The Friday Five, 9/23/22: 5 things I've been up to this week

It has been a LONG week—I got back from my Vegas work trip on Wednesday night and normally I'm pretty good at switching between time zones, but I think I'm still on Pacific time, because last night I was up until 1:30am or so. Leaving for the Ohio wedding tomorrow, then I'm staying put for about a week and half until it's time to leave for the next work adventure!

Ceiling of the Bellagio, one of my favorite Vegas hotels

What I've been up to this week:

1. Vegas work trip. And that's what most of these will probably be about—I arrived Sunday around 6pm Pacific time and I left Wednesday around 2:30pm. I had to work during the day but at night I visited the Strip, including some of my favorite hotels (Bellagio, Cosmopolitan, Paris, Bally's), and had some good eats. I was attending IBIE, which is a triennial (every 3 years) show for the bakery industry. 
2. Eating out. On Saturday night, my boyfriend and I went to Texas Roadhouse, in Novi—I signed us up for the online waitlist ahead of time but it was STILL an hour-long wait, so we walked around the area meanwhile. I highly recommend signing up for the waitlist 30-60 minutes before you actually need to be there. The food was good but I do prefer Outback a bit more. My parents and I also got Jersey Mike's takeout that Saturday. On Sunday, I got dinner at In-N-Out on the Strip (Linq Promenade area), my favorite burger, and on Monday night I got Giordano's takeout. Tuesday night was all-you-can-eat (AYCE) KBBQ with a friend who lives in the Vegas area, which was fabulous, and Wednesday dinner was Auntie Anne's pretzel nuggets from the airport, haha ... technically that was my lunch, actually. 
3. Winning at slots, surprisingly. I rarely leave Vegas in the black but I had a $25 freeplay reward from the myVegas app—which I highly recommend, btw, even if you only visit Vegas once a year, because you can get free hotel rooms and other rewards, which is what we did in January for our one-night stay at Bellagio. Normally you need to be staying at an Mlife property (MGM property) to get freeplay, but with the myKonami app (also a myVegas app) you could get it without staying there, so I grabbed a $25 Bellagio reward. I left with $40 in my pocket and it would've been $50 but then I got greedy, haha. I gambled a little bit at Bally's but then later lost $15 at the airport slots while I was killing some time before my flight, so I think I left about $15 richer, which is unusual for me in Vegas.
4. Finally visiting Resorts World. Resorts World is not on the Strip and it's one of the newer hotels—or rather, it's a building with three hotels in it (Conrad, Hilton, and Crockfords). I was invited to meet an industry colleague there for drinks and I got to check out Gatsby's, which labels itself as a speakeasy but is right off the casino floor and very open (i.e. not a speakeasy "vibe," IMO). What IS cool though is that they have a small QR code on their menu, and if you scan it, it opens a whole new SECRET menu. The drinks were very good there, also, but a bit pricey—about $20 each, though I found that most drinks in Vegas were about $17-20 anyways.
5. Attending IBIE. I averaged about 20K steps per day in Vegas because I was running around so much, and a good chunk of that was IBIE—my schedule was more packed than it has been in previous years. It's always fun to see the brands we write about in "real life," though, and I also got to try a ton of tasty samples.

AYCE KBBQ from Captain 6, super tasty!