Before I started staying in hotels frequently, in Las Vegas or anywhere else, I coveted other people's collections of hotel toiletries.  One of my ex-sister in laws (there were five of them) had a nice collection that fitted in a basket in the guest bathroom.  I thought those little soaps, shampoos, lotions and so forth were so neat.  So when I started traveling I started my own collection.

It's gotten out of hand.  For the most part I don't use them.  For years, I have been diligently gathering the bathroom detrius afforded me at each hotel I've stayed at - and there have been many.  I take them home.  And at first they went in my own little basket (appropriated from one of those same hotels).  But the basket soon filled up, so the little soaps, shampoos and especially the conditioners, piled up - thrown under the sink in bags, stashed in drawers, stacked in neat but pointless walls of soap along some least viewed wall in the spare bathroom.  A lot of them came from Las Vegas, and those are the nice ones.  A whole bag of four year old gatherings (from the same extended stay chain hotel) hangs from a hook in the women's locker room at work.  I noticed it the other day.  Nobody has touched it, not a soap or shampoo has been used.  That is because we don't use the showers in our locker room.  All of us have tried once, only once.  And found that we have no hot water.  But the bag remains, and I can't bring myself to throw it away.

It's the same at home.  It must be the tidy little packaging.  The soaps are special and utilitarian, they should be useful. Some of them are - the really nice stuff I take to my current extended stay hotel to use in place of their cheap offerings.  My Encore Desert Bambu serves me well, as does the Venetian Burnt Orange line.  I leave the scentless cheap Staybridge no-name brand sitting on the counter (though I used to collect them and give them to an abused women's home).  But the maid finds these exotic offerings in the shower, orange or lemon scented delights that I use both functionally and as reminders of trips to Las Vegas.

The problem remains at home.  Why can't I throw away the stale little bricks from that unremarkable stay in Nashville, at the Courtyard?  I'll never use them.  If I opened the paper, they are probably all cracked and shriveled by now,  But they are soaps!  No matter that at home I use shower gel exclusively.  I even have soaps and shampoos from a long Katrina deceased hotel in Biloxi.  Well, that's excusable - those are collectors items now.  I have Caesars Palace collonade style shampoos.  Harrah's line unappealing toilet accoutriments.  Not to mention the stuff I gleaned from Treasure Island, and that place in Puerto Rico, and some (probably several) Hampton Inns.  And the Drury Inn - that's in there somewhere, but I don't even recognize the brand it was so banal.  But I haven't thrown any of them away.

I have got to.  Most of them that litter my house aren't even good candidates for the women's shelter now.  I mean, who wants somebody elses dried out leftovers?  It would mean nothing to me to just empty the whole lot into a trash bag and put it out with last night's pizza.  So why don't I?  Perhaps because our travels are so definative of who we are based on where we've been.  I went through them recently with the very idea of chucking them out.  But I came across the wafer thin soap disc from my layover in Crete.  Gosh, that was a great trip!  I was returning from a tough military deployment on a slow C-130 crewed by people I had become as close as blood family to, and that was our first stop out of the theater where we could drink and party and relax.  I can't throw that away.  Then there's the stuff I got in Ireland - same story, but second deployment.  I hold that useless token of soap in my hand and remember searching for a fish and chip shop in Limerick on a bitterly cold winter afternoon, when none of my other friends on the quest cared one whit about fish and chips, except they knew I cared and craved, so they made that adventure their own, just for me.  Even that, this particular Hampton Inn shampoo... that has some memories too.

They are all I have as catylists to remember times gone by.  I don't take photos, though I do have some purchased souvenirs, but going through my little soaps is what directs me to remember that I have even those.  Maybe I have them - where did that pack of pornographic greek playing cards go?  The pack of cards I pulled out of my overnight bag in the hold of that returning C-130 when somebody asked if anybody had a deck to play spades with, and I said I did, knowing of course the snickers and faux shock it would cause.  Yes, one of those people I played cards with that day was my spades adversary during that deployment... Bill Adkins, long gone from my squadron but now I remember him.  Great guy, good friend.

No, I'm not throwing my little soaps away.

