be back), without breakfast. The drive was beautiful, through high desert landscape, I set the cruise control on 73 mph, no traffic, and sunshine. Could have driven forever. We had decided against Death Valley NP - it wouldn't have been worth the high entrance fee for just a couple of hours, especially since we know the park from previous visits. Instead, we drove into Las Vegas to arrive at the LV Premium Outlets North before noon to indulge in some shopping for a change. Good deals at Jockey, Under Armour and at Samsonite made us happy.

Back to business then: Drove to Fremont Street Experience - downtown LV - and checked things out there. Not too much has changed, with the exception of the new Container Park, a conglomeration of local businesses and restaurants in containers, stacked on each other, with a gathering space and playground in the center. We drove through the Arts District - not much change neither. In total, there are perhaps some more murals on the walls.

Drove to the Strip, parked the car in the huge garage and brought our luggage to The Venetian's lobby, the hotel which invited us for three nights. The Venetian has over 4.000 suites (only suites!), plus another 1.000 luxury suites in the Venezia Tower and 3000+ in the adjacent Palazzo Hotel. We got to know that we are "VIP guests" and can use the VIP Lounge (with little snacks and drinks and a separate reception) and, in addition, we got one of the large suites.

Being spoiled like that, we took the rest of our luggage out of the car (which took us more than 10 min. one way from the huge parking garage to the suite), then got some macarons and coffee in the lounge, took a bath and went out again to our dinner invitation in the "Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill", one of dozens of restaurants in the hotel. Boy, it was heavenly good there - expansive, too, but well worth the money!

The menu combines different influences on small plates, served for the table. The restaurant features three distinct kitchens – an open fire grill, a raw bar and traditional kitchen plus a bar with one of the largest rum collections in Las Vegas. In addition to the plates we ordered - salmon poké (pic above), duck & duck egg on a waffle with duck confit (pic above), lobster rolls and octopus (pic below, left), we got a couple of extra plates fom the GM: goat cheese croquettes, bacon-wrapped dates and - very unique and delicious: crispy pig's ears (pic below, right). Two deserts later, we were stuffed and happy and decided to explore the hotel a little to burn some calories.

Just the weather could have been a little better, cloudy and not very warm today ...