Vegas Day 3

We got up and had coffee and a muffin before heading over to T-Mobile centre to get our tickets. Oddly enough, there was still no line-up even though it was only a few minutes until they opened. This does not bode well. When the windows opened up, we were informed that there were no tickets left. None. Well, not quite true, there were three. One for $200, one for $600 and one for over $1,000. And all in different sections. 

“What?” we said, “How can that be?”

“Well,” the fellow said “It is the season opener”

Ohhhhh...we thought it was the last pre-season game. This changes things. 

He told us that actually, there were a few nosebleed, standing room only seats left at the very top, with obstructed views, but you could still see the Jumbo-tron, in the $200 range. We looked at each other and thought, no, that’s not much fun.  So the fellow said that we could try again tomorrow at 10 AM as the NHL sometimes would release a small block of seats, and also season ticket holders would sometimes have a seat to sell, at a lot more than face value though. Steven was very disappointed, but we said we’d try the next day. Good thing the arena is only a stone’s throw away from our hotel.

We went for a long walk up the strip with one of our couples and did some people-watching before meeting the rest of our group at breakfast.  Today is the one year anniversary on the shooting in Las Vegas where 58 people died and over 400 were injured, thus the flags are at half staff and the lights of the city are supposed to dim between 10 and 10:15 tonight as that’s how long the shooting lasted.

We left our peeps in mid-afternoon to head to Fremont Street.

So. Fremont Street. Old, classic vegas, I love it there. Glitter Gulch from back in the day. Gangsters, mobsters, mafia. As a matter of fact, that was the main reason I wanted to go there, to see the new Mobster Museum.

We got our taxi driver to let us out at the end of Fremont and we figured we’d walk down the other end, and hopefully see the museum within sight.  We spotted a new (to us) store, The Jerky Store. It must have had 10,000 different kinds of jerky....every flavour and animal you could think of. Even kangaroo and snake jerky. Of course we partook of the jerky experience, but not the snake. I’d have tried a sample if it were free, but I didn’t want to pay for snake. 

Anyhow, we left the store and looked right and there was the Mob Museum. So easy to find, even for map challenged people such as me.

It was so amazing. I loved it!. Three floors in the old, original courthouse/justice building filled with interactive displays, movies and original and gruesome items, such as the electric chair from Sing-Sing (Old Sparky), the chair with straps and stains from the gas chamber (it took 9 minutes to slowly die...ugh), the original wall complete with bullet holes and faded blood stains from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre as well as hundreds of other interesting items. 

Then, to continue the mobster theme, we decided to go for dinner at the El Cortez, the oldest, continually running restaurant in Las Vegas, it opened in 1941 and was opened by none other than Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. And they still serve the ubiquitous Vegas prime rib dinner. $12.99.

You have to have a Vegas prime rib when in Vegas.

 
After that we wandered the semi-disreputable streets, watched the buskers and odd-balls, stopped in at a place where our taxi driver suggested we go,  and Steven won himself a nice jackpot. So thanks, unknown taxi-driver! Actually, the taxi-driver had said we should try the 4-D Wheel of Fortune machine, and when Steven sat down to play,  because he is blind in one eye the 4-D doesn’t work for him, so I told him he may as well move and I’d play it. He sat beside me, on the next machine, and won! Meant to be I guess.  

We weren’t comfortable walking around with the hand-pay money in our pockets, too many people had watched the pay-out, so we grabbed a cab and came back to our hotel. It was a great day!