Tags: Vegas Souvenirs Free

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I had forgotten about the Caesars Palace china.  I’ve had a couple of weeks at home, which gave me the time to catch up on some long put off chores.  One of them was to clean the inside of the kitchen cabinets and to do that I had to take everything out.  So when I got to the dish cupboard, there it was: a guilty reminder of my crime-ridden past.  A complete place setting of Caesars Palace china.

I have a dinner plate, side plate, soup bowl, cup and saucer, cream jug, and my favorite - the little rectangle dish made especially to hold packets of sugar and sweetener.  And I had pinched every piece of it from Caesars Palace room service.  Not all at one time of course.  They would have noticed that.  But one piece at a time, over a period of about two years, I had appropriated a little souvenir off the room service tray to remind me of each trip.  Well, not always little – the dinner plate took up quite a bit of space in my suitcase.

I hadn’t gone in to Caesars with larceny in my heart.  No, at first I had just admired the prettily and ornately embossed china.  In fact, I was surprised to see that Caesars had their own china pattern.  It’s a white relief of Caesars’ arch with chariot horses and a whip brandishing charioteer.  Looking at it you can almost hear the thundering of hooves in a Roman arena (or the music and tinkles of slot machines on Caesars’ floor).   What a nice touch, I thought while enjoying my first room service meal at Caesars.  I ate a truly remarkable breast of chicken, after which I dutifully put the plate back on the cart, and pushed the cart, complete with all the crockery it had come in with, out into the corridor for pick up.  There was maybe a bit of coveting going on in head, I’ll admit.  But it never occurred to me to take any of the china.

The stealing started on my second trip.  And it honestly wasn’t my original intent then –not at first; I was set up in fact, by a series of events.  Not my fault, and it’s not really stealing.  I mean, if Caesars didn’t want the occasional cup or plate to go missing they wouldn’t make them such tempting collector’s pieces by putting their brand on them.  Right?  Anyway, on my second visit I left Caesars with a cup and saucer in my luggage. 

The degradation of my morals started when I ordered afternoon tea from room service.  I was taking a break from a brutal session at the slots, back in my room to lick my wounds, and I thought I’d console myself with a nice cup of tea.   I was alone, so I ordered tea and desert for one.  However, when it arrived the tray was set for two.  No big deal, the other cup and saucer weren’t in the way, but as I sipped at my tea I realized I had a use for it.  I found out on the first trip that there was no coffee maker in the room so I’d brought my own little single cup plug in machine.  I had not thought to bring a cup, though.  That morning I had improvised by using a bathroom glass (worked okay as long as you didn’t fill it up because if you did it was too hot to pick up).  But here was this empty cup sitting on the tray, much better than a glass!  I took it off the tray and set it next to my coffee maker.  I used it the next morning and washed it, leaving it to dry in the bathroom where it still sat when I came back.  The maid never did remove it, so it was still there on the last day.  As I packed up my stuff the cup and saucer kept catching my eye.  A nasty little idea started to form.  It occurred to me that room service maybe didn’t keep a real close inventory of their dishes.  If they did, the maid would be duty bound to get an item back to the kitchen as soon as possible.  Or not… perhaps the final inventory happened at the end of the stay… nooooo!  That’s just too time consuming a system for a huge hotel to set up just to track its cheap ass crockery.  And what are they going to do, anyway?  Accost a departing guest at checkout: “Excuse me, ma’am, but we have reason to believe you have one of our room service dishes somewhere on your person.”  Then comes security, two large men in suits approach, one talks into his wrist, “We’ve got the target in sight.  Request a female escort, we’re going to do a cavity search.”  No, of course not!  And that was my train of thought as I wrapped up the cup and saucer and placed it in my suitcase.  Nobody’s a thief until they think they can get away with it.

