Advertisement
Published: December 6th 2011
Edit Blog Post
After a short stop over in LA, we boarded our connecting flight to Las Vegas. Looking out the window as we neared our destination was a surreal; Vegas rises out of the middle of a desert and is surrounded by vast mountain ranges. It looks like such an unlikely destination for a city which draws nearly 40 million tourists a year.
We made our way to the baggage area to discover that in this city it is customary to put slot machines anywhere where there is space for a slot machine. I'm not sure exactly who cannot even wait to get to their hotel/casino to start gambling, but in this city you don't have to.
One extortionate taxi ride down the strip later we arrived at our hotel, Imperial Palace. It was smack bang in the middle of the strip, but on the downside it did smell like an ashtray. It was really exciting to be in Vegas, but kinda strange walking through a casino to get to our room. After this we headed out down the strip. It is an incredible city; the size, scale and bright lights of the place are all pretty mesmerizing. We
walked along the strip, passing Caesars Palace and The Bellagio, stopping at the Bellagio to watch the amazing fountain display! We returned to the Imperial Palace and had a little gamble on some of the machines. It was pretty hard to work out what we needed to do on most of the machines, and it's safe to say that the house was beating all three of us -taking the few meagre dollars that we were all prepared to lose that evening. After a long day of travel and excitement, we turned in.
The next day we awoke and and headed out for a day exploring the inside of the strip casinos. Sustained by a breakfast from the McDonalds $1 menu, we made our way to Caesars Palace and the Bellagio. These are truly impressive buildings, richly decorated in marbles and fine materials. It was obvious instantly from the inside that these were where the people with money stayed and gambled. Opposite Caesars was a casino called Paris, which included a third scale model of the Eiffel Tower! Next we headed to Treasure Island and finally the Venetian. The latter was probably my favourite of all the Vegas
casinoes; featuring an indoor canal complex (complete with boats), the entire place was built like an indoor town! Next we headed to the shopping plaza in Caesars so Beth could look at clothes she couldn't afford, meanwhile and me and James fulfilled gender stereotypes by waiting outside on a bench. It was still very hot in the early afternoon, so we headed back for a swim at our hotel pool. Having seen a number of the Vegas Casinos we had clocked the place with the cheapest drinks in our proximity ($1 beers or mixer drinks!) on the strip. That evening we headed to this destination, Casino Royal; a Casino which shared the name, but sadly none of the sophistication with the Casino in the Bond film. A few beers later we plucked up the courage to try our hands at some gambling at the tables. We picked out a game called Switch Blackjack, with which (we thought) we had a reasonable grasp of the rules, and sat down. After a couple of stupid mistakes and fumbled hands we were taken under the wing of an awesome American woman who was sat at our table. She walked us through the rules
and tactics, and for a while we were doing well - I was about $80 up early on and gave Beth half of it so she joined our table. After all of us initially being up, the house inevitably won. We all left the table having had a lot of fun, but having lost all our money. We hung out for a little longer drinking beer before slumping back to our hotel.
On this, our third day in Vegas, we fancied a change of pace from gambling so decided to try something else distinctly American - shooting a gun. No, we weren't planning on getting involved in the country's notable gang violance; we instead decided to visit a shooting range. We headed out off the strip to our chosen range, imaginatively named 'The Gun Store'. When we arrived we were handed a gun menu listing the prices and types of guns available, from pistols to assault rifles. Being our first time we all chose pistols for $25, and normal targets (there were a variety of less politically correct targets, including 'The terrorist package'😉. The atmosphere was quite strange, with guns being treated as such a normal thing.
After a long queue we were given some instructions as well as goggles and ear protectors, and led in to the actual shooting range. It was very intense in the shooting range, with lots of gunfire and an overwhelming feeling that it wasn't that safe in the range. That being said, we were led to our booth, and given our guns and tips by our assigned instructor. Beth was up first and while looking quite scared, actually did quite a good job of hitting the target. Next up was James who also did a good job. Finally it was my turn to fire. There is no real amount of preparation for just how powerful the pistol was, and it kicked back a lot every time I fired. Overall whilst it was certainly quite fun, it was a pretty scary experience; one that I'm glad to have done, but certainly not in a hurry to repeat. During our few days in Vegas we had been eating a combination of cheap and fairly unhealthy foods, so today we decided to break the habit. After wondering around the strip for a while we found a cheap all you can eat buffet at the
Monte Carlo. IT. WAS. AMAZING. There was pretty much every type of food you could imagine and we all stuffed ourselves with all the foods we normally couldn't afford. After this gorge-fest, we plodded our way back along the strip, visiting the lions at the MGM Grand and the strip's newest hotel, The Cosmopolitan, as we went. Our final evening in Vegas was pretty low profile; a couple of beers and a little bit of gambling on the machines, was all it entailed. Overall Vegas was a great city. I certainly liked it a lot more than I expected. Yes it's brash and tacky, but it makes no preconception that it's going to beany other way. It is certainly a city that I would like to visit again in the future, but maybe it would be best to come back when I'm not on a travellers budget.
The next morning we awoke and got the shuttle out to the car rental place at the airport. Now the idea here was for me to be the driver for this four day excursion through the desert.... however, I didn't have enough money on my credit card and the car
had to be rented in the card holders name, so unfortunately James had to be the driver again. We managed to haggle our way into a free car upgrade, so at least James got a big 4x4 for driving round the deserts.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0552s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb