adventures – Behind the Smile

Last summer, my friend and I bought tickets to see the Backstreet Boys at their winter residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. It FINALLY rolled around this past weekend and Malv and I met up at the airport at 8am on Friday (having already flown there from our subsequent opposite-ends-of-the-country locations) to begin 48 hours of Vegas ridiculousness.

We were able to get into our hotel rooms early so we dropped our suitcases off and headed to the strip. We got coffee at the hotel Starbucks (every hotel has a Starbucks, it seems like!) and made our way south. On the way we stopped at the M&M store, walked through MGM Grand and New York New York and the high end shops at the Aria before arriving at our destination: The Tea Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental.

This particular hotel did not exist when I was last in LV (that I am aware of). Back in 2009, they were just building the Aria complex. I don’t remember the Mandarin Oriental, but dudes it’s swanky. Just checked their website and they are a “triple five-star hotel” …whatever that means. But it’s super nice. The tea room is on the 23rd floor with views overlooking the strip.

We have a history of going to high tea and have tried many of the tea rooms around the Bay Area. I had asked Malv about what she wanted to do (since this trip was my idea and we were also going to the Neon Museum and the flagship Taco Bell. As one does.) and she came up with high tea! I hadn’t even thought about it, but what a good idea. And I would say that this one ranks towards the top for everything. You have to grade on a three part scale – ambience, how good the tea is, and how good the food is. This place gets top marks on all!

By far my favorite thing was the curried egg salad croissants – so tasty! The next best was the chicken salad in the little savory cones, topped by asian pear. An exquisite combo of flavors – we both agreed we could have eaten more than one! The scones were delicious and they provided authentic Devonshire cream, jam, and lemon curd. The desserts were fine but I definitely liked the savory plate better. At any rate, solid A experience, would go again, highly recommended.

After that, we went through several of the resorts on the way back to the hotel (and Sephora) where I guess it was Chinese New Year and there were some truly beautiful displays!

After this we were getting a wee bit tired (our concert was at 9pm so we still had to be up for awhile) so we headed back to the hotel. Stopped at Walgreens because I had, once again, forgotten to bring my brush on a trip, and Malvina saw one of her favorite brands in the extended beauty section. Then we went into the SEPHORA, our home away from home.

(We laughed later because here we had traveled hundreds of miles to spend time together in a different city than where we live, and what did we do? All our usuals: high tea, Sephora, Taco Bell…. the Taco Bell dates back to the 90’s so, hahahaha)

Now, full confession, I had just been to Sephora the week before and gotten a few things with my cousin. But that wasn’t going to stop me this time! I got the new White Peach eyeshadow palette from Too Faced, and Malvina got a bunch of things (two lipsticks I think?) and a nail polish set (I may have gotten the same set the week before…)

Then we were back up to our room, then down to the Taco Bell to grab dinner, then back up to eat and get ready for

**~*~*~*~*~~~***THE BACKSTREET BOYS***~~~*~*~*~*~**

Because we are forever 19 at heart.

They were so so fantastic!!!

At one point before it started, the audience started to lose their minds opposite where we were sitting. Turns out that Shania Twain was there! We saw her come down to the VIP seats in front of us with her bodyguards. She took some selfies with the people down there and seemed nice (from thirty feet away, haha).

this one’s from Malvina too… such an awesome shot of the last moments of the show!

We didn’t get to bed until 1am…. so it was a 22 hour day! We were zonked and didn’t get up till 10 a.m. We headed over to Paris Hotel to have the brunch buffet which was fine but not spectacular. After that we jumped on the monorail and then caught a city bus to Fremont Street, which is the old downtown. We were not super impressed, there is a definite seediness to that area that was not our jam. Nothing happened or anything, just the amount of panhandlers and whatnot was a lot higher than down in the area we were staying. We got Dunkin’ (and when they forgot to make our drinks, the poor counter lady made me take what we dubbed “apology donuts”…she felt bad and I didn’t yell at her, just asked about the drinks so she made me take them).

We found a quiet area away from the smoke and sat for a bit – and off-brand Skyped with Malv’s littles, who were eating dinner and being cute! After that we decided to go back to the Golden Nugget (where it felt a little safer… not that we weren’t safe, just it was a little less rundown-ish? I dunno) and grab a cab, except we noticed a couple of random cabs in the street and grabbed one and headed to the Neon Museum!!

The Neon Museum (or, Neon Boneyard) is a non-profit dedicated to saving old neon signs from Las Vegas’ colorful history. The signs are rare now, because LED lights have overtaken everything as they are more reliable, more colorful, and take less energy. Neon, since it’s a gas, is also fairly unstable, so anywhere that does have neon lights has to have a local artisan who can create and fix them.

My favorite fun fact that I learned (besides the above, obviously) is that the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign was designed by a woman, Betty Willis! She was one of the only female sign designers of the times (1950s) and that is just amazing. They had another of her signs at the museum as well.

Our tour was scheduled for 6pm because if you book a night tour they turn on the neon lights of the restored signs. The tours are guided and I believe $26 each (cheaper if you go during the day). You can only book online ahead of time; they do not allow for walk-ins. It was easy to book though, you just go to their website and buy the tickets, and they had our wristbands waiting at the front desk.

Our tour guide was pretty great and dropped a lot of neon knowledge on us. And the signs were so cool to see up close!

All in all, a great experience! We had a great time and it was awesome seeing each other. It’s so hard when your BFFs live so far away! But stuff like this – it’s so worth it in the long run.

Plus, you know, we fulfilled a wish of our teenaged selves – see our favorite boy band!!! hahahahaha

On Saturday, the sestra and I went to the Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco! I had heard about this hyped event several months ago when it was in LA. I had thought it would be a fun thing to go do on one of my trips there, but as it turned out, it was completely sold out! Also expensive. But already sold out! You have to buy tickets online and you can’t just go there and expect to buy tickets at the door on some random day.

So, I subscribed to their mailing list to see when/where their next pop-up would appear and lo – the next one was San Francisco, a convenient 30-min Bart ride from the East Bay.

I could not get tickets. They sold out in like a half hour and by the time I got to the website (two hours after they went on sale) the tickets were gone. So, I got on the waiting list AGAIN.

Third time’s the charm, y’all, because a month after that, when they extended the SF installation, I finally got tickets for December 2.

Basically, this is an art installation, not really a museum. Also… it’s kind of a place to just take a bunch of pictures for Instagram, not even gonna lie. Anyway, despite this truly hipster social event, we enjoyed ourselves.

They gave us four treats while in there: A strawberry It’s-It, cherry flavored cotton candy, “unicorn” soft serve (the cone was dipped in a candy coating or something), and peppermint Pop Rocks. You get these treats as you wind your way through the various rooms, which were all very pink and candy coated.