Now, I do not have the temperament for a life of crime.  I was sweating as I approached the check out desk.  The polite desk clerk clickity clicked on her keyboard, paused, looked at the screen, scowled… oh my goodness, did Caesars really have that inventory system after all?  Was she looking at the final tally right now, and flashing red on the screen was the fact that they were down one cup and saucer?  I know!  I could say that I’d broke it and thrown it away, that’s it, I’d put it on the edge of the table, knocked it off… darn the room was carpeted… no, I’d had it in the bathroom (true) and I’d swiped it onto the marble floor with the cord of the hairdryer…

 The lady looked at me and smiled.  She’d caught a mistake on the room tax, she explained, but she’d fixed it.  I finally let myself breathe, garbled a quick thank you and farewell and beat feet for the exit and the getaway vehicle – a cab to the airport.  But I HAD gotten away with it!  The great cup and saucer caper, I had triumphed, it was mine.  And after that first big step it was easy.  Next came the creamer, then the soup bowl.  The dinner plate was just brazen, I didn’t even “put it to one side to give the maid a chance to get it”, I just ate its contents, gave it a quick wash and put it in the drawer ready to pack with my undies.  Robbing Caesars of its dishes only stopped when I stopped going to Caesars – there were several years when we just couldn’t take a trip to Vegas, then when we could it had become a Harrah’s and we just didn’t want the hassle of having to work our way back to diamond level so we went to the Bellagio instead (where they are smart enough not to emblazon their logo on their plates).

But the hotel stealing didn’t stop.  I was working on the Beau Rivage’s top of the line Villaroy and Boch dinnerware until hurricane Katrina hit.  Then there’s the really nice Marriott bed cover that the maid had changed out for a new one, but forgot to remove the old one from the room… oh, and the pillow case.   That same hotel furnished me with a little container to hold my salt and pepper shakers in.  Now, the basket my hotel soaps sit in… well, you get the picture.  And it all started with Caesars Palace.  I don’t know if they still have that decorated dishware for room service.  If they don’t it’s probably because far too much of it went missing.  But I am proud to say I am reformed now.  I no longer take things from hotels (or people’s houses – ha! Just joking!).  The airlines haven’t had anything decent to pinch for years now since the cutlery is plastic and you have to pay for everything else, so that ended my brief foray into airline souvenirs.  I am cured.  If I find anything at a hotel that I like, I ask if I can buy it.  I have often gotten stuff given to me like that, and that feels much better that sneakery.   On the other hand though, how many people can say they stole from Caesars palace and got away with it?

Tags: Caesars Dishware Room Service

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The whole trip was supposed to be a surprise, revealed only a few days before we departed.  We were going to treat Mom Gee to a super special birthday in Las Vegas.  This venerable soon to be 80 years old on October the 28th was a Vegas devotee of the first degree, but she very rarely got to go there anymore due to a very limited income.  Her only visits in the recent past had been low roller, very low budget trips tightly controlled by my husband's sister, who was graciously and generously paying, but who had very little in the way of disposable dollars either.

But the financial fairies assigned to oversee our ups and downs seemed to be waving their wands for once for our benefit, conjuring up a rather nice chunk of change that would appear right before Mom's birthday.  No brainer!  As we usually did with these fairy-dust gifts, we would go to Vegas.  This time though, we would take Mom along and treat her like a queen.  Even the Vegas goblins seemed to be colluding, because we had some fantastic offers from the Venetian that would make our rooms pretty close to cost free, which they weren't either the week before October 28th or the week after.  It was karma, ya know.  We booked.

We live in the Southeast, Mom, husband's sister and her family live in Colorado.  We haven't seen Mom for about five years, though we talk every week, so some cooperation and quite a bit of inside information about Mom Gee's abilities was needed from sister, who gladly assisted with both.  We learned of Mom's minimal limitations and medical requirements, and what would best suit her needs based not just on her physical restrictions but a phobia for heights that I had not known of (that meant a low room, sigh, say goodbye to that Strip view).  With Sis in the know and sworn to secrecy, the game was on and all booked more than a month out.  Now we had the anticipation of springing this wonderful surprise on Mom.

Except someone threw the proverbial spanner into the works.

One thing was critical to this trip happening well, and that was for Mom to be in good enough health and be fully rested in order to participate.  She has a condition that requires careful monitoring of her eating, and just being eighty makes her more susceptible to illness, injury, and the debilitating side effects of exhaustion.  We needed her healthy and rested.  Yet two weeks before our planned trip someone comes up with another Vegas trip for Mom, and this one was not at all to her benefit or even had her best interest in mind.

