Welcome to Paradise in America's Finest City, San DiegoWritten by Barry Berndes
San Diego is a fabulous place to live, work and play. Yes, San Diego has best of everything. It has over 50 miles of beautiful beaches and bays, which are an invitation to explore. San Diego is also home to a casual California lifestyle, which is a result of its wonderful, warm, year-round weather. In fact, National Weather Service describes San Diego's climate as being most ideal in America. Yes, San
| | ANY BREAK IS A GOOD BREAKWritten by Laura Glendinning
There is something about that extra day tacked onto a weekend, be it a Monday or a Friday, which turns a getaway into a mini vacation. Of course three day weekends are a state of mind. One "three day weekend" trip my boyfriend John and I took to Vegas started on Memorial Day Monday and ended on a Wednesday. We tend to take breaks just before or just after big holidays - you get better rates, better service and a lot fewer crowds. That trip we skipped our usual easy bargain booking for midweek Luxor (always clean, excellent bathrooms) and made a blind Hotwire bid on a Vegas Strip 5 star hotel and ended up in mind-boggling Venetian for an unheard of price - under $100 a night including service fees. Lots of California people fly to Vegas, Tahoe or San Francisco, but we seem to end up driving to our breaks, partly because dog kennel we use is right off 10 freeway and often on way, partly because getting on road means vacation has already started. When you add up getting to airport early, parking, waiting to board, being inspected, then collecting baggage at other end, you are practically at same number of travel hours. And on plane, we don't get to eat one of John's patented toasted sandwiches. Somehow, way he makes sandwich means I actually eat mayonnaise, a substance I usually detest. Driving against traffic (everyone else was heading back from weekend away and oh what a stream of headlights we saw crawling along) we were hypnotized by flashing lights of an outlet mall/casino combo at border - Stateline, Nevada - and stopped in. Great bargains for men's wear, not so great for women's wear - but we didn't do a thorough search. On that Vegas trip, we dragged our battered garment bag, with a freshly broken strap, across lush marble-floored lobby, looking like refugees. We entered our suite-like room - with its canopy bed, step down tv lounge and huge marble bathroom (two sinks, a shower and a huge tub), pulled out nice champagne we'd brought along in our cooler, pulled out our travel champagne glasses (if they break we don't care) and put on plush robes Venetian provides. A cable movie and champagne shook dust off road trip. The next couple of days in Vegas sometimes means spa for me, for sure sports bar for John, and our search for stranger slot machines to play. The "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" slots actually reward you for answering trivia questions. Vegas is not really about thinking, but times we've played game we've gotten a few interested onlookers impressed with our ability to pull facts out of our brains. We toyed with idea of hanging around machines having a cocktail and helping other players answer their bonus questions but decided against it. Along strip, Barbary Coast has maintained its original kitsch, sandwiched between lush hotels who doubtless are sporadically trying to buy them out. The tables there are friendly and attract a mixed crowd of fairly low stakes players. Like, a lot of hotels, dealers display where they are from on their name tag. A tall, blond Czechoslovakian dealer at Barbary Coast took John's blackjack stake away with breathless speed and efficiency. Was she paid by how many cards she dealt? She was so fast that dealer at next table actually seemed mad at her for ruining everyone's fun. His attitude was "This is Barbary Coast, we don't do that here". Good thing sports book paid off for John phenomenally.
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