Milos & Phantom of the Opera – Las Vegas Style

Flowers make up this painting, Bellagio

The only plan for Thursday was the 7 pm The Phantom of the Opera  show at The Venetian thereby allowing my mother to decide what she wanted to do until then. Having enjoyed her restaurant experience the night before, she wanted to have a formal lunch.  Having picked out a few places I wouldn’t have minded eating myself, I showed her the Prix Fix Lunch menu for Milos, a Greek restaurant in The Cosmopolitan next door.  She wasn’t too excited but I insisted she would be able to find some things to her liking.

Well, it was a beautiful restaurant. They sat us “outside” which is actually a covered verandah. The service was on point. Actually, it seemed every waiter was our waiter. There was a point each was coming after the other to ask us how the food was and we would smile and say “delicious”. When they were gone, my mother would ask “if I said I didn’t like it then what?”.   For her, I ordered the tomato salad with feta cheese appetizer, lavraki with hotra (grilled fresh fish of the day) entree, fresh fruits dessert, and apricot press cocktail.  Luckily the feta cheese (a huge chunk) came on the side so she was able to eat the salad (ie. what kind of salad is this without leaves?) with the bread (which was deliciously toasted). 

I on the other hand enjoyed the bread with the olive oil which they had made it a point to show us the bottle as if it was fine wine before they poured it. I don’t remember what it was. For my appetizer I had the scallops (with her feta cheese), for my entree the lamb chop, for my dessert the yogurt martini, and for my cocktail the sparkling lemonade. It wasn’t as strong as her apricot press which I almost choked on. I absolutely enjoyed my lunch, the ambiance, the service, the food. νόστιμα!

Afterwards we strolled into Bellagio for a look at their conservatory and their glass sculpture chandelier, Fiori Di Como. We then walked into their shopping area on our way to Caesar’s Palace and stopped at Tiffany & Co. There, she was remarking as to how she could go to Ghana and get better diamonds and asking why anyone would drop thousands of dollars on a watch when a sightseeing customer like us asked where she was from. She said Ghana, and the woman stated she thought we were from “that area” because she lived in Liberia at some point. Twice in one week we’ve been accosted by white folks who previously lived in Liberia. I wonder if there is a connection.

Birds made of seeds, Bellagio

In either case we got to Caesar’s Palace where we caught the Fall of Atlantis. What we also caught was a bit of my mother’s wrath. Or maybe that was later at The Venetian. Whichever place it was at no sooner had we entered this tall middle aged man asked us where we were from, and that just got her on a roll. The poor man. Turns out he was from Morocco and he was just asking because he had recognized “his sisters from the motherland”. Ha! Ha! But honestly, I don’t know why we were being asked that wherever we went. In fact a man (black) begging on the walkways welcomed us to America out of the blue! In the Forum Shops we continued our sightseeing shopping in expensive boutiques and eat a lot of gelato.

We eventually made it to The Venetian where we enjoyed the Streetmosphere in the Grand Canal Shoppes, saw the gondolas go by, and finally joined the very long line for The Phantom Show.  Now I wasn’t very familiar with the story. Yes, I could recognize the mask but I had never before been interested in reading the book, watching the movie, or watching it’s performance. I just chose this show at random actually. Well, hmmm, I guess I was expecting something extremely riveting, something so spectacular, so show-stopping, I don’t know what. Even the chandelier fall wasn’t impressive. Overall, it was good, you know, OK. I could follow the story, my ears didn’t bleed though they threatened to, I appreciated the storyline, but the plot was so BLAH.  This particular show in Las Vegas is in it’s 5th year, and it was the 5th year anniversary the night we went. So there was a bit of hoopla abound. One lady supposedly had seen it 55 times before. FIFTY FIVE.  Really?!  That would be torture for me.  I don’t even think I would want to watch the Broadway edition which is the full version.

After the show, we wandered around the Canal Shoppes some more and stumbled upon the Peter Lik Photography Gallery. The landscape and nature photographs are quite amazing. Simple and amazing. But ridiculously expensive. Thousands of dollars per print. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some photoshop “editing” in them though! But they were beautiful. So, if anyone has money to spare and is wondering what to get me…