Hello Reno!

I've finally downloaded my photos from last week's little trip and gathered up a few to share. You may remember I mentioned purchasing an overnight stay at the Nugget through Living Social. For $50 we had a pretty nice room (even if it was kind of bland in coloring and faced toward the freeway) and we received $15 of that back in food credits. Here's a picture of part of our room.

There was a big flat screen TV (although we weren't in our room to watch it much) and desk, and the bathroom was spacious too. Isn't that a weird looking light fixture hanging over the table though? I kept thinking someone had made it with bits and pieces leftover from other projects that didn't really go together.

We arrived in our room around 3 p.m. or so and unpacked our things. Then we headed down to the John's Oyster Bar for the Pan Roast I was looking forward to. (Pan Roast is basically a rich seafood soup.)

On Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., there's a weekly farmer's market in the square right outside the hotel, so that's where we headed to walk off a little of our meal afterward. As you can see, the day was beautiful. That's the Nugget in the background.

In talking with some of the farmers, we found many of them had come from the farm areas not far outside Sacramento! We couldn't really buy too much because we didn't have any refrigeration, but we purchased a few goodies. The dried flowers will last a long time, as will the handmade soaps in the lower right hand corner.

We actually ate those artichokes for dinner tonight! Yum!

The fifth floor of the Nugget boasts an indoor swimming pool. I had to check it out while Hubby went down to explore the casino a bit.

They also have an exercise room and a salon/spa on the fifth floor. Maybe next time we'll need to arrange for massages and a little pool time.

We had tickets to see Dana Carvey, and although I took a few photos, he came out kind of blurry in all of them. One of the photos I took before the show came out okay, so you can at least see what the room was like.

Our seats were great. We sat at a long bar/table that faced the stage and we could see and hear everything.

While we were at the Nugget, there was a convention for the blind going on--apparently a national association and a state association were holding conferences. It amazed us a bit, I think, to see how well the blind were able to negotiate their way around the casino--they seemed completely fearless and self-assured. Some had service dogs with them. Hubby, in his excursion to the casino while I was checking out the pool, noticed a Black Jack table had been set up for a group of blind players, and several of them had dogs sprawled out on the floor close by, sleeping while their people played cards. All those sleeping dogs were kind of a funny sight! The only difficulty we had was in the fact that Hubby's wheelchair isn't quickly maneuverable, so now and then he'd be unable to get out of the way of someone, or he'd be run into from behind when he was parked, although no one was ever injured in these small collisions.

The last time I visited a casino, there were people playing the slots and holding onto coin-filled cups; now it's virtually coinless. We signed up for the casino's club, and we were each issued a magnetic card we could use to load funds onto for play and then later cash out. The other slight surprise was how many different slot machine games they have now and how difficult it is to figure out how to play some of them! The one thing that remained the same though? I still can't seem to win anything in a casino! I used to enjoy playing craps, but this time, playing a slot machine for an hour or so was the most excitement I could stand.

It was nice to get away to Reno for a day or so, but we were happy to get home again too. Thanks for stopping by for a visit!