Vegas: A review of the ridiculousness and Stratta condemned

Let me just say the Vegas is crazy. I was on stimulation overload for the first few days. It is a lot to take in all at once. Especially at night. And especially on the strip. It was fun, but I think after a full seven days in Las Vegas, I needed a vacation from my vacation.

Don't get me wrong, our resort was amazing! The only drawback was they gouged you every chance they get. Which is not surprising considering the deals we got on our hotel stay. I think if we went again (which is likely to happen, but not anytime soon) I think it would be for a few days in the middle of the week. The weekend was crazy.

Unfortunately, once we got there, we decided that we should try to keep our food costs low, which meant not trying some of the buffets on the strip and nice dinners at the resort, but we did manage to find one gem while we were there, which I will proceed not to talk about at all (later my friends).

So, on our anniversary, I had brought a killer pair of heels and decided to find a killer outfit to go with while I was there. I got this gorgeous dress from Banana Republic at the outlets (can I get an amen for some great outlets!?) I wish I had a picture of us all dressed up for the evening, but it's on Matt's phone. :( We had tickets for The Phantom of the Opera that night and late dinner reservations. We were almost late for Phantom because my hair and make up took too long, but we got there right before it started. I was thoroughly enjoying it until I got a good dose of the Phantom. I am planning a dedicated post to this monstrosity, but let me just say that I did not have a good time.

After the show, we walked back to our hotel and had dinner at a Restaurant called Stratta.

It's supposed to be an Italian place in the Wynn which is attached to the Encore (which we stayed in). Any way, we had gotten several glowing remarks about how wonderful it was and decided that where we would celebrate our five years of marriage. I had made a reservation but we still had to wait fifteen minutes for our table. And fifteen minutes on growing blisters (because that's the price for wearing killer heels and walking in them all over creation) was not pleasant.

After we were seated, our waitress started completely ignoring us, only showing up once every twenty minutes or so (I actually checked). Our food was slow to come and at this point it was very late and I'm very hungry. And the food was lackluster. It could've been that our waitress was incompetent and absent or it could've been the copious amounts of smoke pouring in from the casino. Or it could've been the fact that the restaurant offered no privacy or atmosphere whatsoever.

Whoever designed it should have been fired. The restaurant was on the corner of the casino and a very popular thoroughfare through the hotel and was open to it all. I suppose if you wanted to eat dinner but still "be a part of the raucous action" in the "see and be seen" atmosphere of Vegas, then mission accomplished boys. And it was so dimly lit that you couldn't appreciate the style of the place, which from the publicity photos looks amazing.

We were seated cheek by jowl in that place with no privacy and the noise! Oh! the noise! I could barely carry on a conversation with Matt because of the noise. And since our food took three years to come to us, and me being so hungry, I had filled up on their bread and cheese so that when my meal came I took three bites and couldn't eat any more (I know this was my fault but I was annoyed because our room didn't have a fridge so I couldn't even take it back and eat it later so I felt guilty about wasting food). Not that I would've wanted to eat more than three bites any way. I make better pasta at home.

And after all of this, the bill was over a hundred dollars for the two of us. I was pissed. But not being one to make a scene, pouted until we got back to the room. So, in all, our anniversary sucked big time. And I'm sorry about the rant (I didn't plan it) and I'm surprised if you've made it this far into it. But after expecting five star cuisine and five star service from a five star resort, forgive me if I'm really disappointed at having a one star experience.

Image courtesy of www.royallyflushed.com and www.lastheplace.com