STAYING AT THE EXCALIBUR HOTEL AND CASINO IN LAS VEGAS

It’s located between the hotel that looks like a pyramid and the hotel that has the replica of the Statue of Liberty in front of it.

It’s the Excalibur Hotel and Casino and like the Luxor and New York New York , it’s located on the Las Vegas Strip .

Like most of the hotels in Las Vegas, Excakibur has a tgeme also.

Think the Middle Ages meets the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas .

It’s even shaped like a castle and in the entire hotel and in the casino, you’ll see statues of Knights, real Knights , not the hockey team.

As many times as I’ve been to Vegas , I never stayed at this hotel before.

Because I am a member of their M Life players casino card club, I was given a discount on my room for the two nights that I stayed.

Yeah, the Sports Diva plays the slots a lot, don’t judge me.

The hotel is near the airport, so since I had an early afternoon flight back to Newark Liberty , this was convenient for me,and I was able to get the room I requested .

High floor near the elevator .

I was on the 25th floor.

I was able to see the Luxor and Mandalay Bay hotels from my room.

It looked so beautiful at night.

I would stay here again if offered the great rate that I received this time.

The only thing that I really didn’t like about the hotel was that, if you needed to print out something other than your boarding pass which was free, you had to pay $7 to do so.

The Sports Diva of course, was printing out some hockey tickets for a friend who was going to the hockey game with me.

I didn’t pay it and went to the concierge across the way at New York New York, who did it for free.

(More about the hockey game in another post . )

Other than that , (and you really shouldn’t charge that Excalibur, get on your game, people) I would stay at the castle on the Las Vegas Strip again.

SOME PICTURES FROM THE NHL AWARDS

This is one of the main reasons that I come to Las Vegas in June.

No, who am I kidding?

This is THE only reason I come to Vegas in 100 plus temperatures Fahrenheit in June to see the NHL honor the best players for the whole season.

The Sports Diva isnt the only one who marks this date on her calendar every year.

Other hockey fans make their own 30 Plus Teams Tour of Las Vegas to do this and you don’t have to dress up.

Those Minnesota Wild and Las Vegas Golden Knights jerseys that you’re wearing are just fine.

Represent your hockey team, especially if they have a player nominated for best goaltender , best defenseman, best coach or even for their dedication to hockey.

(That dedication to hockey award is real not just a made up name. It’s called the Masterton Trophy and it was named for Bill Masterton , who unfortunately , lost his life while playing hockey for the Minnesota team . )

I normally get pictures with the players who were nominated , but not this time .

You had to have a bracelet to do what’s called the Red Carpet this year.

Thank you to those fans who bring all that stuff to be autographed by the players and then you sell them!

Because of y’all , the Sports Diva and other hockey fans can’t get up close and personal with our favorite and definately not so favorite hockey players at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

At least tickets were inexpensive enough to attend the awards ceremony , something that I hadn’t done in 2 years.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so get your money’s worth by checking out some of the action from the NHL Awards .

LAS VEGAS BABY – LAS VEGAS , NEVADA – WHY????

I was going to  do a post on the World  War I I  Memorial  in Washington ,  DC .  

But I’m  going to  save that for another day.

As I woke up this morning, I was texted by friends and relatives about a shooting  in a place near and dear to me, Las Vegas ,  Nevada.

In case some of  you  don’t  know, not only is it the newest city on my 30 Plus  Teams  Tour ,  but in 2010, I moved to  New York  City  from Las Vegas , after living and working  there for three years.

50 people ,  who were just doing what everyone  does in Las Vegas ,  having a good  old time at a music festival ,  lost their  lives  to a deranged gunman.

This was at the Mandalay  Bay  Hotel and Casino, which if you’ve  ever been to Las Vegas ,  is the first hotel you see when you go on the Strip . 

It’s  the  hotel right next to the  Luxor . 

200 people  were injured, making this one of the  worst shootings in a whole  string of worst shootings in this country.

I’m  not going to  get into a gun control debate here because this blog isn’t  about that . 

I’m  very  angry and disgusted that someone  actually  was staying on the 32nd  floor of the hotel and instead of enjoying the scenery  in front of  him, not to mention the good music and happy vibes coming from the concert, did the unthinkable . 

He killed and wounded so msny innocent people who never did anything  to  him.

They may not have even known who he was, nor he them.

We may never know  this man’s  motives and why he had so much firepower with him to do more damage because he killed himself.

If he had lived, I would have liked to  know one thing.

WHY?