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Day 5: Saturday 21st April (part 2, the Luxor) 
It was fantastic fun making a grand entrance into the hotel lobby, it was as though Heather and I were famous and Ashley was our bodyguard. We went straight to the main desk to check in, only to be told our room wasn't ready. We had booked a jacuzzi suite in the corner of the pyramid which meant you could sit in the hot tub and have a grand view of Vegas. The assistant manager apologised for the delay and said we could either wait for our room, or he did have a suite on the top floor that we could have at no extra cost if we would like to see it. We took the key and made our way up in the lift, or "inclinator" as they called them (they run at an angle along the pyramid walls, very strange experience) to see what this suite was like. It was, in fact, larger than our 2 bedroom flat in London, and totally luxurious. We were 30 floors up, right in the middle of the front facing side of the hotel, looking down directly onto the sphinxs' back. The suite had a bar, 2 toilets (one in the bathroom and one in the powder room), 2 huge televisions, a video machine, a stereo, an enormous king-size bed, a shower big enough for 10 people, a jet bath that just about held two people, and twin sinks in the bathroom. Most hotels provide you with shampoo and soap, this suite had about 20 different bottles of soaps, shampoos, after shave, razors, toothbrushes etc., and they also provided embroidered bath robes and slippers. Much as I was looking forward to a jacuzzi we decided to take the top floor suite instead. 
After calling for our bags to be brought up we decided that a well earned drink was in order so we took the inclinator back down to the hotel floor. Still dressed in our smart clothes we wandered around looking like we owned the place until we found a convenient bar and sat down with a few cocktails to plan the rest of the day. The first idea was to make full use of our sumptuous suite and order a slap up meal from room service, even though there was only one vegetarian option on the menu (pizza) we were sure a top hotel like this would be able to rustle something up, so after a few more cocktails we went back up to our room to order some food. How wrong we were, the kitchen refused to make anything that was not on the menu which, when you consider how expensive it is to stay at the Luxor, we thought was a pretty poor show, an opinion we later passed on to the management. Instead, we opted to stay in the hotel and go to one of the restaurants on the mezzanine called Papyrus. This turned out to be a wonderful choice because we had one of the best meals any of us had ever eaten. The menu was mixed oriental, with several vegetarian dishes, so everyone was happy. Our waiter, who didn't have the best grasp of the english language, patiently listened to what Heather could and couldn't eat, asking her to repeat things until he fully understood what she wanted, and generally couldn't do enough to help us. We had a glass of champagne each to start our meal, and then a nice bottle of white wine to wash our food down with. And what food it was, everything was cooked perfectly and was absolutely delicious. We spent a long time in the restaurant, savouring our food and wine, getting steadily drunker, until we thought it was finally time to do some serious gambling downstairs. 
None of us had played anything other than the slot machines since we arrived, and we were looking forward to spending some dollars on the roulette tables. Playing roulette turned out to be great fun, we chose a table that had a $10 minimum bid and, after a brief lesson on how to play, we bought some chips and started playing. To spread the game out we played one at a time so we lost all our money over a couple of hours, except Heather who (typically) walked away with about $40 profit. All the time you are playing waitresses are bringing you free drinks so it was more the fact that none of us could see straight anymore that influenced our decision to stop playing. Heather and I politely declined Ashley's request to spend the night on our couch (he said it was more comfortable than his bed at the hotel) and said goodbye to him after making sure he knew when we would pick him up the next day, and retired to our room. We had only been there about five minutes when the phone rang to say they had a gift for us and would bring it up as soon as they could. The gift turned out to be a bottle of our favourite champagne from Ashley, and a couple of huge chocolate coated strawberries. Heather and I sat down with a glass of champers each and watched our wedding video on one of the huge T.V.s in the lounge area of our suite, and eventually slipped into a very inebriated sleep at about 1 a.m. |
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