Sunday, October 20th<br><br>[color:blue] Casinos and Side Trips </font color=blue><br><br><br>The Venus Lounge sounds interesting, it's at the Venetian, it's one of hundreds in Vegas. <br><br>One of the the things i definitely wanted to do on the last trip, was go to and spend time in, lounges. Voo Doo lounge, ghost Bar, coyote Ugly, <br>Sky Lounge, see The Checkmates at Arizona Charlie's, Fontana Lounge, on and on. The only regret is, after time spent at the tables, there isn't enough time in a week to spend a lot of time in a lot of places. <br><br>One of the places i managed to spend a couple of hours, was the Rumjungle Bar at Mandalay bay. There was no live entertainment in the early evening, the entertainment was the bar itself. Conversation and sports bet talk with the bar tenders, other people's conversations around you, (were they bragging about their world travels ?) a society fix, that's what makes a great bar. The Rumjungle is isolated from the casino, which is unusual and located right near the West Entrance (back) valet parking. Long bar, with every kind of rum ever made, lighted to the ceiling on shelves behind the bar. Illuminated "fire" cascading from the walls, tables in shadows, not the place to stop into after a day at the casino and on the way back to the room, but a night destination, sexy class. The Rumjungle is a Brazilian style steak house, but at 9:30pm it transforms, opens up, into one of Vegas' top nightclubs. If you eat there, or are at the bar before that time, there's no cover charge for the nightclub, otherwise it's $20 and a waiting line. There's a dance floor with roped off table areas surrounding it, for celebrities/VIP's or available for more hundreds of dollars than i want to know about. The restaurant gets decent to very good reviews. <br><br>One of the "quick tour" episodes was at the Venetian. The WB Stage 16 Restaurant, keeping with the Vegas theme tradition, has a movie set theme. It was around 5pm and i think the restaurant just opened. A waiter walked by near the entrance when i went in and other than that there was absolutely nobody there; i took the opportunity to walk through it. The restaurant layout winds by a lot of small, unique, expensive. comfortable looking and hard to describe dining areas, with a changing lighting scheme. The back of the restaurant is open to about three floors high, the lighting simulates a night scene in the back streets of Manhattan tenements. A fire escape stairway, open to the restaurant scene below, zig zags up a brick wall to another floor of dining areas, interesting, Vegas different.<br><br>Well, what happens at the tables, all this time spent. It's not difficult to win, especially in Vegas, compared to other gambling venues, it's just difficult sometimes to come back from a trip winning. How many times has eveybody been ahead during a trip, maybe substantially and could have scaled back your playing level and won. How many people get up from a table with a small profit or loss, grind it out, quit while you're ahead. I agree, it's not fun. And, in the midst of the magic, the seduction, of Vegas, the shining light in the american desert, where the night never ends until you want it to, it's nearly impossible. <br><br>It's not that it's fun to lose. Maybe it's more accurately stated that it's no fun to stop winning.<br><br>Today was moving day from
Terrible's Hotel and Casino <br><br>(Sunday, October 20th, to be continued)
