Day 10–We’ll always have Paris

I woke up at 6:30 this morning, even after being awake until after 2:00 last night.  Aryn woke up shortly before 8:00.  While she was getting ready I checked the show schedule and found that Celine Dion is in town tonight.  I want to see Penn & Teller, but thought Aryn might want to see Celine instead – turns out that was sound figuring.

We walked over to the Tix4Tonight booth, but they weren’t open until 10:00, so we continued to Imperial Palace for breakfast.  Imperial Palace is more of a cafeteria-style buffet, but it’s hard to mess up breakfast.  Aryn doesn’t believe that the guy in front of me took just as much bacon as I did.  Mmmm … bacon.

Then we went back for tickets.  I got my Penn & Teller ticket, but they had no discounts for Celine (not surprising), so it was off across the street to Ceaser’s to try the box office.  The $90 seat I’d seen available this morning wasn’t anymore (it was a single, lonely seat in the top section, with everything else there sold out), so we had to move up a level in price.

A long.  Very long.  Horrendously long tour of the Ceaser’s Forum Shops then commenced.  We looked through the Gucci, Versace, Costly, and Pricey stores – and that’s all I can remember.  The rest is a blur of ridiculous clothes and four-digit price tags.

Then over to Mandalay Bay, but the tiger/dolphin exhibit was $20 each and I’ve hit the entertainment budget for today, I think.  So back to the room for a rest before lunch … or might wait until dinner … that was a lot of bacon.  Mmmm … bacon …

We went to Flamingo for an early dinner.  Not much to speak of … Aryn and I agree that we’ll just stick with Paris tomorrow.  The other buffets are simply not up to that level … although, in the taxi today, the Wynn video makes their buffet sound pretty good, with a lot of the food being cooked to order at the stations.  Not on the Buffet of Buffets, though.

Aryn’s show was at 7:30 and mine at 9:00, but I left for mine early, planning to do some gambling at Rio beforehand.  I got there about 6:00 and had an hour to kill before the box office would open so I could get my seat assignment, so I headed for the casino.  I really wanted to play craps, but all of the tables were $15 minimum bets.  That’s a problem this trip, because I have a limited gambling budget – most of the money being earmarked for, well, the trip.  So with not wanting to gamble with more than $100 for the session, my style of craps play, with as many as six or seven bets outstanding at one time, could wipe out the bankroll in four rolls of the dice.

So I found a $5 Let It Ride table and played for an hour.  Lost about $40 and then went to get my seat for the show.  When I came back, I sat down at the other Let It Ride table, which turned out to be a $15 limit.  I went ahead and stayed, which turned out to be a good decision, since I was quickly up about $150.  Once that dropped below $100 after a few bad hands, I decided to call it quits and left $80 ahead.

Still with some time to kill, I wandered around Rio and stumbled across this year’s World Series of Poker – didn’t know that was this week or I’d have played a satellite game for the hell of it.

There were over a thousand tables in the ballroom for the tournament.

But only one Final Table.

On to Penn & Teller and a great show.