Ah Ying eh Blog - 阿盈的部落

Sunday 24 March 2013

Sin City

The Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas is a very interesting city to most people. Not me and Sheldon. (Dr. Sheldon: You know, I'm given to understand that there's an entire city in Nevada devoted specifically to help people like Howard forget their problems. They replace them with new problems such as alcoholism, gambling addiction and sexually transmitted diseases.)

It's not that I didn't enjoy my visit there, it's just that I'm not so keen on casinos, entertainments and shopping. The one thing that I really can relate with and makes me really love the idea of visiting Las Vegas is CSI, one of my all time favorite TV series :) However, we didn't take any "CSI tours", all the advertisements seems a bit stupid to me.

We started our Las Vegas trip by doing shopping at Las Vegas Premium Outlets. Before we got ourselves accommodation, before we had our proper meal, before we did anything else at Las Vegas, we went straight to the outlets and had great time shopping. Both of us had almost equal share of spending and fun. It is a bit crazy for me, maybe once in a life time experience.

After the shopping, we drove along Las Vegas Boulevard for the scenic night view, and also to pick a hotel that we'd love to stay. Since there are so many hotels along Las Vegas Strip, it's hard to choose. We decided to let Agoda to make the decision for us. We drove to McD and use the free wifi, went to Agoda website, set the filter with "Las Vegas Strip", "5 Stars" and "below USD100" and agreed that the first hotel that come out from the search should be the one.

This led us to Flamingo Hotel, which happened to be a great deal! I dropped Ching Ching at the lobby so that she can check in while I waited in the car. When she finally completed the check in procedure, she came out with an expression that shout UNBELIEVABLE! This 5 stars hotel cost us only USD45, even after tax it's only USD50.40. This is the cheapest hotel we stayed for our 15 days South West USA trip!

Since we were way below budget for accommodation, we decided to spoil ourselves with some great meals (食餐豪的!) We went to the Olives at Bellagio, found ourselves a great seat at outdoor, just besides the fountain at Lake Bellatio. 3 minutes later, a waiter came and told us that the kitchen is closed. We checked our watch and surprised that it's already 10pm!! and we haven't had our dinner!!

So, no great dining experience at Las Vegas for us. Almost all fine dining / contemporary dining restaurants are closed after 10pm. We ended up having down to earth meal at our hotel.

The next morning, we started our day with great breakfast at Serenipity 3, at Ceasars Palace. The restaurant is cheerfully decorated in orange and pink (a very strange colour combination but turn out surprisingly pleasant). We had our breakfast at the patio. It is fun to have small talks here while most parts of Las Vegas is still asleep.

After the breakfast, we started to walk along the Strips. It's totally different view and experience as compare to night time. There were less tourists in the morning, which means we could take a lot of photos without strangers in them. It also means we could take our own sweet time to walk rather than rushing along.

After exploring the Strip, we, just like any other tourists, went to Freemont Street. Of course, we were supposed to visit this place the night before, but we were too exhausted then, we decided that the Freemont Street can wait.

Freemont Street is not interesting at all during day time. We did some souvenirs shopping, and the little girl went to weigh herself under the sign of "OVER 350 lbs EATS FREE!" Of course, she is way below target even with her backpack.

Before heading to Big Bear Lake, we HAD TO take photo with the famous Las Vegas sign!

We were very surprise to see the super long queue, and we were not as patience as these people. So, instead of waiting in the queue, we decided to stand beside the queue, and had our post ready. As soon as the other tourists finish their photo shoot and before another one come into the picture, we could take some fine pictures :)

So this is how your picture looks like if you refused to wait in the line:

Saturday 23 March 2013

Hoover Dam without Transformers

We HAVE TO visit Hoover Dam, of course it is an engineering wonder, but more importantly, we watched The Transformers :) [Who knows maybe there is actually a secret base of Sector Seven here. haha!]

We reached here late and missed the last guided tour of the dam. Since we can't tour and learn about the inside, we decided to walk around and take some photos before heading to souvenir shops for some Transformers / Hoover Dam fridge magnets.

It's a very warm evening. The sun light made it hard to take good photos, but I still love the fact that all the photos are with blue blue sky :)

I have watched documentaries about Hoover Dam before, so I could understand why the Americans are so proud of this dam. This engineering wonder was built in year 1933, and I think it is safe to say that it helped the born of the Sin City Las Vegas.

Walking near the penstock towers was fun. I couldn't help but imagine a few Transformers will land on this place any minute from now and start fighting and I couldn't help start calculating the odds of getting out of here alive :)

After a short walk around the area, we finally ended up in the souvenir shop. Both of us was SOOOOO DISAPPOINTED with the souvenir shop at Hoover Dam. The souvenirs sold are with very bad quality, and super expensive! The fridge magnets / T-shirts / mugs are all badly printed with some lousy photos of the dam. And believe it or not, I still manage to find some year 2000 magnets, still on sale!?

