So it’s time to jump way back to late November last year, when we arrived in Vegas after going through Yosemite and Death Valley national parks. Heading towards Death Valley in the pitch black of night, in the middle of nowhere, we could see a glow over the horizon. This was Vegas – 200km away. The roads were so dark and straight that we’d see a car’s headlights and drop the high beam, then wait 5 minutes before we actually passed them. With nothing visible except the road in front of us and the distant glow on the horizon, it felt like we were somehow lost or where we didn’t belong. We drove like this for a few hours, and through it all, Vegas was there, waiting.
As we approached the outskirts of sin city, we could see signs of the impending insanity. The hotels on the strip stand out like sore thumbs, and the light from the Luxor drew us in like moths to a flame.
Lots of our friends have already been here, it’s hardly breaking new ground. But for anyone who hasn’t, the city is insane. Just wandering around the streets at night leaves you boggling a the crazy things you see on each casino. It’s so tacky, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Each casino has it’s theme or central attraction, and I can’t think of anywhere else you could get away with such cheese. Except CSI Miami.
We checked out all the casinos (except for the crap ones!), which is an amusing tour around the place. Most of them have themed decor inside, so the New York New York looks like the streets of NY inside, and a roller coaster through its cityscape on the outside, as well as the Brooklyn Bridge. The Paris has boulangeries and Metro signs, and a giant Eiffel tower. The Venetian has a canal you can take gondola rides on (it’s inside and they have a fake sky). Caesar’s Palace has the Trevi Fountain and the shows are held in the Colosseum. The MGM Grand has a lion enclosure. There’s a Camelot casino which has turrets and towers. The Luxor is a giant glass pyramid with a huge spot light coming out of the top.
And last but not least is where we stayed: The Bellagio. We wanted to go somewhere fun and zany, so it was a toss up between here and Caesar’s Palace. The Bellagio was pretty nice and had a bit of zanity, but we both agree Caesar’s would have been a bit more Vegas. That said, we did have a room with a view of the dancing fountains, and they are really impressive! They also look better from above than from the street level where people gather every 15 minutes to watch the shows. The shows are set to different songs, like Singing in the Rain, Hey Big Spender, Luck Be A Lady, etc. The jets are really powerful – the water got to the height of the Eiffel Tower across the road, and you’d hear a bang when the big jets fired off.
As for luck being a lady for us, well that didn’t happen. We played in the Bellagio, the Paris and Caesar’s Palace. We didn't have any luck in any of them, except for a not bad night on our last night in the Bellagio. The bastard dealer in the Paris chatted us up, enticing us to start playing, then after we sat down and dealing out a hand to me, he asked Daph for ID, even though it was me playing. The supervisor came over and wouldn’t accept her driver’s license, it had to be a passport, which she didn’t have. Meanwhile as we were trying to sort this out, he left me sitting on something like 14 against a face card and proceed to play out the hand for everyone else and took my money off the table when we lost. In short, the guy was a knob. So we don’t really like the guys from the Paris, although the steak in the restaurant there was pretty good.
Daph did have some luck with roulette, which was fun to watch her play. I have a curse with roulette, so I keep out of it. There was a $300 minimum roulette table near us, and we saw a guy just plonking down thousands of dollars each round all over the table. We saw him on multiple nights, wearing the same clothes, which was a worry. He didn’t seem like he was short of cash though.
We also saw quite a few brides, which was funny to see, but I suppose in the Vegas spirit. They’d come down to the gambling floor in the wedding dress and wander around making bets. We went to the Coyote Ugly bar, which was a bit lacking in energy, but fun for a while.
Lastly, we were there over Thanksgiving. Which was probably lucky, because the place really filled up for the holiday, and if we were anywhere else, we might have had to deal with things being closed down. We looked around for a place to have a traditional thanksgiving dinner and settled on a bar in Caesar’s Palace. It was really tasty! It was the first time I’ve had pumpkin pie, so I’m not sure if it was the real deal, but it was ok. The turkey and stuffing was great, though. Best value expenditure we had in Vegas by far!
We enjoyed our time at Vegas, but probably could have spent a day less there. We already chopped one day off to add to Yosemite, which was a great idea. Should have taken another day to add to something else and it would have been perfect. Luckily hotels in the US seem to have very liberal cancellation/alteration policies, so you can pretty much make whatever changes you want.
Good food was never hard to find
Blackjack tables at Caesar’s Palace
Canal inside the Venetian
The Bellagio fountains
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