Tuesday Dec 21

 3:00 PM 

No rush this morning. Had a nice "Irish" breakfast at an Irish Pub in the Galleria shops between Luxor and Mandalay Bay. (There's an Irish band there tonight - we'll check it out). Then we walked, walked and walked some more, exploring Excalibur, NY NY and, across the street, the mind bogglingly large MGM Grand. (That's where to go if you're into sports betting).

We got back to Luxor around 2:00 after walking about 2 miles. We'll put our feet up for awhile before heading down to Treasure Island for our show this evening.

10:30 PM

Around 4:00, we took a Lyft ride down to Treasure Island. Our plan was for an early dinner before our Cirque de Soleil show. We had three restaurants in mind - there were all closed! Either they don't open on Monday/Tuesday or, in one case,  it appeared to be closed for good. We ended up at a quick food place we knew about called Snack in The Mirage, next door. Oh well, it was sustenance.

The Cirque de Soleil show ("Mystere") was unbelievable! The theater was quite large and appeared to be sold out. Its hard to describe the show - acrobatics, high flying, gymnastics, bizarre costumes, loud, live music.....it was great!

Returning by Lyft to Luxor, we stopped by the Irish Pub for a snack and the hear a set from these two guys doing Beatles and Irish songs. They were pretty good!

Wednesday Dec 22

Nice breakfast at the Pyramid Cafe in the hotel....although way too much to eat! Lyft ride to Bellagio to  explore that area of the Strip. While we have been somewhat disappointed at the lack of imagination for Christmas decorations, the presentation in the Bellagio's Conservatory is spectacular!

Then we walked, and walked, and walked some more. While the weather is quite nice, we spent most of the day inside. These places are enormous! We eventually ended up at the "Forum Shops", a giant high end mall attached to Caesar's Palace. We walked back by Bellagio's fountains but missed the show.

Back to our room to rest up before tonight's show.

9:00PM

Nice dinner of Stomboli and cannolies at a place here called The Slice. (We shared both!) Then off to our AGT show in the Luxor theater. Full house enjoyed a fun show, although it was unbearably LOUD! Many of the acts were familiar to us from the TV show. Most impressive was the final act - Dustin Tavella. We always thought he was a bit sappy with his stories, but his act was amazing!

Thursday Dec 23

Our flight doesn't leave until after 6PM tonight, so we parked our bags with the ball captain, had breakfast at the Pyramid Cafe again, and set off to the Excalibur next door to find the "Big Red Bus" for a city tour. Unfortunately, the weather would not cooperate. It was cold and drizzly so we didn't spend much on the open top level. Our tour guide was very entertaining!

The tour took over 2 hours so by the time we got back to the hotel it was time to head for the airport. The place was really busy! All flights are full. We'd heard about cancellations due to weather and Covid but all we noticed was a delay of about 30 minutes. We had to connect in Phoenix, uneventful. We got back to Boise about 1:00AM

Note to self: at 1:00AM in the Boise airport, when several planes had arrived about the same time, there are NO Uber or Lyft rides, nor any taxies. We wondered how we were going to get home! Finally, a cab showed up - cost us $50 bucks to get home!!

So, it was a fun trip! The Luxor is a fine hotel for a home base. The two shows we saw were great! We used Lyft exclusively to get around - that's a great system! Future readers of this post may not understand, but this is "Covid time". We were impressed that masking compliance everywhere we went was about 99.99%. Congratulations to everyone!