Rollin' the dice in Vegas

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We arrived in the early evening on our flight from Washington DC into Vegas. Our taxi driver from the Vegas airport was able to charge us a stupendous amount of money on the meter for a tiny journey, I suppose it makes sense that Vegas is set up to take all your cash!
Our driver told us that tourism had dropped by 50% in the recession, businesses in Vegas must be hurting badly!

Our hotel/casino Bally's is in the middle of 'The Strip' and seemed nice enough. The walk through the large casino gaming room to the elevators up to the guest rooms was a huge 200m walk, it was another 200m from the elevators to our room, it's a pretty big hotel! Our room was a nice clean, and fairly modern one, great bang for buck, the bed a king size is the biggest we've ever slept in and our views weren't bad.

We decided to go for a little walk along the strip at night (our body clocks were telling us 11pm but it was only 8pm in Vegas). First we checked out the neighboring Paris themed casino which had Parisian style cobble-style streets bounded by fake blue skies overhead and boutique shops on either side. The Paris gaming rooms were bursting with pokies (as they all are) and we made our way toward a large metallic looking strut of the Vegas 'Eiffel Tower' to find the exit. Outside we found the Vegas Eiffel Tower was pretty big (not as big as the real one of course) and impressive and pretty in the night lights. We walked the strip and found the architecture of the Casinos crowding the strip and everything lit up to be very pretty.

We were annoyed by the touts everywhere handing out adverts for prostitutes (we looked at the adverts and they ranged about $35-65 for a girl to your door in 20 mins) and appreciated that this section of the strip is not the family friendly part, pretty scummy.
After exploring the 'New York' themed casino and taking in a few more sights of the strip and having a quick burger we turned for home, we enjoyed our walk of the strip but got back with our body clocks well after midnight, the curtains mostly blocked out the blazing lights of the Vegas night.

Alicia was feeling reasonably well today (no sign of morning sickness) so after eating our morning bananas we set out to explore Vegas by day. It was balmy weather, about 70F, and light jumpers were fine and we even took those off when walking in the warm sun; this was much nicer weather than what we'd had in the North East!
Out on the strip we headed Northward (having seen Southwards at night) and took in the architecture of the strip, plenty of high rise hotels with interesting design, some low shop and mall areas. The Strip is very wide and has overhead walkways to get across in most cases. It seems obvious they should run a subway or tram down the length of the strip as it's so hard to get around.....

Our first stop was the Flamingo, we saw the garden area between the hotel towers and saw a few pretty flamingos standing about, it was a reasonably pleasant garden but not an insanely lavish or impressive offering.
Our next casino visit was The Venetian. They've done a fine job of crafting an exterior scene that's quite true to Venice with the monument towers they have in St Marks all there and the facade of the Casino had the same facade as the real Doges palace. The entry walkway is over a reasonable interpretation of the Rialto Bridge and a moderate sized outdoor pool serves as a canal for the gondoliers to pole along with guests foolish enough to go on their 30 metre “cruise”. After enjoying the lovely thematic exterior we popped inside to be harassed by touts trying to sign us up for shows, and after disposing of them we were able to enjoy the Venetian interior. The entry lobby has a huge and impressive ceiling painting with palacial type decoration; it's been done to a high standard and was very impressive
Down in the casino floor the Venetian theme seemed to disappear and it could have been any other casino in town. The cocktail waitresses that serve people gaming were wearing stupendously short dresses, this was a theme we noticed over and over in many casinos. The uniform applies irrespective of age too so some cocktail waitresses in their fifties are dressed like slutty teenagers!

