Did you know you can now purchase wifi access on Southwest flights? I did not and am now typing this from 30,000 feet above Texas. What a country.
To wrap up my trip, I dragged my mom to a couple more touristy things in Las Vegas before my afternoon departure. First we went to the Titanic Artifacts Exhibit. On the one hand, this was very interesting. They had a good collection of recovered materials organized in a coherent narrative, some good replicas of various classes of rooms, and biographies of individuals, with actual possessions attributable to those people. I was not aware of the diversity of stuff that has been brought up, including legible paper documents. On the other hand, I need to do some research about who has done that recovering and who is profiting from the display. I vaguely recall something about a federal lawsuit, and I have a suspicion that the price of admission may have subsidized a particularly sophisticated group of grave robbers. Then we had lunch at Grimaldi's, which now has several Las Vegas locations trying to replicate the original in Brooklyn. As the different URLs might indicate, they have not quite succeeded. The toppings on the pretender pizza are just about the same, but the crust does not compare. It lacks the same delicious chewy quality as the genuine article. That being said, it's still pretty good and I am looking forward to having the leftovers for dinner in a little bit.
After a month on the road I am going home. It hasn't seemed like a month. After a little decompression I am looking forward to going through the 1200-odd pictures I took and seeing just what the heck I got up to. But for now I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, wearing a new shirt, meeting a baby that was born while I was away, getting a po-boy from Domilise's, walking in the Red Dress Run, cheering for the Saints, and starting my new job. I have seen enough of America for the time being to know that there's no place I'd rather be.
Half of me is upset at the sacrilege of anyone even trying to replicate a Grimaldi's. The other half is excited about having better than mediocre pizza on this side of the Mississippi.
ReplyDeleteIt was worth swallowing the outrage and giving it a try, I guess. I didn't get the usual Grimaldi's euphoria, but it was still better than any other pizza I had on the trip, or for a while before that. The weird part was that although there was no line and the staff was actually friendly, that somehow detracted from the experience.
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