My wife and I get a Plaza cabana suite room every summer. The only difference between this year and ones in the past is that we got a second one for our friends visiting from California. The rooms were adjoining so it turned it into a two-bedroom suite. We were there the weekend of August 14-16.
We got checked in and headed to the Joker Poker machines. We did not have any luck there. We walked around Fremont Street after that to check out the crowds. It looked almost normal for a weekend night.
There was still a decent spacing along most of the Fremont Street Experience. There are some pictures in the gallery below.
Our friends arrived and we played some blackjack at Plaza. After that, we got some drinks and headed back to the rooms. One of our suites has a separate seating area. We partied until about 3am and headed to bed.
Bingo time
None of the four of us had ever played bingo in a casino. We decided to check out the Plaza bingo room. The casino is very proud of that offering. I figured it was time to play.
Plaza has a $25 match play from the players club that is available up to three times per day. We each bought $40 worth of cards and took a seat. Every other monitor was turned off for social distancing purposes.
We played the 3pm game. There were about 40 people in the large room. The game will auto-daub if you wish. A couple of players marked cards by hand, which looked like a difficult task.
Kristina won the first game. She ended up in a five-way tie for another one. She was the only one out of the four of us that won anything.
Oscar’s Steakhouse
We had a comp at Oscar’s Steakhouse. We had the incredible crab cakes as an appetizer. I went for the prime bone-in ribeye, which is exceptional. We all had different steaks and left happy. It went well with a bottle of red wine.
Fremont Street Experience
After dinner, we walked around Fremont Street. The bars being closed was problematic. Security, which had no issues with kids running around, would not allow drinks to be brought under the canopy from anywhere other than the casinos along Fremont Street. We looked for a place to drink away from the chaos and settled on Freedom Beat at Downtown Grand and met up with another friend there.
We spent a few rounds there before heading to the Omaha Lounge at Plaza. The stage was removed and tables setup to allow for drinking away from the closed bar top.
More blackjack
My wife decided to go back to the room. My friends and I played a few hours of $10 blackjack at Plaza. It was fun. The dealers were all friendly, some dealing faster than others. I broke even between my two blackjack sessions, which is more than I can say about Joker Poker.
National Atomic Testing Museum
Our friends wanted to check out the National Atomic Testing Museum on the way out of town. We joined them. It was interesting to see the history of nuclear testing in the desert north of Las Vegas. It had a couple of video exhibits in addition to normal museum artifacts.
There was one amusing thing about the museum. There were some poorly worded signs on many exhibits that were likely intended to be interactive but were closed due to the pandemic.
It is always great to see friends in Las Vegas. The weekend was a good way to forget the chaos in the world.