Back on the strip we headed north and saw Treasure Island (TI) which had a sad facade and looks like it's just about going out of business; the pirate ships outside were a bit worn looking and some of the front area was covered off with black plastic sheeting. Later when we popped into treasure island casino there was no obvious pirate or similar theme to be found and the usual free show they offer (nowadays a 'siren song') was cancelled too... not looking good for TI......
Between this area and the next part of the strip was sort of no mans land with construction sites and dusty bleak ground, it was a long walk up to 'Circus Circus' our intended destination casino. Circus is famous for having free circus type shows all day and we popped in in time to watch some impressive 'fast change' artists at work going through an impressive range of lightning fast costume changes that we found very entertaining. We then watched a second free show: a ribbon climbing acrobatic type show that was pretty good.

With the day getting on we made the long walk back and stopped in at the 'Forums shops' a branch of Caesars Palace. Inside we saw excellent decorations, one entry hall had was very high with a helix shaped escalator flanked by statues and a nice decorative ceiling too, inside the shop area we located a couple of beautiful fountains but couldn't find any moderately priced food, everything was exorbitant so with me hungry we set off to try to find something.

Walking the strip you see many costumed characters e.g. Elvis, Spiderman, Superman, etc posing in the hopes of getting change or paid for photos. The best we saw was Elvis with gold painted skin standing so still he was able to scare a girl who came up to check if he was a statue or not. Also a guy dressed like 'Captain Jack' from Pirates of the Caribean who had done a great job with costume and hair and also walked with exactly the right wacky, airy-fairy pose that Johnny Depp had.

Back in our hotel in the late afternoon I watched a Monday night football game (on early as it was played in the East of the USA) and drank some Bud with Lime beer (refreshing stuff) and Alicia took an Ibuprofen and slept off her headache and nausea with a big two hour nap.
We headed out for a Lamb & Steak meal in a restaurant 'Outback Grill' Alicia had spotted earlier, it's odd seeing Australian themed eateries that you know don't exist back home around the world... Alicia had a delicious rack of lamb whilst Nick had prime rib slow roasted which looked like corn beef it was so pink and odd textured but tasted ok.

Our next morning Alicia's morning sickness killed her so she watched moronic tv and tried to feel better while I wrote the diary. We eventually made our way out to find something a bit more substantial to eat since eating tends to reduce her nausea and found an outdoor cafe offering a good and inexpensive menu. We enjoyed a brunch of pancakes and club sandwich and laughed quietly at our waitresses ludicrous fake eyebrows which were easily the worst looking we've ever seen.

With Alicia feeling a bit improved we walked down and into the MGM grand casino. It is a vast casino indoors and seemed quite nice. It was around midday on a weekday and there were a few very pretty girls in the casino wandering with their boyfriends, I suppose it was the time of day when couples wander and explore.
MGM is know for it's Lion exhibit which we went to, we learned the $9 million indoor glassed in enclosure was climate controlled and sound & smell proof so the lions don't get distressed by the casino or it's patrons. The enclosure was an impressive big enclosure with a cascading waterfall, rock areas for the lions to lie about on and a glassed in walkway that you could walk through underneath the lions that frequently walked or lay above. We stood under a full grown lioness and were within15 cm of her through the glass, it was impressive. The Lions were a bit sleepy and jaded but did prowl around and swipe at the rubber balls a little and were generally interesting and excellent to see.
We finished up in MGM and made our way out to explore more of the casinos. Crossing the street on an overpass we found fabulous views of the New York casino and Strip, and the large MGM lion statue.

We found a 'Cold Stone' ice creamery on our travels (identical to Cold Rock in Australia) and had strawberry ice cream filled with smashed kit kat and M&Ms. Eating cold food also seems to help Alicia's nausea a bit but neither ice cream was great. We think Cold Rock has much better mix selection and ice cream back home in Oz.

Our next casino to visit was Luxor, sadly it's quite hard to get a decent view of this giant black pyramid and Sphinx if you approach it from the same side of the strip. Inside Luxor we once again cursed the lack of themed costumes (no casinos seem to dress their staff in theme) but did appreciate the efforts they'd made on decoration, there certainly were some obvious Egyptian motifs throughout. We played a couple of slot machines and lost a few dollars then stepped toward the exit. We wandered about and got a few decent angles and photos of the Sphinx and Pyramid, it was frustrating that it's SO hard to get a decent look at the Sphinx and Pyramid with roads and car parks and fences always in the way because it is a very impressive, huge pyramid and statue construction.

