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You can negotiate prices in restaurants

Anniversary2At least you can negotiate wine prices. I didn't try negotiating menu items.

Just returned from a weekend vacation in Las Vegas to celebrate our [Edie and me] 35th wedding anniversary. WOW! 35 years, that's longer than a lot of people I know have been alive.

Oh well, but I digress!

All in all, this weekend was one of the more pleasant and memorable ones. We stayed at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay in a very comfortable 725 square foot suite. We saw Bette Midler on Saturday night, which surprisingly [at least to me] was very enjoyable. We then ate at Bradley Ogden after the show, Aureole on Sunday night [our anniversary], and RM Seafood Monday night.

All the meals were great, as were the wines. The most memorable being the 10 course dinner we had at Aureole on our anniversary, which is the main reason I'm 7 pounds heavier today, than when I left on vacation. But the best part of the weekend was negotiating the price for a bottle of wine at RM Seafood Monday night.

As I was perusing the wine list, I noticed a 2006 Dumol, Ryan's Vineyard, Pinot Noir. I've had the wine before, and it was great, but the price at RM Seafood was nearly twice the price of the same bottle at Campanile in LA.

There were a few other good bottles of wine I could have ordered instead for less money, but at that moment I was in the mood for the Dumol. I just wasn't willing to pay the price on the list. So after already having two glasses of wine in the hotel lounge, while we watched the Steeler game, and not thinking the waiter would accept my offer anyways (the wine manager was gone for the evening), I offered him 25% less for the bottle. Without hesitation, the waiter said "sold".

Damn! Had I'd known it was going to be that easy, I would have offered him a lot less. Oh well, it was worth it, and it was a fitting end to a great weekend.

So that experience taught me a valuable lesson. No matter the circumstances, you don't always have to accept things the way they are, or appear to be. Very little in this world is fixed in stone, and if you want something you think may be out of reach, you shouldn't be afraid to try to reach it anyways. You never know, as in this case, you might just be successful. And besides, the worst that can happen is the answer is no, and you're no worse off for trying.
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John Wagner said…
Sounds like you had a wonderful anniversary. Congratulations on 35 years together!
6:47 AM
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