Leaving Las Vegas (Unfortunately)

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I’m typing this entry from a poolside sun bed at the famous Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas and we’re just beginning to get our breath back. We’ve had a quite sensational five days here and there hasn’t been anything even close to a dull moment - if New York is the city that never sleeps, this place doesn’t even stop to blink. If you’ve been to Vegas, you’ll know exactly what I mean; if you haven’t, it’s everything you see on the TV, in films and a lot, lot more. We pictured it as a slightly sleazy, run down place with not a lot else to do other than gamble. Whilst this may have been the case a while back but it certainly isn’t now and Las Vegas is fully justified in its claim to be “The Entertainment Capital of the World”.

In actual fact, our visit got off to an inauspicious start as we encountered our first major travel problems of our year out when transferring from New Orleans. Our plane was scheduled to touch down in Dallas but tornados there led to all flights being cancelled. Just for good measure, the American Airlines computer system chose this day to crash, leaving their very few staff to manually check in thousands of passengers. By the time we eventually reached the front of the queue, all flights for the next two days had already been reallocated leaving us in a difficult position both flight and hotel wise. To cut a long story short, we luckily managed to get the last two standby seats on a flight direct to Vegas with another airline six hours later; even though this was at a cost to us (Act of God and all that) it proved well worth the money.

Las Vegas (Spanish for “The Meadows”) has a population of just over half a million and is set in the desert state of Nevada. It is a city founded on gambling. A statement of the bleeding obvious, I know, but we just hadn’t realised to what extent this was the case. As soon as you set foot in the airport terminal building, you can gamble; hundreds of fruit machines line the corridors to the arrivals hall and slot jockeys are getting their first fix as they wait for their cases at baggage reclaim.

From that moment on, you can bet twenty four hours a day, seven days a week if you want to; casinos are everywhere and even the counter tops in bars have video poker machines sunk into them so you can gamble whilst having a beer. Ironically, Angela and I have had the time of our lives here but, other than using the free slot credits you get on check in, we’ve taken no part in the action. That may seem unusual for someone who has lost money at the races in what seems like half the civilised world, but the lack of skill (don’t laugh!!) with this type of gambling holds no appeal for us. Percentages and probabilities mean you WILL lose money in the end and, with a $15 minimum stake, we’ve got other things to spend our money on. Slow horses for example.............

You only have to look at the resort casinos to understand how much money is lost here - the wealth and opulence has to be seen to be believed. Ageing casino’s are ruthlessly knocked down and rebuilt with cutting edge facilities and there are new ones being built everywhere, all paid for with the money of hopeful but luckless punters. We stayed in The Venetian and I urge you to take a virtual tour of one of the rooms (http://www.venetian.com/TOUR.aspx#), it doesn’t overstate how fabulous they are. Ours was the lowest class of its 4,000 suites and even that had not one but two 42” HS plasma TV’s in the living area and a smaller one in the bathroom (very similar to some of the casa particulars we stayed at in Cuba................!!). Actually, the room rates aren’t too bad at all really as a) these places take some filling and there’s a lot of competition and b) their sole aim is to get you into the casino. All signs point there and drinks are free as long as you’re playing. “Free” in as much as you don’t pay for them, but you can lose an awful lot of money at blackjack in the ten minutes it takes the waitress to get your $3 bottle of Bud.

The legendary strip is 7.2km long and is cheek by jowl with the palatial casino resorts all fiercely vying for business. They do this in many ways, the main one being built along a theme. By way of a few examples, there’s the beautiful “Paris” complete with a half size replica Eiffel Tower, the Roman influenced Caesar’s Palace and Circus, Circus built along the lines of a .............well, you can probably guess. Each one puts on nightly shows that would match anything Broadway can offer and, at the moment for example, you can see Elton John, Barry Manilow or one of the five Cirque Du Soleil in town.

Our choice of The Venetian turned out to be an excellent one; it is built as a faithful replica of Venice, complete with authentic Latin streets and even a massive St. Marks Square (I thought Angela was joking when she observed a lot of its seventeen award winning restaurants were Italian...........). A canal runs for over half a kilometre through the centre and gondoliers serenade their passengers as they gently punt them under the ornate bridges and along the water (“Just one Cornetto.................). The weather in this “Venice” is always perfect as the high ceiling is painted convincingly with a gorgeous blue sky and just a few fluffy white clouds.