Done with the South end of the Strip we decided to head back homeward, Public transport in Vegas is CRAP and a bus wasn't easily available to us. We weren't pleased having to walk back up the strip as this section was a bit deserted and with a couple of dodgy hobos about. We felt that the real estate down this South end near Luxor and Mandalay Bay just isn't good Strip real-estate at all.

Alicia was getting weary by the time we made it back up the strip to around MGM/ NY where there were some stunning sunset views of MGM and NY casino. I took a hundred photos of the sunset and strip from the escalators and pedestrian walkway whilst Alicia waited and cursed me.

After a decent rest at home we headed out, bought a 24 hour bus pass and jumped on the bus to Downtown, sadly we had to take the 'all stops' bus. Once again: public transport in Vegas is BAD! It's expensive too! Taxis are even worse with huge per mile prices! We finally got to Fremont St in Downtown after a lengthy 40 minutes.

Fremont Street in Downtown is a huge pedestrian mall with an electronic screen roof running a few blocks over the whole stretch, they have ads and other useless things on the screen when the 'Fremont St Experience' show is not running. We were surprised and amused to watch screaming girls fly overhead on a zip line, a cool gimmicky ride that runs under the big screen roof.

After a quick scout about the Downtown casinos where we saw loads of very scantily clad casino girls and cheap drinks we realised this section is probably paradise for lads bucks parties. We stepped out again onto the street at 9pm to catch the Fremont St Experience (2*+) show.

As we waited for the show we saw a couple of impressive little street performers; one chap was sculpting (!) a bust of a tourist as he waited and doing a good job of it. Another was spraying a painting using deft blasts of spray paint and tools to shape the paint on the cardboard.

The 'experience' eventually began and is a sound and light show on the huge lengthy overhead screen. The show they ran while we were there was backed by 'The Doors' songs and had some picture clips that were probably from their era and albums, the screen was mainly lit up with pulsing colours light patterns and swirls. What made the experience excellent was the sheer length of the screen, you could look down the covered mall and see it stretching away for a good hundred metres or more and the overall effect was stunning, the show was just 'fair' in content (pictures/ videos/ music) but the fact they'd invested so much to make it happen and it was a success was a marvel.

With a bit of searching we found a decent restaurant to eat dinner and I had a nice microbrewery Pale ale and BBQ ribs that were average, and Alicia enjoyed a pizza. Overall it was a successful and inexpensive meal, one of the best bang-for-buck meals we've had in the states and it made us think this is what Vegas all used to be like; affordable decent eating.

We found ourselves a $2 blackjack table and put down $30 between us, after a couple of wins with four other lads sitting on the table with us the boys left and a new dealer arrived, we took a terrible run of dealer blackjacks and some other improbably good hands for the dealer and got killed and lost all our money quickly. I walked away feeling cheated but re-assured myself it would be too outrageous to cheat gamblers so blatantly in such a mainstream place.

We bid farewell to Downtown and got home to bed, we liked downtown as it was obviously different and a bit cheaper than the Strip.

Next morning we ducked over to the nearby 'Bill's Gamblin' Hall' to attend a free Craps dice lesson. Unfortunately the guy giving the lesson was a bad teacher and it wasn't pitched simple enough for beginners, I don't think any of the fifteen people attending the free talk understood Craps much better by the time he was done.

