Shakespeare and Vegas

We spent Labor Day weekend 2018 in Cedar City and Vegas.  We enjoyed great plays, art exhibits, red rock hikes, and ethnic food--our favorite things.

Each year, we buy season tickets to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, including all eight of this year's plays.  We spend several weekends during the summer luxuriating in great performances, with great variety.  Our very favorite play this year was "Othello", with the Festival artistic director, Brian Vaughn, playing Iago in the 200-person Ames Theater.  We felt we could just reach out and touch the devil.  Dave and I talked for long afterwards about jealousy, temptation, and evil.

The musical, "Big River", was the crowd favorite this year.  It was a tale of Huck Finn and Jim floating down the Mississippi.

We like Shakespeare's tragedies better than his comedies, but we did enjoy "Merry Wives of Windsor," set in turn-of-the-20th-century America, with the merry wives dressed as suffragettes and John Falstaff wearing spats.

We love checking out the latest exhibits at the Sorenson Art Museum next to the Festival.  James Surls a sculptor, from Colorado, used plants as the basis for his creations.  His bronze, steel, and wood sculptures seemed to grow and blossom and reach for the sun.

 On Sunday, September 2, 2018, we drove to Vegas, after Church, by way of the Valley of Fire.  It was  sizzling outside, but we love red rock vistas at any temperature.

Prickly pear cacti were covered with fruit at the Valley of Fire Visitors Center.  Dave and I remembered picking prickly pears in the desert near Tucson, Arizona, many years ago, and putting up a year's supply of prickly pear jam.

No Vegas buffets for us today.  We searched for the best-rated ethnic restaurants, and found "Viva Las Arepas," selling arepas (corn bread pouches filled with spicy meat and cheese) from Venezuela.

 We spiced our arepas with "green sauce" and "red sauce" and vowed to return.

 My job was to find a new adventure in a city we have visited at least 25 to 50 times.  We checked out the Neon Museum, filled with old signs from Las Vegas landmarks--the Sahara, the Stardust, the Golden Nugget.  We chatted with a docent about the economy of Las Vegas, including the machismo drive of casino owners to build hotels each bigger than the last, which results in inventory that can never be filled or completely profitable, no matter how big the conventions that arrive.

 And, of course, we stopped at the Bellagio, for its flowers and art, if not for its food.  The garden is always amazing, with sculptures created entirely from flowers.  Wildly artificial?  Of course.  Impressive?  Yes, of course.

Each time I visit Vegas, I visit the Bellagio's art gallery.  This time, it displayed a collection of works by modern Japanese artists.  I like abstract art better and better.

And, finally, no trip to Vegas would be complete for us without gelato at the Bellagio's ice cream shop.  Berry is the best.