This is an extremely affluent part of the US and that’s reflected in the quality of the buildings; all marble floors, fountains and statues. There’s also over 500,000 sq foot of mall in the basement of The Venetian ( those shops you never actually see anyone buy anything in - Fendi, Jimmy Choo, Swarovski etc) - you can easily understand how the place cost $1,500,000,000 to build. I got a timely reality check one evening when taking a deep, foaming bath in our suite. There, by the gold plated taps, I spotted a pumice stone we’d got for the equivalent of a few pennies on the streets of Santiago. We bought it off a father and his young daughter who stood for hours on end in the blazing sun trying to eke out a living. This could have been a totally different world than this adult Disneyland for millionaires we were currently living in.........................

The most difficult aspect to convey about these resorts though is their sheer enormity - they’re more like cities in the sky than conventional hotels. In addition to the 4,000 plus suites, The Venetian has five convention centres, seven pool areas, a 120,000 sq foot casino (about a ten minute walk from side to side, if that helps) containing 800 game tables as well as the incalculable number of slots. Would you believe it even has its own Madam Tussaud’s inside? In January this year, its adjoining sister hotel - The Palazzo - opened and that’s even bigger. They now combine to form the largest hotel complex in the world.

The Venetian also contains two theatres (each with a capacity of almost 2,000) and it was there we saw a fabulous, pyrotechnic filled production of The Phantom of the Opera. We’d both seen a Saturday afternoon matinee version of this at the Opera House in Manchester years ago; I didn’t really enjoy it though as United were in action at the time playing QPR away ergo my thoughts were elsewhere. This, though, was a different kettle of fish and the performances very moving. Angela got a bit too caught up in it though and I had to keep putting my hand across her mouth to stop her singing loudly. She has many, many talents but singing certainly isn’t one of them and I know some casts can get a bit sniffy about the audience joining in...................

By now, we were having such a fabulous time we decided to extend our stay in Vegas by a couple of days. There were still some sights we wanted to see but the real deciding factor was the internet deal we secured for The Bellagio (of Ocean’s Eleven fame) - even the lady who checked us in there was amazed!! Whilst not as pretty as The Venetian, this is still an unbelievable hotel and its casino must be three times the size of its faux Italian competitor. It employs over 10,000 people and is famous for, amongst other things, its performing fountains. These run the full length of “Lake Bellagio” in front of the hotel and provide a stunning spectacle as they seemingly dance in perfect time to the accompanying classical music. Enhanced by spectacular lighting, they often reach the height of the hotel itself and large crowds gather to watch their show.

It’s quite funny that we even considered walking from The Venetian to The Bellagio when we swapped over as they are diagonally across the road from each other and look quite close. Thank goodness we decided against this as, due to the size of these resorts, it’s an optical illusion and actually much further than it looks. In fact, the journey cost us $12 in a taxi and dragging two suitcases along crowded streets wouldn’t have been much fun. We’re doing lots of walking during this year out in an effort to keep fit and we’ve covered miles and miles in the like of Buenos Aires, Habana, and Auckland etc. Nowhere, though, have we walked as far as here - you don’t really have an option; we (well, Angela) usually picks up the geography of a city in a day or so and finds her way round - not in these hotels. We got lost more times than we care to remember and it was a pleasant surprise when you actually managed to locate a place twice running.

Las Vegas has a million ways of extricating the maximum amount of money from its visitors yet still leaving them feeling good about the place. Undoubtedly the best money we spent here was on a helicopter flight into the Grand Canyon and this turned out to be a truly amazing experience. We were determined to visit the Canyon and had considered driving there but it was over four hours away and we thought this too far. Also, the sheer size of it (277m long, up to 18 miles wide and a mile deep) means there’s no way you could see enough from ground level to fully appreciate its vastness.

As the Canyon is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and it is estimated to be up to 17,000,000 years old, we decided we wanted to do things properly. There are lots of companies vying for your custom and we did quite a bit of research to select the best one; in the end we chose Papillon.com and they didn’t let us down. The trip got off to a great start when they picked us from our hotel in a stretch limo to take us to the nearby McCarron Airport where our state of the art helicopter awaited. It only held six passengers and we had a chuckle as Bob Marley’s “Don’t Worry About a Thing” played over our headphones as we waited on board for the pilot.

