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Saturday, May 7, 2022
We decided to go out for dinner. One of the restaurants at The El Dorato was rated by the Food Network as one of the 10 best pasta restaurants in the United States. We showed up around 5:15 pm and were told that the wait would be over two hours. Each of us had thought about making a reservation but things around town seemed very slow and, besides, who else besides us goes to dinner so early? Time for Plan B. We decided to try a Tepenaki restaurant called Ichiban. We took two passes past where the restaurant was supposed to be but never did find it. Time for Plan C.
Just outside of Circus Circus, along “The Row” between the three hotels, we found a small food court. One of the restaurants was Habit Burger, a chain that we’d never tried before. I ordered a cheeseburger and Deborah ordered a burger with portobello mushrooms on grilled sourdough. The burgers themselves were on the small side but they were piled high with fresh and tasty toppings (still they were bigger than Dave’s Giant Burgers). We shared an order fries and a soda; the bill came to about $23.00.
It was still too early to retire so we went over to the game room and played some skee ball. We must have done fairly well because we earned enough in tickets to trade for some of the cheaper prizes. We decided to keep our tickets in case we try our luck again.
For dessert we intended to patronize a cafe back in The El Dorado. We’d passed by several times and they had some nice looking pastries. As we were waiting in line Deborah noticed some additional display cases around the corner. We were delighted to see that these cases were filled with gelato. That made for an easy choice.
We decided to share a two scoop serving. We chose chocolate and hazelnut. The gelato turned out to be vey high quality. The chocolate was dark and smooth and laced with small chucks of chocolate. The hazelnut had a very strong flavor and paired beautifully with the chocolate.
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Happy Mother’s Day!
We decided to check out The Atlantis. It’s the newest casino in Reno and it’s on every must see list. The 3.5 mile drive took just over ten minutes. The main casino, where the restaurants are all located, is not too big. There was a long line for the buffet. Most of the other restaurants didn’t open until 5:00 pm. Our only other choice was a NY style deli. The menu looked rather appealing but the environment was so smokey that we decided to seek greener pastures.
Deborah had researched a number of restaurants. We checked our list and headed over to Josef’s Vienna Bakery Cafe. Given that it was Mother’s Day we hoped that the wait wouldn’t be too bad.
It looked like there was a line of people waiting to give their names for tables but when we talked to the cashier she told us to just sit at any available table, the other people were waiting for a large table to open up. The place was very busy. While we waited for a table to open up we looked at the display cases containing cookies, cakes and pastries. We wanted to try them all.
Since COVID service in restaurants has been pretty slow. Most establishments are having trouble getting help. Given that the restaurant was packed we expected the service to be glacial; we weren’t disappointed.
Eventually we ordered our food. I got a scramble with bacon and green apple. It came with potatoes and home made english muffins. Deborah got eggs benedict with black forest ham and potatoes. Both of our meals came with a small pastry. The food, at least, was worth waiting for.
The scramble was very tasty. It was fresh and well seasoned. The potatoes lacked onion but had copious amounts of rye. The benedict was well executed but could have used more lemon in the hollandaise. We decided we might go back and try some of their lunch menu another time.
After lunch we visited the National Automobile Museum. It was voted one of the top ten car museums in the United States. Entry cost $15.00 per person. We arrived around 1:30 pm and were told that a docent would be giving a tour at 2:30 pm. We wandered around the museum for an hour and then joined the tour.
When we got to the meeting place the docent was already in full swing telling stories. We could see he was a car fanatic and a real nut. We liked him immediately. He took us through three of the five rooms starting with the earliest steam powered cars dating from the late 19th century.
According to our guide the museum has well over 350 cars. In total there have been over 5,000 car manufacturers in the U.S. alone. Many of the earliest car companies started as bicycle manufacturers. Most didn’t survive the Great Depression and the rest eventually folded, got bought out or merged. Most of the cars in the museum came from the personal collection of Bill Harrah, the founder of Harrah’s Hotels and Casinos. Of course, over the years, more cars have been added.
If older cars are not your thing there were a couple of areas that contained McLarens, Indy Car winners, and cars designed to set land speed records. Another section contained famous cars from popular TV and movies such as the original Batmobile (a 1966 Lincoln), The Green Hornet’s Chevy Imperial, The 1946 Ford “Grease Lightning” from Grease, and the 1966 Volkswagen Beetle used in Herbie: Fully Loaded.
Some of our favorites included…
- 1936 Silver Mercedes-Benz
- 1948 Delahaye in Dark Blue
- 1954 Kaiser-Darrin in a color that could only be called Butter
- 1956 Mercedes-Benz in white with gull-wing doors
- The Batmobile (of course)
- 933 Auburn in two-tone
- 1921 Rolls-Royce with copper body ordered by the King of Spain