Here's the gist of it: Sis had an ex husband, and the reason he was an ex is that he is - well how to put this nicely?  Judge for yourself.  I will start by saying that he came to the United States from what was then East Germany to play in a band that never made it, and he hasn't had a steady job since.  Sis and he have a son, who has grown up into a very nice young man, but, as with many youngsters, he doesn't have much common sense yet.  The ex and the son had to get to the German consulate in Los Angeles for an appointment on October 12th, for the son, a born American citizen, to get a German passport (don't even get me started on that tack).  Well yes, I will get started on that tack.  You are an American citizen.  By accepting dual citizenship what are you doing?  Hedging your bet????  Grrrrrr.

I've calmed down now.  Anyway, niether father nor son have much money.  I'm guessing they don't even have gas money to get from Colorado to LA and back, and they certainly don't have the funds for an overnight stay in the very expensive City of Angels.  So they come up with this plan to stop overnight in Las Vegas and stay in the cheapest room they can find.  "Oh, Mom (Grammie) you love Las Vegas!  Come along with us.  You can help with the gas, and we'll share a room!"

Doesn't sound right, does it?  It gets worse.  The room two grown men have in mind to share with one elderly lady is at the Sahara.  And the sharing part, because they know that isn't right, doesn't mean sharing at the same time.  No, they'll have it at night after they've been to LA, and she can sleep in it during the day.  When they come back to sleep, she goes down to the casino, the wonderful, safe, Sahara casino where she can wander around all night, and where she can try to make the twenty dollars she has for gambling last.  Which is why she called us and told us about this plan.  She needed some money.

Words cannot describe my husbands reaction.  Uh, livid?  Outraged?  I've rarely heard him use the F word, and never to his mother, and he didn't now - he covered the phone and told me "this is NOT going to fucking happen".  But he could not convince her it wasn't a good idea.  To her it was a chance to get to Vegas.  She couldn't see that it was also, basically, a shake down, and a horrendously dangerous thing for a elderly woman with health problems to do.  Even if we hadn't got our own trip planned for her, our reaction would be the same.  Not only no, but hell no.  But as I watched husband plead with her not to do it, I could see he was failing so I said, "Tell her."  If she was going to be in optimum shape for our surprise it couldn't stay a surprise.  So he told her she shouldn't go because a few weeks later we were taking her to Vegas, and it wasn't some cheapskate diversion to the Sahara (no offense to Sahara fans - but it doesn't stack up against the Venetian).

She was overwhelmed and happy, elated, all that.  Of course now she understood why she shouldn't put herself through such a harrowing trip.  She didn't go on the boys debacle, and I don't know where they got the money from.  However, now we had lost the value of the surprise.  And it's not much of a special birthday if there is no surprise involved.  So I came up with a birthday trip with surprises embedded in it.  Since it was Vegas, and in keeping with the theme, there has to be seven, right?  Most of them we were going to do anyway, and instead of our original plan of sending her a card detailing the whole trip, we're not going to tell her until she's there.  The surprises are:

Limo pick up at the airport.

First days gambling money in a pretty envelope.

Next day (her birthday) another envelope with gambling funds

A gift card for the Venetian shops, so she can buy what she wants

A gondola ride, with a well sung Happy Birthday To You

Phantom of the Opera (best seats we could buy)

- That's only six.  I've been struggling with the seventh.  It could be the return limo ride to the airport, but that's cheap since she might be expecting a round trip.  A promisary note telling her we will rebate every bit of the money she's gambled to take home, so she can relax while sinking money into the machines?  But that could get expensive - she's not stupid and can be conniving, what if she goes hog wild???  The fairies weren't that nice to us.  I've thrown out the red roses delivered to her room, because I'm just not willing to plonk down a C note on flowers she would only enjoy for a day.  What to do?  I'll figure it out, maybe while she's there.  But at least one thing is for sure, we are going to spoil her absolutely rotten.

Tags: Venetian Birthday Surprise

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