We booked some shows for the afternoon and evening then since it's our last full day in Vegas we decided to get a little more exploring done and headed into Bellagios for the first time. Before entering we watched a daytime fountain show out front. Bellagio has the famous, huge fountains played to music out front. It was overcast and dull light but otherwise fine to be outside and the fountains were very impressive with their computerised patterns and high firing, we really enjoyed the show and think it's a fabulous feature.
Bellagio had nice interiors and everything seemed a little more plush, in particular there were lovely decorations in the lobby; an artistic array of coloured umbrellas overhead and golden Christmas trees. We stopped into the Jean Paul chocolate shop inside to marvel at a vast chocolate fountain that began in the roof and poured out in twisting, ribboning fountains of chocolate into puddles and pools that fell again to the next level. Alicia spotted a giant strawberry dipped in white and milk chocolate that we shared for the princely sum of $4, it was fairly good.
Lastly we found the famed Bellagio conservatory; an indoor garden they change every six weeks or so. They'd decked it out in Christmas theme and there were gorgeous displays of polar bears, penguins in igloos, reindeer flying overhead dragging a santa sleigh and a big and impressively decorated Christmas tree. Also a garden of giant gold baubles with jumping fountain sprayed waters that shot over the baubles in bursts. This was the most impressive Christmas display I've ever seen and I appreciated Bellagios big spending on very impressive, free to the public displays.

Finished at Bellagio we then headed directly through to Caesars Palace. At the check-in lobby they had nice ceiling decorations, round statue statue displays and painted/ mosaic walls that look good; just like you see in the movie 'The Hangover'.
We were hoping to sneak a peak at the pool area and were pleased to find that this could be done with no checkpoints to establish if we were guests or not. When we got out to the pools there was a sign saying 'area closed' but other tourists were wandering about taking a look so we did too.
It was a large and beautiful pool area with stunning statues and decorations, e.g. winged horses and Roman figures. By the pool were large square plush looking cushions on vast couches like you might expect to see Romans lounging on. There were a few different pools and bubbling spa areas, it was just such a vast and lovely pool area, I've rarely seen better.

After a quick lunch at the Venetian to keep Alicia's morning sickness under control we hopped the express bus up to Sahara Casino to play some cheap $1 blackjack that Alicia had spotted a sign for.
Sahara does not look like a prosperous casino and they tried to rope us in for some 'free gambling money' on arrival to find we were both foreigners and not around to hear the 'time share' rubbish they wanted to punish us with.

Alicia played a slot machine quite successfully for a while (before losing) then we both played about an hour on the $1 bet blackjack table where we came out exactly even; we began with a hot streak that had us cumulatively about $20 up followed by plateau and eventual decline. We played through two dealer changes and about 4-5 shoes (I'm guessing there were about 3-4 decks minimum in the shoe). On our table were some drunk mid-aged Americans who didn't seem to be playing their 'A' game..... so that's why Casino's want people drinking!
Some card shoes you swear are lucky and you win everything; others unlucky and you get killed; it's crazy and hard to avoid being superstitious!

We shot back South to the Flamingo for our 4pm 'Nathan Burton Comedy Magic show' (1*+), the magician was reasonably funny and good. He had two very sexy showgirls he used a LOT (although big question marks on how real their boobs were) often the first 3 minutes of each trick was the girls dancing saucily in tiny outfits.... I wondered how much conservative types and parents appreciated this....
Sadly all his tricks were the same and he gave half the show away to a sidekick doing audience participation schtick; sigh.
The one trick he did over and over (about six different variants of it) were putting either himself or an assistant in a box and making them disappear. Some were very well done, others I could guess how they were done, it got to the point though I was almost groaning when another box/ chest came out to lock someone in! The show fizzled with a dud final trick but overall, for the price, it was entertaining and pretty good and I was glad we saw some live magic.

Alicia died of nausea after the show so we went home to rest for a few hours then we headed to dinner in the next-door Paris casino which is directly connected to Ballys and very close by. Our casual burger restaurant had a very minimal dress code for it's female staff and Alicia was commenting on how the outfit was completely inappropriate for one of the normal sized but large busted girls who didn't come close to fitting into it. Our waitress was the only dog in their with tramp stamps all over her arms; hahaha!
I had a Philly Cheesesteak style burger and Alicia had a milkshake, soup and fries, it was very filling and we didn't finish it.

