Museum Day in Vegas

November 13, 2022

Tom hadn’t yet spent anytime in the casino, so in the morning as I was getting ready and packing up he ventured down to the casino to try his luck. He was back up in the room 40 minutes later after not having any success on the electronic roulette table. While we were at Nacho Daddy’s the night before we discussed plans for our last day in Vegas and had bought tickets for 2:00 to the Neon Museum. We knew the Mob Museum was also close by so we planned to grab lunch and then go to the Mob Museum.

We both agreed to pizza and went to Pizza Rock (https://pizzarocklasvegas.com/) which was a short walk down Fremont Street and a block from the Mob Museum. Pizza Rock had several different pizza crusts and styles to choose from and after the waiter went through the menu we decided on the River City Ranch pizza which consisted of Ranch Dressing, Mozzarella, Chicken Breast, Applewood Smoked Bacon, Garlic, Cherry Tomato, Green Onions. Tom says it was one of the best pizzas he’s ever had. It was really good, but it might also been because we were both so hungry. As we waited for our food I got online to checkout what to expect at the Mob Museum and then realized we might not have enough time to do it. We decided to head over there anyway to check-it out and found that we could come and go, so we would be able to come back and spend some more time there when we were done with the Neon Museum.

The Mob Museum was very well done! It is located in the old Post Office and Court House of Las Vegas and spread out amongst the three floors. We had purchased an audio tour, but quickly found that it was hard to hear and taking up too much time. There were several short video clips throughout the museum that were basically giving us the same information as the audio tour. We made it through the entire 3rd floor exhibit and into the courtroom on the second floor to watch a video of the Kefauver Committee hearings on Organized Crime. So well done! By this time though it was time for us to start walking over to the Neon Museum that was about a half mile away.

The Neon Museum/boneyard is where old signs from Las Vegas are kept. Some signs are used for parts and others are just on display. We spent about 45 minutes here walking through, taking pictures, and talking to the workers gaining more insight on the background of the signs. There was one particular neon sign of a duck that I was not familiar with. I asked what it’s story was and the worker told me that it was from a used car lot that operated for about 5 years and went out of business. He said that the sign probably cost around $200,000 and the company had spent more money on the sign then they had invested in the business. The boneyard was much more condensed then I expected. I thought it would be more spread out, but it was still neat to walk through.

When we were done we headed back to the Mob Museum and spent another 45 minutes going through the second floor exhibits. I didn’t really plan out this trip and for the most part it worked out ok, but in the instance of the Mob Museum I wish I would have planned our day better to get the most out of it to be able to see the whole thing. We were glad that we were able to see what we could though, and if given another opportunity we would go back.

We headed back to our hotel to grab our luggage and Lyft and was soon back at the airport. The Lyft driver told us that the Hard Rock had bought the Mirage and that in December the Mirage was shutting down and the Hard Rock was going to begin re-constructing the front to build a giant guitar building. We hadn’t heard that while we were hear and found that very interesting. We got through check-in and security with no issues and were at our gate with plenty of time to spare. We both thought we should grab something for dinner since we weren’t expected to land in Milwaukee close to midnight. We wondered through the terminal and had a moment where Tom was being the undecisive one about what to eat. I asked him if this was what it was like being with me and realized how frustrating and annoying it can be! We decided on Moe’s Mexican Grill (similar to Qdoba) and shared a chicken burrito bowl. Our flight was slightly delayed in boarding due to having to wait for the flight attendant to arrive off of another flight. We eventually got on and seated and then waited a little while longer as they took care of some “housekeeping”. We came to find out later when we talked to the hockey guys that were also on our flight that the “housekeeping” was kicking somebody off the flight. Apparently a couple rows up from where one of our buddies was sitting someone was getting a little loud and verbal with some displeasure they were having, and they were escorted off the flight. We landed in Milwaukee at 12:30a.m. It took forever to get our luggage and I think we got home somewhere around 2:00a.m. Overall we had a great little weekend get away!!