Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
...and Canals, pyramids, cities and volcanoes
I spent most of the last two days in San Francisco either watching movies in the Hostel TV Room or hanging around the park or Union Square reading. I did make a little geeky pilgrimage to the CNET building in the business district where a lot of the Tech podcast’s I listen to every day are recorded. I guess it’s a bit like a “normal” person going to the set of Coronation Street or something. The evenings on the other hand were a bit more lively, drinking in the basement party room of the hostel, playing pool and table football.
I flew to Vegas on Thursday afternoon, where I met up with Lisa again at the airport. We stayed at the Sin City Hostel which is in Downtown Vegas where all the wedding chapels (including the one where Brittany got married apparently) and a lot of the seedier establishments are. There is a bus called the deuce that connects the downtown area and the bottom of the strip and for $5 you can ride it as much as you want for 24 hours.
We had a wander down the strip going
into a few casinos, but I’m not much of a gambler and found it hard to get excited about the gaming tables. All the different casino’s seemed to have free performances or exhibitions on which are quite fun to watch or wander around, I especially liked the fountain at the Bellagio which dances in time with music every 15 minutes. The scale of it is real hard to grasp, but it must shoot water up about 100 feet into the air.
Another pretty amazing thing was Fremont Street which I think is the original strip in Vegas. Now the entire street has been covered in what looks like white plastic, but every hour all the neon lights go off and it turns into a 1500 ft TV screen, apparently the largest in the world.
We also went to the LA Comedy Club at Planet Hollywood, the haunted bridge at New York, New York. And after Lisa convinced me that it would be worth it we went to see the Penn & Teller show at the Rio. I’m really glad she did, I’ve been a fan of theirs since they had a show on late Friday night channel 4.
I’m not really sure what to make of Vegas on one hand it’s the ultimate nightlife city with so many amazing things to do, but on the other hand the whole exuberance of it all made me feel a bit uncomfortable, that the casino’s make that much money from gambling and sex shows that they can afford all the life-size Eiffel tower replicas and 110m high pyramids. The other problem I had was with the amount of hassle you got form the people trying to sell you timeshare or much worse, the lines of people along almost every step of the strip trying to thrust cards in your hand with the promises of 2 girls for $69 or girls to your room in 20 minutes or less guaranteed.
We’ve now left Vegas for LA on a greyhound bus which was what I was originally planning to use for getting around the whole of the USA and I’m bloody glad I didn’t, the seats where uncomfortable with hardly any legroom and they are anally strict about the amount of time you’re allowed for a rest stop. The driver of our bus drove off with 1/3 of the bus still in
the service station including a really old couple who had left all their bags on the bus. I felt really sorry for them for the rest of the day.
We’re in LA for 4 nights I got some free tickets for 2 days entry to Universal Studios from an internet points thing I’ve been doing and maybe having a day at Venice Beach or something.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.099s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0389s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lucas
non-member comment
Penn...
Loving the picture of you with Penn, that's going to be you when you're older!