Best and Worst of Vegas: vacation recap

So, we got to Mandalay Bay and discovered that they'd apparently overbooked our room and gave us a penthouse suite. No joke. We had a swank living room, huge marbled bathroom and tub with superjets, four flat screen TVs including one in the bathroom, remote control curtains, glowing light under the bathroom sink bar, flowers on the bed with turn-down service. The view was incredible: we were higher up than the peak of the pyramid at Luxor. We will never stay anywhere this nice again. (I hope I'm wrong.)

Also, Mandalay Bay as a certain smell, which I'm surprised we didn't notice last time. It's subtle, but if you think about it, the air in the common areas (minus the casino) smells like the tropics. It's fresh, with hints of vanilla and something floral, like pikake. We did a smell test in other hotels and didn't notice anything like this. They must've spent a fortune on this feature.

As everyone knows, Vegas can be really tacky. Incredible tacky. Criminally tacky. The trick to avoid tackiness is to stay somewhere that is a resort first, casino second. Mandalay's casino isn't nearly as busy as others, but its 11-acre "beach" complex is obviously the reason people stay there. We'd walk around and experience the tackiness on the Strip, but it was nice to go back and retreat to somewhere...nice. And there is nothing like 3 hours at the "beach" every day.

And it was a good thing that everything was so nice, because I got food poisoning on Wed, our anniversary. I have never had food poisoning before, and hope to never again, especially being sick and then having to fly. I don't want to repeat that flight or the hours leading up to it. Still recouping, though much better thankfully.

UPDATE -- Intestinal Flu
Ray started his round of the nastiness late Friday night. Food poisoning? Nope...Sheila correctly diagnosed intestinal flu which recently flattened her household. Now we're just hoping August doesn't follow our lead. Bought Pedialyte just in case.