New series! Winter in Las Vegas

Hello Vegas!

We start a new series today! Don't worry, this does not mean that the Around the World Extravaganza has ended. Far from it, in fact. I am not even one fifth of the way through that series. However, I thought I would start running this (much shorter) series in parallel, as well as throw in a few Boston restaurants here and there.

Every January for the past eight (!) years Bryan and I have gone to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (this is why the Las Vegas portion of this blog is actually quite solid). It's a fun a crazy time where we check out all the latest electronics, listen to audio systems that cost more than a condo in Boston, visit friends, and enjoy the great food (and shows!) that Las Vegas offers.

This year, we even got to enjoy a stunning hike at a nearby rock formation just 45 minutes outside of Las Vegas.

Here's a brief summary  of our Las Vegas trip, to be covered in much more detail in upcoming posts!

We spent our first lunch at a new, Italian small plates restaurant called Lago inside the Bellagio. They had a lovely outdoor terrace with heaters (yay!) and incredible views of the Bellagio fountain.
 
CES was quite fun this year, with tons of augmented reality devices that we got to try out. Of course we saw our fair share of 3D TVs, huge displays, and lots of really interesting web-enabled appliances, wearables, and much much more.

For dinner, I was thrilled to visit Chef Roy Ellamar (who I first met at Saveur's Food Blog Awards in 2012) at his newly opened restaurant Harvest inside the Bellagio.

The food, which involved house made charcuterie, Alba white truffles, Hawaiian poke, and other Asian-influenced small plates, was fantastic.

We treated a good friend to dinner at Alaine Ducasse's new small plates restaurant in Vegas, Rivea, located on the top floor of Delano (formerly THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay). The views were stunning and the restaurant space was gorgeous.

The small plates were tasty, and we had one of the best bison steaks we'd ever had here.

We needed a quick lunch after spending our last morning perusing start-up technologies at the Sands Expo Center. We stopped by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich's burger place at Caesar's Palace, B&B Beer & Burger, where we enjoyed a very reasonably-priced burger while watching people bet on horse races right behind us.

We ventured off Strip for dinner on our last night in Vegas, at a new place called Chada Wine & Thai, opened by a former general manager and sommelier from Lotus of Siam. We enjoyed a similar combination of excellent wine (at crazy reasonable prices) and solid Thai food.

We visited the Valley of Fire State Park, a stunning hike that is only about a 45 minute drive from the Strip. The hike took less than 2 hours total, which was just enough time for us to catch the fiery golden hues from the sunset.

I highly recommend getting away from the Strip at least for a day to enjoy the vast, beautiful landscape right outside of the city.

As always, it was a fantastic trip. Bryan felt like the trip was too short, and wished we had spent an extra day there (we left on Wednesday and flew back Sunday). There's just so much to see in Vegas, it's hard to fit in a technology conference, hiking, shopping, shows, and eating all in just a few days.

Perhaps next year we'll have to stay a bit longer.

Stay tuned for more posts in this series!