Hawaii Vegas Connect: January 2023

Vegas Trip Diary December 2022

Another trip to Vegas completed! I love going to Vegas during holidays; it's so festive with all the Christmas decorations and the holiday cheer. The weather was perfect! It was in the high 40s/low 50s, and it was nice and chilly without being too cold. Surprisingly, it wasn't too crowded either; I felt it was way more crowded when we went in May/June 2022. I'm thinking more people probably head to Vegas after Christmas to spend the New Year here.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and please check out the other posts about this trip! Links at the end.

Welcome, indeed! Love being greeted by this sign when we de-plane.

Fremont Street East is such a fun place to visit now. Lots of restaurants and bars.

Our home away from home in Vegas.

Our first visit to Resort World. Lots of shopping. Lots of food options. Lots of gambling. And the best bathrooms in Vegas. It's like a disco in there! Since I have trouble posting videos here, you'll just have to go and see it in person for yourself. The next several pictures are from Resort World.

The MSG Sphere is coming up! It's going to be an amazing venue when completed. I believe the first concert there will be U2.

The new sign indicating you're entering Downtown Las Vegas. I couldn't get a picture at night, but it's especially gorgeous at night.

Walking around Wynn/Encore. I don't know where one ends and the other begins.

More art at Wynn/Encore.

Vegas Vicky at Circa.

This game, I tell you! I played it at Main Street Station, and it's one of those games where you have to fill up "something" with coins and once you "pop" it, it triggers a bonus game. In this machine, the coin fills the kitty's belly.

I thought for sure the kitty was pretty full and the bonus would trigger soon (yeah, yeah, I know, it's totally random).

But it gets even BIGGER!!!! Look at how huge she is!

And look at her cute little paw! So I never did make the kitty "pop" to trigger the bonus. I went back a few times during the day to check on it, and it was still at full, and I would put a few more dollars in, but no luck. I finally checked late at night and someone finally was able to trigger the bonus because the kitty was back to normal size. I hope they got a good win!

That's it for now! Thanks for reading, and please check out my other posts from this trip!

Vegas Eats 2022

Some new places we ate in Vegas this trip . . .

We checked out Dominique Ansel (home of the cronut!) at Caesar's Palace. We only tried the cronut, which is their famous half croissant/half doughnut pastry and the DKA, Dominique's Kouign Amann, but boy, both were so good! They had a ton of other beautiful looking pastries. This will be a definite stop on our next trip!

Fremont Hotel & Casino opened their new food hall while we were there. They gutted the previous buffet space, put in the food hall, partnered with Fanduel for a new sports book and added more space for slots. The food hall includes Dunkin', Steak & Shake, Huey Magoo's, Roli Roti, Craft Kitchen and Tomo Noodles.

I made the mistake of going to Tomo Noodles the day after it opened and while the food was ok, the experience was not. The staff and kitchen had a lot of kinks to work out. Many of us was left waiting a long while for our food to come out and the staff didn't quite know what they were doing. Being that I'm posting this entry one month after my trip, I hope they were able to work out the kinks. The menu did look good.

If you are staying at The Cal or Main Street and want some pizza, you don't have to walk far. I tried Pop Up Pizza, located at The Plaza. It's located at the back side of the casino and offers pizza, fries, wings and breadsticks. The price was pretty decent as well.

I love hot dogs, so it was a no brainer that I would try Dirt Dog, which is located on the Fremont Street Experience. If you even only like (vs. love) hot dogs, you should definitely try it. I had the House Dog (house sauce, house spread, onions, bell peppers, mayo, mustard, ketchup and bacon bits) and the Dirty Esquite (Mexian corn), which included lime, mayo, chili powder, cotija, cilantro and bacon bits. I really loved the Dirty Esquite. The next time I'm going to get the Elote Dog, which is basically Mexican corn hot dog. So yum!

A big plus was the 90s hip hop music that they play. There's only a few tables at this location, but I love the vibe of this place.

We've been wanting to try Oscar's Steakhouse, located at the Plaza. The restaurant is named after Las Vegas' former mayor and mob attorney Oscar Goodman and includes a view of Circa, Golden Gate and the Fremont Street canopy.

We had really high hopes for the food here, especially since a lot of Vegas YouTubers have claimed the steaks were the best that they've ever had, and while it was good, it didn't blow us away. We had the rib cap and lamb. It's the first time we tried rib cap and again, it was something that influencers have raved about, but I'm not quite sure what makes it special from other cuts of steak. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think!

We also ate at usual favorites such as In-N-Out, but I didn't include those . . . I thought I'd just include new places we tried. If you have places you'd recommend, please let me know!

Thanks for reading, and please check out my other entries from this trip:

Princess Diana: A Tribute Exhibit

If you are a Princess Diana or British royalty fan, Princess Diana: A Tribute Exhibit is for you.

I'm not a huge fan of Princess Diana, but it's hard to not know anything about her because she was so present in the media, even after her death.

I visited the exhibit because I was really interested in her personal style and her fashion choices, but I found the exhibit to be very interesting and learned a lot about her and the British monarchy.

Admission is based on time of arrive; you need to select your arrival time when purchasing tickets. I bought VIP tickets which allowed me anytime access on the day of the purchased ticket. It also includes the audio tour (which can be purchased separately with general admission) and a gift (a Princess Diana poster).

The exhibit provides a journey of Diana's life, from birth to her death, and goes in-depth about her struggles with the monarchy, her marriage and her children. It also provided background on Charles, the royal family, William and Catherine as well as Harry and Meghan.

Here are some of the pictures I took. As mentioned, I was interested in her personal style, so most of the pictures are clothing replicas.

As I went through the exhibit, of course we had to come to Diana's tragic death. The exhibit described the circumstances of her death as well as the funeral and the country's reaction. The above description of the above display described how mourners put flowers outside the Buckingham Palace gates. So much flowers that that you could smell the flowers from far away. A floral scent permeated this section of the exhibit.

The above photos are the very few I took that are not fashion related. It's not an indication of the exhibit -- I found the information fascinating. All photos below are fashion. :-)

I forget where she wore the above dress to, but Diana was criticized for her choice of wearing black.

Diana's wedding dress boasted a 25-foot train. At the exhibit, the train was under glass behind the dress and you could walk around the dress and therefore walk over her train. It wasn't pulled out for the full length though.

The black dress in the back is dubbed "the Revenge Dress." She wore this dress to an event on the same night when Charles admitted his affair is Camilla on British national television.

The blue dress on the right was one of the first formal dress she wore. Those early dresses were very "princess-y" and you can see how her style evolved to be more sophisticated.

After her divorce from Charles, at William's suggestion, Diana put 73 of her dresses up for auction at Christie's in New York. The auction raised $3.2 million for various charities. The above and below are doll-sized replicas of the dresses she put up for action.