In case you don't know me personally, I'm more than a little skeptical, so I didn't react well when TJ got sucked into a deal at Hilton Grand Vacations in Las Vegas. We'd get a nice room right on the Strip, at a cut-rate price, plus vouchers for a meal and a future hotel stay. The catch: We had to commit to listening to a two-hour pitch for a timeshare.
TJ put it on the line as soon as the sales rep started speaking: We are absolutely not the right market for a timeshare, and we are only here for the free stuff. I have to give the guy credit; he was persistent. I even respected him until he fell into desperation moves. Toward the end of the two hours, he looked at me and asked me to share my opinion, implying that TJ doesn't or wouldn't let me do so. I think he was stunned when I responded that I was in absolute agreement with my husband, so I felt no reason to interrupt -- or pay attention, for that matter.
To be honest, if I were a different kind of person and traveler, I might've been convinced by the financial savings. But if you don't like peanut butter, you're not going to buy a lifetime supply, no matter how cheap the jars are. So we didn't buy anything, but we did pay with two hours of our lives. And for this, I believed TJ owed me for going along with this trip, to a city I don't really love.
Luck was with him in Vegas, though, because I actually enjoyed many of the activities we stumbled into. We ran across Turf from America's Got Talent performing on a street corner. TJ was not awed by his stardom, but he was impressed by his moves. To me, this might be one of my best celebrity sightings. What do you think: Is Turf better than Tom Berenger or Ric Flair or Jackie Mason?
Another reality-show stud was in town, but we didn't run into him, I'm afraid. Adam Richman was hosting the World Food Championships at Bally's. Because of the, ahem, fine print of our vacation, we didn't see the main competitions, which included burgers and barbeque, but we saw the end of what appeared to be an al fresco and amateur Iron Chef, except four chefs presented their final dishes, with the secret ingredient of salmon, to only two judges.
With our appetites whetted, we used our meal voucher for our own bit of gourmet, at Le Café Ile St. Louis in Paris. The fake French bistro on a fake French cobblestone street under a fake French sky was a little cheesy, but the food was excellent. We started with -- what else? -- escargot, followed by Filet au Poivre for TJ and Boeuf Bourguignon for me, then ended with raspberry-filled mousse and a chocolate-frosted eclair.
Since TJ had paid his debt to me, I let him enjoy some of his favorite Vegas hobbies, like drinking 50-cent Hamm's draft beers while playing video poker at Las Vegas Club on Fremont Street and drinking $2 microbrews while not gambling during happy hour at Ellis Island Brewery.
I even coaxed him into finally playing $3-minimum blackjack at Circus Circus after some $1 video-table practice at Slots A Fun. We managed to spend a respectable amount of time in the game, but still, we walked away as losers. In the end, our savings-account balances were a little bit lower -- but by less than, say, a timeshare in Orlando.
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