The airplane was thirty minutes late arriving and, as you would expect, thirty minutes late departing.

I take these deviations from schedule as a part of doing business but it seems that at least half of the flights I take are behind schedule. I can't think of any that have been early. And when they are behind why doesn't the airline offer something to show that they're sorry. A cookie, a coupon, beverage service with an extra smile, just something.

Another thing, why can't we use iPods during take off? I find it extremely difficult to believe that even a planeful of iPods are going to cause problems and, if they do, why not use better shielding on whatever is being interfered with? Which brings up another question that struck me as I wandered through the airport...would people that stutter, stutter if they were using sign language? Wait...better not get off on a tangent...

Vegas is Vegas. Even though it was rainy and cold when we arrived, everybody arriving at the airport appeared excited and happy, everybody leaving looked tired and depressed.

After waiting in a quarter mile line for a taxi (which snaked back and forth on the sidewalk but only took about twenty minutes to navigate) we were finally on our way. We had a great taxi driver this time, who made pleasant and fairly unobtrusive small talk and only asked us once if we were going to visit the strip clubs.

We stayed at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. This was our first stay here since Landry's (yes, the restaurant chain) bought them out. The Nugget, as us Vegas aficionados refer to it, is the nicest hotel downtown but it pales in comparison to most of the resorts on the Strip. However it is much less expensive, almost as comfortable, and you see fewer college guys of the Abercrombie & Fitch shirt wearing, baseball cap turned around backward, crowd. There are fewer babes too, but still a healthy supply. Be warned...most are married and their husbands are lurking somewhere nearby.

The line to check in was too long, but this is the first time we have ever had that problem and so I will not gripe but assume it was a fluke.

The room we had this time was in the north tower, which you rarely get on a bargain rate. To be honest, the room was a little bigger but the bathroom was a little smaller. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. The room is comfortable but, this being corporate Vegas now, an internet connection costs you $11.95 a day and they want twenty bucks a day to use their gym. Okay, okay, those of you who know me are giggling now but I was really considering getting up in the mornings and hitting the treadmill to get loosened up for that day's walking. But not at twenty bucks. That's a pass line bet with odds at craps, a couple of small blackjack bets, or a healthy raise at poker.

We decided we wanted to eat at some of the nicer places this go around and so for our first night my buddy had booked reservations at Vic and Anthony's, the steakhouse owned by Landry's and located in the Nugget.

Good choice.

For those of you who prefer the 99 cent ½ pound hot dogs and the buffet at Circus Circus, this is not the restaurant for you. It is expensive. Not kick your teeth in, fall to the floor gasping expensive, but still expensive.

Our waitress, Annette, was very, very good. Even though she repeatedly turned down our invitation to join us for dinner, she did so with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. She was ever present but entirely unobtrusive. Water glasses were always full and empty plates sat on the table just long enough for us to quit picking at them, but not long enough for me to get my shirt sleeve in the left over food.

For an appetizer I ordered the recommended crab cake and my friend had cold water oysters from off the coast of Oregon. There is a distinct difference in flavor between oysters from the Gulf of Mexico and the cold water oysters we've tried. Gulf oysters are usually bigger, saltier and stronger. The cold water oysters seem to be a little sweeter and more delicate. The oysters were served with the standard, ketchup and horseradish based cocktail sauce and a thin liquid that looked like soy sauce but had a distinct cucumber flavor. I'm not a big cucumber fan but this sauce matched the oysters perfectly.

The crab cake was filled with huge lumps of crab, held together with mayonnaise and just a little filler, then coated with panko bread crumbs and lightly fried. A light aioli sauce was drizzled over the cake, the a mound of lump crab meat was placed on top of it. Chives topped it off. Excellent.

We decided to skip soup and each ordered a salad. I had one with mixed greens, blue cheese, pear slices and candied pecans covered in a light vinaigrette of some type.  It was also top notch and extremely flavorful.

My friend had the wedge salad with Roquefort crumbles and a creamy Roquefort dressing. Undoubtedly the best wedge salad and dressing I had ever tasted. A wedge salad is hard to do correctly, in my opinion because the iceberg lettuce has almost no flavor, but this place succeeded and displaced Truluck's as my favorite.

Next, for the main course, we ordered the specials which was a 16 ounce ribeye topped with a lobster tail that had been removed from it's shell, coarsely chopped, and sautéed with herbs and a few pieces of onions. The lobster was then put back into the shell for service and topped with a variation of a Bearnaise sauce.

The steak was perfect but the lobster missed its' mark.

The ribeye was the best steak I have ever had in my life, bar none. Cooked to a perfect medium rare, seasoned in such a way that you could taste the seasonings but they did nothing to cover the steak, it was absolutely incredible.

The lobster was a different story. The sauce served over the lobster was seasoned waaaaaaaaay too heavily. I couldn't identify the flavor, I guess my palate is not as developed as I thought, but it overpowered the lobster completely and there was just too much sauce. In the whole meal though, this was the only misfire.

I finished with Kona coffee and crème brulee, which was also excellent.

Even though they missed completely on the lobster dish I would have to give Vic and Anthony's 4.5 out of 5.

Full to the eyeteeth and just a little inebriated from the wine and drinks with dinner we staggered off and crashed.

Oh!

And the gambling?

Let's reverse time for a bit.

We had an hour to kill before supper and so we hit what used to be the Horseshoe, our favorite casino and the mecca for Hold-em Poker players.

As many of you know, Harrah's (curse them forever and we suggest a boycott of their properties) bought out the Binion family, moved the World Series of Poker from its' birthplace to the Strip, and promptly sold it off.

They have also changed the name from the Horseshoe to Binion's, removed all of the lucky Horseshoe carpeting, added more lights, taken out most of the table games and replaced them with slots that don't pay worth a crap, and gotten rid of a lot of the old staff who made the place what it was. We still played craps for a little while, lost a couple of hundy (which isn't unusual), then headed to dinner, feeling like we'd lost an old friend.

The Horseshoe was the first Vegas casino I ever gambled in, where I learned to play casino poker back before it got popular, and to me epitomized what Vegas was about. Now it's corporate too.

Oh well, lots of casinos, lots of stuff to do.

Next: A trip to The Art of Shaving  lunch buffet at the Bellagio, and more gambling.