Vegas Eats March 2025

 Here's a photo dump of some of the food we ate during our March 2025 Vegas trip. 

Clubhouse sandwich with fries and onion rings from Triple 7 at Main Street Casino. The fries were "meh", so we're glad we got the onion rings. 

Fried rice . . . it was ok . . .

. . . and oxtail stew . . . pretty good, from 

California Noodle House is the Cal's upscale casual dining restaurant. Some of the items are similar to Market Street Cafe, the 24-hour restaurant, but a little more elevated. The portions were pretty big and definitely sharable. 

Corn beef hash breakfast and loco moco (eggs scrambled) for breakfast from Market Street Cafe.

$3 beer and hot dog from the Downtown Grand.

On our Strip day, we had dinner at Pinky's by Vanderpump at the Flamingo. This is her third restaurant in collaboration with Caesar's Entertainment. The other two locations are at Caesar's Palace and Paris. The menu consist of sharable selections and unique cocktails. Some menu items are unique to the location and the decor is beautiful and unique to each location as well.

As of this post, it was just announced that Lisa Vanderpump will be rebanding the Cromwell, a boutique hotel right across from Caesar's Palace. A part of the agreement will include room and casino renovations. I'm excited to see how everything turns out when it's completed in 2026!

Thanks for reading!

More from this trip:

• Vegas Trip Diary March 2025

Las Vegas 2024

 This blog entry is going to be a big dump of all the trips to Las Vegas taken in 2024. I'm going to start it as a continuation of our summer trip, which include visits to Universal Studios Hollywood and Disneyland.

After two fun-filled days at Disneyland and California Adventure, we headed to Las Vegas via car. At first we were going to take a flight, but it was pretty pricey, considering there were four of us. So we decided to do what a lot of Californians do . . . drive to Vegas!

Being from Hawaii, a 45 minute drive is considered long, so this was definitely an experience for us. Here's some observations from someone who has never driven anywhere outside of Hawaii:

• California is a very large state! The drive was about five hours. It takes us five hours to fly from Hawaii to California! So I was very worried about driving for that long.
• I was fascinated and amazed at all the big rig trucks on the road. Too many to count! You don't see this in Hawaii, and I wondered what they were carrying and where they were going.
• Driving over the mountain pass was pretty cool. There was a stretch where it was advised to turn off the air conditioner to avoid overheating. I'm not sure if everyone does it, but I'm one to follow directions, so off the air conditioner went!
• I've watched You Tube videos of different places can stop during this drive, but we didn't do any of it. Maybe next time we will.
• It was a shock when we stopped for lunch at In-N-Out at Barstow. We went from nice mild weather to HOT HOT HOT weather. It is not tolerable because "it's DRY heat!" LOL. It's still HOT!
• Once we crossed the border, Las Vegas was just a short 45 minutes away!

OK . . . so the following are just random photos in no particular order.

Summer display at the Bellagio Conservatory.

Milk tea from the Arte Museum Tea Bar. This was a cool experience.

I recommend the Arte Museum. It kinda reminds me of the Team Lab experiences in Japan.

This is one of my favorite rooms at the Arte Museum. My picture doesn't do it justice.

Some eats from the Proper Eats Food Hall at Aria.

Views that never get old. Bellagio at night.

Paris from the Bellagio fountains.

I'll probably never hit a jackpot, but small wins are always nice!

A mocha latte from Pink Box always hits the spot on a hot day!

Tried Gordon Ramsay Fish & Chips. Super expensive, but it was good.

Lots of LSU and USC supporters during our September trip. Energy was super high. It was a good game! Unexpected win for USC.

Stopped by Resort World to get a Junior's cheesecake!

Hot dog and a PBR for $2 at the Downtown Grand. I think they raised it to $3 and they serve a different beer now.

We checked out Fountainbleau. It's a beautiful casino. These pictures are just from walking from the parking structure through the lobby to the casino.

 

Playing Bingo in Downtown Las Vegas at the Plaza. Bingo is so high tech now with a lot of different rules and cards you can buy. Green pack, blue pack, yellow pack, etc. I've played Bingo a few times now and I normally get about 40-ish cards. Thank goodness for automation. I've never won, but the hubz has gotten bingo a few times. Small amounts, but there are people who will win a few hundred during the session!

At the Cal. Santa getting some surf time before the big day.

Holiday display at the Bellagio. So pretty and smelled so good. They were pumping a holiday smelling scent in the air.

I went roller skating on my December trip!

It was Flippers' Roller Boogie Palace located at Tao Beach Club at the Venetian. They covered the pool area with flooring.

I had the whole place to myself! Just the DJ, the skate marshal and another employee dancing outside of the rink. I went at night because I didn't want to skate in the sun, even though it was December and chilly. I didn't realize they closed at 8 p.m. and I got there at 7 p.m. When I got up to the rink area, two other ladies were leaving, leaving me there all by myself! It was the best time! :-) I hope they have this again next winter! If not, I'll need to try ice skating at one of the pop-up rinks.

