Emily

I spent too long here and left without sleeping before my 4:30am flight, exhausted.

I did, however get to do a lot of fun things: we visited the Hoover Dam; we took a night flight in a six-seater plane over the Strip; I swam in the hotel pool and read my Kindle poolside; bought half a pound of candy at the candy store in the lobby on a whim; we went to the Pinball Hall of Fame and blew $12 in quarters; finally got to try In-N-Out Burger; saw a terrible Cirque show (Criss Angel); saw a great Cirque show (Zumanity); watched the Mirage Volcano explode; watched the fountains at the Bellagio play Hoedown from Rodeo, All That Jazz, and the Star Spangled Banner; won $10.62 on the penny slots in our hotel.

A fun trip all in all!

Do yourself a favor: take that $20 that you were going to feed into the slots and put it into the change machine at the Pinball Hall of Fame instead.

This “museum” is full of rows of pinball machines spanning from 1947 to the present.

There are arcade games, too. I won a tiny plastic rat in a 1938 crane machine and a double prize of a plastic ring and a pool-ball keychain in one of those stop-the-light games. (It’s designed to win no matter what, so if you lose, you get one prize, and if you win, you get two!)

You learn all kinds of things about the history of pinball and even America by reading the little handwritten index cards on some of the machines. Did you know that there was a point when pinball was fliperless? And that pinball manufacturers stopped making games during WWII so they could help with making things for the military?

Also, the entire building has the most pleasant smell. Machine oil mixed with popcorn. Heavenly. My couple of hours here were some of the most fun I had in Vegas.

This bookstore has the most books and the least floor space of any store I’ve been to. It’s labyrinthine. Books from floor to ceiling, sometimes in no discernible order. A perfect place to lose hours of your vacation if you’re a bibilophile.

There’s even a cat perched on the checkout counter.

The bookstore occupies two rooms of the William Faulkner house, and is the only part open to the public.

Faulkner lived here while writing his first novels; now it’s a bookstore with a sizable collection of poetry and first editions.

It’s small but packed from floor to ceiling. The woman who rang up my order told me that the owner felt a bookstore should be judged by its poetry section. By that measure alone, it’s a fantastic store.

Sarah and I ducked in here to get out of the cold while we were shopping the Christkindlmarkt. It was so close to my birthday and I was craving sushi, and so was Sarah, so we split a couple of not very good dishes. It was nice to be warm though.

Noel and Sarah helped me devour it. Sarah offered a sip of her Schokolade Baileys—spiked hot chocolate—as compensation.

I had a primo of ravioli with walnut cream sauce here that knocked me off my feet. One of my favorite meals from my three-month study abroad trip. I wish the picture did it justice.

I walked past this place every day while my study abroad group went here for our class trip, but didn’t eat here until Noel and I came back for fall break.

From Eat, Pray, Love:

But he is Neapolitan, no question about it, because before I left Rome he gave me the name of a pizzeria in Naples that I had to try, because, Giovanni informed me, it sold the best pizza in Naples. I found this a wildly exciting prospect, given that the best pizza in Italy is from Naples, and the best pizza in the world is from Italy, which means that this pizzeria must offer… I’m almost too superstitious to say it… the best pizza in the world?

I really want to visit Praha before the Czech Republic changes to the Euro!

They’re announcing the adoption date on November 1, 2009.

If you only have one day in Munich, like I did, try a New Munich Free Tour. The guides are well trained and entertaining.

The tour lasts about three hours and gives you historical background to the places you visit. It’s a little heavy on the history of the Third Reich, but there’s a stop at Hofbräuhaus and the Viktualienmarkt, plus a great legend about the devil and a pair of Birkenstocks, so it’s not too dark.