With a little time to go before our 10:30pm show we raced to see the Bellagio night fountain show but they inexplicably ran one ending at 21:55 and we missed it. We went out with camera and tripod just in case but another one didn't eventuate and so with me swearing viciously that we weren't going to see the fountains at night we ran the camera gear back to our room then ran to the Jubilee show at 22:30.
Jubilee is the longest running burlesque show in Vegas (over 25 years) and had an enormous cast and stage sets. The show began with dozens and dozens of girls in costume, then singing men, then more topless girls, then still more girls, it was astounding the size of their cast! 2 out of 50 girls were not flat chested, so it wasn't a terribly 'titillating' experience. The cast were topless about 40% of the time.
Overall it was an impressive show with high production values, great costume, amazing headpieces and hats. The best part of the show, costume wise, was when a crowd of twenty something girls in red feathered headresses put their heads together to form a vast shape of feathers, it was remarkable. The only part of the show we didn't much like was a Titanic themed part; why they'd choose this tragedy for a part of their show was beyond us!
We enjoyed the show but were weary by the midnight finish, we got to bed well after midnight after finishing packing, not much chance for sleep tonight with an early flight.

Our next day the airport transfer and flight check-in to San Francisco were all painless and problem free. Virgin has touch screen tvs and wifi internet available during the flight! Everything was quite new and plush and staff have freedom of speech; many announcements were full of slang, jokes and casual phrases. You get the impression the staff are kind of enjoying themselves and it was nice to fly with Virgin America.
We flew over the rocky mountain range on the way from Vegas to San Fran which had a good snow covering and was very pretty.

Thus ends our Las Vegas adventure, we had a great time and would recommend the experience to all. Next entry is San Francisco (where we'll be leaving our hearts).

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Photos

Architecture and Colour on The Strip
Nice lookin' buildings just opposite Paris Casino

Paris by night
The Eiffel tower in Vegas ain't the real thing but it's pretty darn big and pretty darn good

Pretty Fountain
The Venetian Casino is surrounded by beauty, I like the swirls of the water in this shot

The Venetian
True we've never seen a canal so small or clear in Venice but the other attention to detail is fabulous

Caesars Forum Shops Interior
Wow! on the interior of the shops, that's what I call interior decorating

Strip Skyline
Not just for gamblers, Vegas offers good times to photographers and architecture fans

Caesars Fountain
The best of the many pretty fountains in Caesars

I'm not Lion!
The Lion on shift in the MGM lion showroom strikes a nice pose by the waterfall

Wow to Vegas
This shot encapsulates the excellent New York array of buildings plus the vast MGM lion

Big cars
This is a typical huge car/truck they have in the USA, we can't get over how stupendously large their vehicles are.

Luxor Casino
It's quite hard to get a decent view of the Pyramid and Sphinx as a pedestrian.... shame as they look great.

Sunset Silhouette on the Strip
Excaliburs castle and NY's Statue of Liberty framed against a delightful sunset, it was beautiful

Lion at sunset
The big MGM Lion facade in a pretty sunset

Fremont Street Experience
The vast overhead canopy screen is all lit up in crazy colours and video and goes for a heck of a long way, very impressive to see

Bellagio Lobby
Bellagio knows how to decorate; this gorgeous scene is the coloured umbrella decorated ceiling and xmas trees

Bellagio Conservatory Christmas
The christmas display was fabulous and second to none, this is one of the many photos we took of the lovely, lavish display

Chocolate Fountain
This excellent floor to ceiling chocolate fountain in Bellagio's was cased in glass and looked excellent and delicious

Caesars High Rollers
The entry to the Caesars High Roller room is appropriately lavish

Caesar's Pools
The pool area in Caesars is stunning and unbeatable, this is one of the many lovely pools flanked by fine quality statues

Comments

[MumG]

las Vegas
Vegas sounds amazing Can't wait to see it one day.You saw so much in a short time Thanks for another detailed report I love reading what you've seen.Will have to look at all your photos.