When I visited Main Street Station on our December trip, I was surprised to see a lot of slot machines and the table games gone. It was just a big empty space!

But they were just changing out the carpet. The top of the picture is the new carpet, with the old at the bottom. Can't wait to see the final result on my next trip.

I played at my first ever slot tournament! It was a two day tournament and each player played one session on each day. The people with the top five scores won cash prizes and the next 50 won slot credits. Each session was three minutes long and let me tell you, pressing on that button for three minutes is hard! Of course I did not place, but it was a fun six minutes!

While strolling around Container Park in Downtown Las Vegas, I stumbled upon a wrestling match and stopped to watch for a bit. I wonder if this is how The Rock got his start. Wrestling at these types of venues.

And that's a wrap for 2024! Oh wait, I do have one more post left -- a review of Circa, so please check that at well. Thanks for reading! I hope to visit Vegas in 2025 and will be better at posting on a timely basis and with better photos as well.

Read more from this trip (sort of):

• Universal Studios Summer 2024
• Disneyland Summer 2024

Main Street Station Room Review December 2023

 If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that we normally stay at The California Hotel and Casino when in Downtown Las Vegas. On this trip, the first night of our four-night stay was sold out, so instead of staying one night somewhere else and then moving back to the Cal, we opted to book the entire stay at Main Street Station, which is connected to the Cal via a pedestrian bridge. In addition, we haven't stayed at Main Street in many, many years, and the rooms were recently renovated, so I thought it was good time to check it out.

The rooms are very similar to the Cal. It's roughly the same size and the layout/furniture is pretty much the same. You have a tv that sits on a dresser that includes the safe and mini-fridge; you have a desk right next to the dresser; there are two chairs and a table/lamp; and the windows have shutters over them. Like the Cal. 

There's a bench near the entry way, right across from the bathroom. I really liked the bench as it was great to sit on while putting on my shoes. I liked the large mirror as well.

The closet has a pretty wallpaper.

The sink is outside of the toilet/shower and is open from the hallway/entry way.

The shower/toilet is very small. It feels a bit claustrophobic when you close the door and it's a bit dark in there as well.

Instead on individual containers, the shampoo, condition and body wash is mounted to the wall, like how other hotels are now doing.

So what are my thoughts? Although the room is very similar to the Cal, I do prefer the Cal, specifically the rooms in the what I call the mezzanine tower (vs. the Buddha Tower -- they are called the East and West towers, but I'm directionally challenged when it comes to using East and West). And it basically comes down to the bathroom. The bathroom in the mezzanine tower is much bigger and brighter. I didn't realize you can actually enjoy a bathroom space, but when we stayed at Mandalay Bay, I learned that a bathroom can definitely be an experience.

We actually spent only one night at Main Street. The air conditioner looked new, but man, was it loud! Every once in while, it would make really loud noises like gushing water and that woke us up a lot at night. The clincher was the toilet -- it didn't flush properly and was on the verge of overflowing if we weren't careful. 

The Hubz is a BIG fan of the Cal -- he thinks that Main Street is very far from Fremont Street and from the Cal itself (even though it's connected). So instead of calling down to fix the toilet or moving to a new room, he used it as an excuse to move to the Cal, which we did, and I'm not mad about that because of the small bathroom at Main Street. NOTE: We haven't in the Buddha Tower in a long time -- I think it's the original hotel tower when the Cal first opened -- and I recall the bathrooms in this tower to be similar to Main Street.

AFTER NOTE: When checking out, we did inform the front desk of the toilet issue. I hope they did send someone to fix it before the next guests checked in.

Not to say that Main Street Station is a horrible hotel. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros:

• Newly renovated rooms with an in-room mini refrigerator
• Connected to the Cal via a pedestrian bridge
• Smaller hotel, so even if your room is located at the end of the hall, it's not a far walk to the elevator
• Close enough to Fremont Street Experience, but far enough that you don't hear the noise from it
• Garden Court Buffett and Triple & Brewery
• Quieter casino

Cons:

• As of this post, table games are only open Friday - Sunday.
• Small bathroom
• Possible noise from passing trains, depending on where your room is situated

So not a lot of cons. The casino itself is beautiful with a Victorian theme. A lot of the decor are from different parts of the world. For example, a part of the Berlin Wall is installed in the men's bathroom; there are chandeliers from the San Francisco opera house and the Coca-Cola building in Austin, Texas, street lamps from Brussels, Belgium. You can pick up a brochure and take a self-guided tour of all the artifacts.

What are your thoughts? Have you stayed at Main Street? Leave you comments below!

More posts from this trip:

• Christmas Diary 2023
• Bellagio Conservatory Christmas 2023
• Vegas Food Diary December 2023