Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
A trip to Vegas turns out to be a battle between a man, his mother-in-law and his gambling addict of a grandmother.
Day 3
Grandma was exhausted and, although La Madre was ready to walk a few miles (or so she claimed), we took a taxi straight up to Harrahs to see Mac King and hit their Fresh Market Square Buffet. The buffet was not only the best we’ve ever had, but was also one of the prettiest as these larger-than-life statues of vegetables stood around us. For some reason, Margherita's mother thought that it was necessary for us to pose in front of one of them for a picture. Why she wanted a picture of herself standing with asparagus is beyond me.
Mac King, on the other hand, was worth the anticipation. We laughed and joked, but more importantly, I realized then that presentation is everything. For 10 minutes, the act was exactly the same as we saw the night before. Some people might be disappointed, but the jokes were just as funny as the first time. It’s a skill to presenting a joke or a trick and to have them come across fresh every time.
Then, it was back to walking south along the strip and alternating between explaining all concepts American to La Madre, while keeping Grandma from gambling away her last dollar.
Our next stop was the mall and shopping at the Aladdin. Little did I realize that, although we walked only a few buildings down,the strip is so massive. A full loop within the shops of the Aladdin is a mile and a quarter walk.
Grandma asked, "Are you trying to kill me? We walk all day, you keep me away from gambling, and then you stuff me with buffets."
We slowly made our way around the entire mall and eventually came full circle to the Spice Market Buffet at the Aladdin. Although there was no logical reason to eat two buffets on the same day, my innate nature to make stupid decisions caused me to try, just once more.
The Spice Market is, hands down, the best buffet on the strip. It has every type of ethnic food that you could ever want to eat. Margherita, Grandma, and La Madre made a game of trying food from every section. I, on the other hand, started at my favorites and worked my way down. By the end, we were sufficiently engorged and lost the ability to walk.
Fortunately, next on our list, the Ovation, was right within the Aladdin.
Ovation is named a variety show, but it’s actually a bit more than that. In a way, I was thinking it was going to be a show like Cirque du Soleil, and Margherita thought it was a variety show in the vein of a Carol Burnett special. We were both wrong.
The Market
Boom. Boom. Boom. The techno drums beat away so loud that they probably made me sterile. If Grandma wasn’t deaf before, this certainly pushed her in that direction.
Oddly enough, this post-modernistic sideshow/variety show was one of our favorites of the week. It’s very hard to describe, except to say that there were tap dancers, acrobats, jugglers, comedians, and two muscled Russians who climbed on each other like ballet-dancing monkeys.
