Where do I begin? What an amazing time I had out West. The flight was wonderful. The weather was wonderful. The company was wonderful. The food…..ugh, wonderful.
Tim and Joe are the consummate hosts. Tim had a full day of sight seeing planned for us on Thursday which included Mulholland Drive, Hollywood and Highland and of course, Beverly Hills. Below are some snapshots from those locations.
We also got to taste the world famous Sprinkle’s cupcakes. Oh My God. These things were ginormous and worth every single calorie/gram of fat that was in them. I opted for the Carrot Cake - complete with shredded carrots and giant walnut pieces. Did I mention the cream cheese icing? These things were delicious. I even went back into the shop to tell the girls that I flew all of the way out there for a Sprinkle’s cupcake – not a complete lie. I’m trying to find a way to get a store out here in PA – this place would be a success!
After we all were in our sugar-induced coma, we decided a nice walking tour down Rodeo Drive would be great….you know, to see how the other half lives. The first indication we were someplace different was the canary yellow Rolls Royce parked on Rodeo. I wanted to touch it, sit in it, lay in it, drive in it. It was lovely. I, of course, found a lot of items I had to have….Louis Vuitton purse, Hermes jewelry, Armani clothes. Lord help you if you are trying to cut shopping out of your life….this place would not be good for you.
Here’s where things start to get blurry. Not due to alcohol or anything like that. It was just there was so much stuff going on that I really can’t remember the sequence of events.
We drove to Vegas late Thursday night. On our way out of LA, we stopped at In N Out. Hands down the best hamburger I have had. And even though I was still stuffed from the smorgasbord of food we have already consumed that day, I managed to split a cheeseburger and fries with Joe’s Aunt Sandy. Joe’s Uncle Frank had a “moment” in Rancho Cucamonga (a.k.a. Rancho Cucafungus)– stunk up the whole AM/PM Mini Mart. Scratch that – stunk up the whole Rancho Cucamonga. In fact, it still smelled on our way BACK from Vegas. We did give him a nice round of applause as he exited the building though.
Driving into Vegas is one of the most memorable things. Just the lights and everything is so overwhelming. You really do forget what time it is there. So many things happened in Vegas – and not even of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” variety. Just a whole lot of things going on at once. Sight seeing, pool lounging, drinks, food, food, drinks. We went to see The Blue Man Group at the Venetian Hotel…..the show was amazing and hilarious. I didn’t expect it to be what it turned out to be. I thought they were more of just a percussion group – but the performance was amazing!
Saturday evening brought the rental of a party bus (Thanks Joe!). Originally it was rented for 3 hours but Joe’s sister got it for an additional hour. This bus was loaded – wet bars, flat screen TV’s, flashing lights, stripper pole. And yes we made good use of the pole. A whole lot of non-coordinated white people swinging around on every bar that existed in that bus….it was so much fun.
Out hotel was cool. We stayed at Excalibur. We never let the cleaning lady come into our room to clean….and as such, our room smelled like a dead hooker. At one point, Joe thinks he spotted blood on the carpet from previous occupants. Um ewwww! We even stole additional towels from their carts as they cleaned the other rooms, piling them neatly in the bathroom. I thought we should leave the Privacy Please sign on the door even after we left Vegas – hoping the cleaning team would think there was a dead hooker in our room. I mean, the smell in the room already indicated that someone had died in there, so chances were good that they would be thinking that. I made a sign for them, just so they couldn’t miss where we had placed the dead hooker.
We made our way back to LA Sunday night. What a fun drive that was – sitting in the back of Tim’s car with 2 other adults through a wind and dust storm
Joe and Tim saved the best for last Monday. For lunch, they took us to their favorite place: Picanha in Burbank. The concept of this restaurant is all you can eat meat and sides, Brazilian style. The buffet part of it was simply to die for. My two favorites: the mashed potatoes and the bananas. The potatoes were so creamy with chunks of potato still in them. The banana’s – candy coated deliciousness. Once you are at your table, you control how much meat you get with a little wooden marker – colored green, yellow, and red. Green tells the meat servers “bring it on with the meat”, yellow tells them “check back every so often” and red tells them “no more for me, I'm in the middle of a coronary”. While the marker is on green, a barrage of services come to your table with skewers of meat including top sirloin, picanha steak, polish sausage, Brazilian sausage, garlic chicken, and parmesan chicken. This meat was so tender and yummy. Did I forget the little cheese puff breads? This place was the best. You had to pace yourself though. One word of caution though: if you are not a huge meat eater like myself, you may want to ease yourself into a place like this. I surely paid for it as soon as my plane touched down in Pittsburgh Tuesday morning. At least it waited until then and not while I was flying over the Midwest, which would certainly force me to use those horrible airplane restrooms. NO THANKS!
And now for some things you might here in Vegas:
"I feel like a million dollar hoe"
"You know you CAN drink in your room"
"Come on ride the tram"
"4 day old Sprinkle's cupcakes...that's gnat-sty"
"Tai-wan-kwon"
"I'm going to have to have sex with Juan Valdez to work this out"
"Turn the air on. Turn the air off. Turn the music up! Turn it down!"
"Bi-racial porn, ugly porn, and adultery porn"
I've had some pretty great times in my life, but this trip definitely took the cake (or cupcake as it were).
