Las Vegas Weekend with Adele

Six weeks ago Marci and I flew together from Denver to Las Vegas to see Adele in her residency at Caesar's Palace on her penultimate weekend. We got to see her 88th show on the 8th of June. 

Marci booked us a room at the Venetian where she's stayed for work conferences. If you look at a map it appears it's right across the street from Caesar's Palace, but as I quickly learned, nearly nothing in Vegas is a straight walk. Add to that the 105 degree temps that weekend, and we used Lyft rides to get almost everywhere. 

The Venetian

We did walk over to Caesar's (which is where I learned how long it takes and how hot it feels) to visit the Adele boutique that is only open on the weekends of her shows to get the exclusive poster that was designed and dated just for that weekend. They usually sell out, so I wanted to be sure and acquire one and not have to wag it around at the concert.

this is a partial view of the Venetian -- the hotels are gigantic malls built around casinos in the hopes you'll check in and never leave. 

That evening we visited the Neon Museum where the old signs of defunct places around the Strip are housed.

then we hopped over to the Mob Museum which was already closing, but has a speakeasy called The Underground in the basement that we enjoyed with its live jazz music and souvenir cocktails

Marci's cocktail came with a bathtub while mine arrived hidden in a box that looks like a book.

Once we got back to the hotel, we stopped off at the top of the parking garage to take in the Sphere's projections 

Saturday morning we got out of the tourist Strip for a hearty breakfast at a local diner that's been going since 1968 with very little changed inside. They also make their own homemade jellies that were so good we ended up bringing jars back home with us.

Then we visited the Bellagio to see their botanic gardens

We returned to the Venetian and took one of the indoor gondola rides through the mall section before cooling off in the room until it was time to get to Adele

Adele was, as always, spectacular. Video is below the still photos. 

We are in this first pic below, as the gigantic screens flipped the cameras around to the audience during one number. We are on the first row of the top balcony left of center and about four people in before you get to the person standing against the rail. I'm in teal and you can see me filming. 

The production values were incredible all around. 

Those 32 squares below are the live orchestra!

(proposal/engagement moment)

During "Set Fire to the Rain" the grand piano is actually lit on fire (in the video, no still shots) 

At one point she comes out and walks through the audience chatting. She shot a couple of autographed t-shirts wrapped around $50 into the balcony and pulled one lucky seat number from a bingo container containing all the seats in the balcony and invited that person with one companion to come down and sit on the front row, where she chatted with them a good bit. 

In another lit paper lanterns dance from the ceiling (again, in the video)

And then there was the confetti. It rains down to the main floor during a couple of numbers. The Polaroid confetti of her photos arrives during "When We Were Young" with the hearts arriving at the very end number "Love is a Game" when she disappears through a trap door under a ginormous cloud of heart confetti. 

Of course, being in the balcony meant none of it fell on us, but I'd read if we made our way to the ground floor, ushers would be handing it out to people who wanted some, so that what we did. 

My haul laid out on the hotel bed that evening

Since we were on the front row in Denver back in 2016, I'd kept all the handwritten confetti notes with our physical tickets we had to pick up thanks to getting them through the verified fan sale (with the spectacular price for front row tix of $149.95 printed on them). After bringing home the Weekend poster and framing it with the concert confetti, I decided to pull out the 2016 stuff and frame it as well with a few photos of Sam & Amber and I popped in for good measure. 

Sunday we managed to get a bit lost trying to find the entrance to the monorail so we could get up north to meet up with a high school friend of ours who saw my Instagram post and messaged to say she and her family were also in town at a convention. 

And after she had to get back to the convention, we located the last place in Vegas where there are still slot machines that take quarters and have actual handles to pull and the old sounds I've heard in every movie set in Vegas. It's called Slots o'Fun and is owned by Circus Circus, in a small building to the side of their complex (admittedly, quaintly small compared to the behemoths south and out of Vegas city limits by design.

I had brought my stash of quarters along just for this and managed to win a couple of bucks

We headed back to The Venetian to check out and get a car back to the airport for the ride home. Once boarded on our plane, I spotted the Florida state plane pulling in nearby. 

On the flight home I happily watched this desert wasteland become snowy mountains on the way home

Like my last trip when I went to Floirda and missed the aurora borealis from my Loveland backyard, this weekend ended up being, at the last minute, the time Nick was in town to coach at a nearby football camp. He flew in the night I'd landed in Vegas and was heading back the night I flew home, so we at least managed a dinner at the Moonlight Diner near the airport once I made it back.