And of course, most importantly, we don't see a single image of Transformers. I thought it should be a good way to sell Transformers at Hoover Dam? (Well, maybe this is just some crazy ideas from a non-American-tourist)

So, even though we'd like to buy a fridge magnet at every stop, both of us decided to skip Hoover Dam. Better continue our journey to Las Vegas before it's too late (Or it is never too late to reach Las Vegas?!)

On our way out, we saw a "vista point" and hence, as usual, I MUST go there and have a look. And what a surprise, Lake Mead looks so good from here. A very good conclusion for our Hoover Dam visit :)

Thursday 21 March 2013

Cozy in the Rocket

I always love Amelie's Cafe. This cute little shop at Armenian Street serve one of the best pasta in town.

It has now moved to Beach Street (near the junction of Armenian Street - Beach Street), and named as Cozy in the Rocket.

This new location is even better than the original Amelie's Cafe. First of all, now it is bigger, so you don't have to always wait in the queue. Secondly, now they split the shop into 2 areas, one with air-conditioning, another one still using the open-air concept. I hate Malaysia weather, and hence I love the new air-conditioning zone :)

It is a slightly upgraded version than the previous rustic feel. The shop deco is still as simple as possible, yet elegant.

Traditional Wooden Molds on the Wall

Just like when they were in Amelie's Cafe, they had their menu all written at the blackboard. The old metal cups are still hanging there, decorating the wall.

I love the fact that they still keep their special blackboard where they will write their "Today's Special". I always order from this list because these are made with the fresh ingredients that they just got from the market, and they never fail to surprise me.

The non-air-conditioning area

If you are interested, you can even choose to sit near to the kitchen, so that you can peek at the process of the chef.

During our previous visit, I saw "Gnocchi" on their "Today's Special" menu. I've never heard of this food and hence, my curiosity kick in. I MUST try this! We googled this and found out that this is normally a home-made meal in Italian family!! So we ordered a Gnocchi with mushroom in truffle sauce, and a Gnocchi with sausage meat and gorgonzola cheese.

The Gnocchi with mushroom in truffle sauce was great! Maybe I'm a fan of various types of mushrooms, I found this dish irresistible. The Gnocchi itself is tender and it absorbed the aroma of the mushrooms so well that the more you chew, it tastes better and better. The one with sausage meat is a bit too salty for me but I love the gorgonzola cheese in this dish. It mixed very well with the gnocchi.

I'm a huge fan of their passion fruit drinks

Gnocchi with mushroom in truffle sauce

Gnocchi with sausage meat and Gorgonzola cheese

Fresh spaghetti with bacon and asparagus

We had a great and quite lengthy chat in the cafe, so we felt a little bit guilty for only having the main dishes. We decided to get ourselves panna cotta with passion fruits. I'm never a fan of dessert, and I hate too much sweetness in my food. Hence, this is not really my type of food. However, the texture is very soft and smooth, and luckily the sour from the passion fruits make the sweetness bearable. For those that love sweet dessert, I'm sure you will fall in love with this :)

Panna cotta with passion fruit

How to go?
Address: 262 & 264, Lebuh Pantai, George Town
(Junction of Armenian Street and Beach Street, next to Cheah Kongsi new entrance)

Tuesday 19 March 2013

My Route 66

Ever since I watched Cars, I somehow always think that Route 66 is the coolest road in USA :p

So, I took a photo with the Route 66 sign when I was in Disneyland's Car Land.

Then I have to take photo with the sigh of "Historic route 66" when we were actually drove on the mother road. First, with iPad.

Then I forced the little girl to help me to take another photo, this time with my DSLR.

So what did we do at Route 66 actually? We were driving from Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, and I insisted that I must drive on Route 66, even only for a small stretch. So we drove to Seligman, stopped at Snow Cap Drive-In to experience how it really feel like if Radiator Spring is for real.

Snow Cap Drive In

Surprisingly, I am not the only Pixar-toxicated-fan. There are really a lot of people (I guessed most probably influenced by Route 66 nostalgia) that purposely came here for a stop!

To order, you have to go into this door:

Basically a tunnel of stickers and photos and advertisements:

It's an unique experience so we actually enjoyed this:

You know what is even crazier than the tunnel? The counter!!! I really didn't know which sign to look at when it's our turn to order.

This cute little model of Snow Cap Drive-In was placed at the counter, together with other souvenirs. But this one is not on sale.

Our initial plan was to buy burgers and hotdogs. However, I think they are not used to handle a crowd of more than 5 so we were asked to wait for another 20 minutes. Though we were not really rushing, but first of all, I normally don't believe in the locals' concept of time when I were at some super slow pace small towns. Secondly, we do want to reach Hoover Dam as soon as possible. So, at the end, we got ourselves a nice cup of cherry sundae to enjoy at the backyard :)

Every tourists are busy taking photos here

Sherrif is waiting....

Do you see Doc Hudson?

Oh, and you gotta love the toilet! It is with air conditioned, and with an antique TV set too!

After the brief stop, we continued our journey to Hoover Dam then Las Vegas. It is until 3 days kater, that we met again with Route 66!

I actually ended my USA 15 days road trip by taking photo with "End of the Trail" of Route 66 at Santa Monica!

I love my Route 66!