It was quite a surprise when the said pilot confidently strolled over and turned out to be a tiny Japanese lady by the name of Yoshi. (I’d pictured it would be someone who looked like they’d been in Top Gun, all chiselled chin and Aviator Raybans). Although a little taken aback at first, I soon relaxed again as I figured this was a helicopter, not a car and she wouldn’t have to do any reversing or parallel parking ............................just kidding!!. In fact, Yoshi turned out to be a real laugh and her flying was fabulous - she explained everything in great detail and her commentary added to the occasion.

We flew at 145mph (although it barely felt like we were moving at all) out over the snow capped Spring Mountains which surround Vegas - unbelievable as this is the Mojave Desert and the temperature was around 90 degrees in the city. Being in a helicopter was great fun in its own right but some of the sights it afforded us were unbelievable. First up was the imposing Hoover Dam which was built in the 1930’s and holds back the mighty Colorado River. The dam created Lake Mead, the biggest artificial lake in America, and provides the desert city below all the water it needs, allowing it to flourish. Next up we skimmed over an extinct volcano and clearly saw the broad rivers of solidified lava it has spewed out over millions of years. These make for an eerie landscape and its unusual formations and colours have been used as sets for Star Trek, The Running Man and others.

After an hour or so, we reached the western rim of the Grand Canyon and Yoshi dropped our altitude so we could fly inside it rather than over it. Everyone on board became silent as we had our breath taken away by the jaw dropping sights, some that would rival any of the others we’ve been lucky enough to see during this sabbatical. Soon after, we landed on the floor of the Canyon for a picnic and cracked open a bottle of champagne. There, we ate and drank whilst craning our necks to try and fully take in this awesome spectacle that nature has created. Suitably refreshed and full of bonhomie, everyone climbed back onboard the helicopter and started the journey back as the sun set behind the mountains. There was one final treat in store for us as we flew down the 4.5 mile Las Vegas strip, now lit up in all its glory - this time, a decidedly man made vista but a very, very impressive one nonetheless.

This amazing experience provided a fitting end to our time in Las Vegas. Big, brash and, in its own way, beautiful, it far exceeded our expectations and we had an unbelievable amount of fun. It completed a hat trick of cities (along with Habana and New Orleans) which, although all vastly different, have been high amongst our favourite ones since we’ve been away. We’re driving across to Los Angeles next and it’s got an awful lot to follow!!

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Photos

The Entertainment Capital Of The World
There's a lot more to Vegas than just gambling. We were there for five days and the time just flew by.

Just One Cornetto
Gondoliers serenade their customers at top volume whilst punting them along The Venetian's canal.

Checking In
The whole of The Venetian is lavishly decorated in this way and you're accompanied by gentle opera music everywhere you walk (and you walk a long way!!).

St Mark's Square
Only in Vegas could you have a meal in a detailed replica of Venice's St. Mark's Square. The realistically painted ceilings mean you eat under a beautiful blue sky, day or night.

The World's Largest Hotel Complex
The newly opened Palazzo is nearest the camera and it's sister hotel, The Venetian, furthest away. It's amazing to see that these places are always busy and that the city can support lots more hotels like them.

The Hoover Dam
Built in the 1930's, this uses the Colorado River to create the massive Lake Mead which then, in turn, provides the desert city of Vegas with all its water.

Don't Step Back!!
I think I look remarkably calm here as, a moment before this photo was taken, Angela had nearly pushed me into the Grand Canyon. She said it was an accident and that she tripped, but I'm not so sure..........!!

Doing It In Style!!
Landing actually in the Canyon was a wonderful experience. There, we had a picnic washed down with champagne whilst gazing at our incredible surroundings.

Weird Landscape
The area around the Canyon is covered in solidified lava spewed out by volcanos over millions of years. Their eerie form has been used in many TV shows and films in the past, including "The Running Man".

The Bellagio
Our second hotel has had its popularity boosted by featuring in Ocean's 11, but it was the fountains that made it for us.

In The Casino..........
It's scary to see just how busy these places were all day, every day. If you looked around you might find a table with a $15 minimum bet but most were $50 up. Now wonder they can afford to build such lavish places - we contented ourselves with the one buck Michelob offer whilst watching others doing their money.

The Fountains By Night
This was a truly stunning show put on by The Bellagio. It really is as if they dance in time with the classical music and the whole Strip stops for a while to watch.

Paris By Night
Just one of the themed casinos that are amazingly faithful to the original. We had lunch on the 11th floor of the Eiffel Tower and the restaurant would rival any of those in Paris itself.

Comments

[alex fry]

That View is truley Magnificent