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VEGAS for the 4th!

I flew west to meet all 15 members of the Borelli family in Las Vegas for the 4th of July. We spent about 5 hours at Springs Preserve, a new government funded 180 acre sustainable site filled with games, films, galleries and interactive games on how to conserve recycle and live a more sustainable life. Surprisngly the mega hotels on the strip only use 10% of the Las Vegas water supply.

I definitely had my fill of Italian food, we tried B&B at the Venetian, Mario Batali’s new restaurant. The grilled squid dressed with a limoncello sauce was to die for! Nonno (grandpa) was fighting with the sommalier to change the Johnny Cash to Bocceli. No luck. Anyone heard of Rao’s in East Harlem? Hands down it is the toughest restaurant to score a table for dinner. With only ten tables and devoted customers, families have the same table at the same time every week. They can lend it to their friends, sell it on Ebay, but no one forgets to include it in the will. Anyways, they expanded to Las Vegas and tripled the size. I finally tried their Italian home cooking and it lived up to the hype. Ask for Bubbles (huge man from the Bronx) at the Vegas location, but be careful he won’t stop hitting on your Grandma. Ohh and the pistachio soufflé at the Eiffel Tower restaurant melts in your mouth.
The Historic Car Museum at the Imperial Palace was a great place to take Dad and the boyfriends. I am now obsessed with the 1 of 2 1953 Caddilac Ghia’s built. Rita Hayworth rolled around Hollywood in one of them. Only 2.5 Mil, dream big or don’t dream at all.

I made my new favorite, watermelon salsa but no one had the same appreciation. Even the A/C repair man couldn’t handle it.
We took a tour of Hoover Dam in 110 degree heat. They bring you 535 ft underground to the generators. You can feel the vibrations at your feet from the water running 88,000 gallons per second. The dam was finished in the 30’s and weighs 6.6 million tons. Miracoulously it has only sunk ¼ of an inch over the years. Finished 2 years ahead of schedule and 14 million dollars under budget President Hoover and “hurry up” Crowe tamed the Colorado River.

We watched fire works popping up all along the horizon from a high rise, it looked like an enormous bag of scattered pop rocks.