Day 1 Sunday - January 29, 2012

Aside from getting up at 4:30 am, our day starts off pretty mellow. Arrive at MHT which is pretty dead so we whisk through security and get to our gate pretty early. Flight from MHT to DEN is non-eventful but we watch Real Steel which is basically the machine version of Rocky but pretty good.
I'm not sure how it is that when I research flight info, it always looks OK but then when we travel I always seem to think "What the hell was I thinking?". A +3 hour layover in Denver makes ponder the previous question....
Well we finally depart Denver and are 2 short hours from Vegas. Plane ride is uneventful and we grab our things and get in the taxi line which is the longest I've seen it from the last couple of trips. On our way, we have a great cabbie who chats with us a little so he knows we've been before so he doesn't take the tunnel out of the airport and attempt to overcharge us.....Get to the Flamingo and check-in is smooth but our room is not quite ready so we drop our bags at the bell desk and head out.
First stop is Planet Hollywood to get tickets to the BeatleShow for Monday....done. Next we continue down to the MGM to see the Lion Habitat which is in its last couple if days. We saw 2 huge lions with their keepers just laying around above the viewing walkway. I don't think the pictures will be any good as the glass (or plexi) that is used is pretty worn and scratched. Dave and I were actually a little bummed to see the small space they had and we're curious as to where they will be going as I did not read about that but we can only hope that it will be better.
Since I wasn't really interested in gambling here, we started our trek back towards our hotel to see if our room was ready. As we're walking, we both are commenting on how bad our legs and feet will hurt tomorrow. Of course they'll hurt a lot less if we win big....we'll see.
So heading back to the hotel we decide to stop in Bill's and try our luck at some $5 black jack tables. I don't do so well but Dave comes out a little ahead so overall we are only slightly down at this point.
Head back to the Flamingo to pick our room keys and there's a few people in line but they only have a couple of agents serving this area and it seems like everyone has a problem. Almost 30 minutes later I finally get the keys, we go to the room and call for our bags. The room is a Go-room and it is clean and adequate. Dave & I do the usual sweep of the room to make sure it meets standards and all appears to be good. We do find out later that the slider to the bathroom isn't quite working right and takes a bit of muscle to move but later on I decide that's not acceptable and after inspecting the door, I see it's off the track and with a little lift and wiggle, I put it back on track........yeah! Dave is on vacation so I it was up to me to get it fixed!!!!!
After getting settled we head out to the Fashion show mall to go to Strip Burger which I have a certificate for. It's obviously a burger joint and I tried the southwest burger while Dave got the Mexican burger and we got some Garlic Herb fries to split. These fries were amazing....I almost put my burger down and only ate the fries!!!!! It was also too much for us and so we ate what we could and waddled our way back towards the Flamingo.
We stopped along the way to find $5 bj tables and found some at Imperial Palace which we played for a while but Dave didn't so good here and I only walked away $10 up but considering I was almost out at one point, I'll take it. We then headed back to Bill's cause Dave still had his chips. Again we played for a while but nothing to really show for it so we headed back to the Flamingo and played a little bit of slots. I started with $20 and it seemed like I was quickly down to about $2 but I was able to cash out at $22 and since I was getting tired, we called it a night.
I was feeling nervous about how bad my legs would feel in the morning so I soaked in the tub for a while in some nice hot water. Feeling better, we fell asleep about 11:00 pm which may be early in Vegas terms but for us and the three hour difference it was already 2:00 am!