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Published: March 10th 2006
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Las Vegas: 22nd - 25th February 2006
We left San Francisco at 7.15am to make it back to the airport in time for our hop over to Las Vegas. Arriving at the airport in Las Vegas was truly bizarre, as you fly in you're surrounded by a mass of desert, and then the Strip becomes visible with all these insanely shaped buildings that are your first glimpse of the casinos. In the airport itself, there are more slot machines than in the arcade on Southsea seafront. After retrieving our luggage, we found our way to a bus stop to try and get a bus down to Fremont Street where our hostel was. We'd already heard a few comments about the area being a bit dodgy, but there only seem to be 2 hostels in the entire place and the other one seemed to have a reputation as a bit of a crack house so we opted for the USA Hostel on Fremont. The bus journey there was eventful in itself, we had no idea where to get off the bus, so we asked the bus driver whose reply was a little difficult to understand so we ended up getting on
and off the bus 3 times as we thought each place was where he'd meant us to get off. The bus became packed and I don't think we were too popular with our enormous packs, but once the other passengers had established we were english they were only too happy to talk about the Queen or tell us they'd been to Eurpoe and give us tips on where to visit. We eventually got to a bus station where we boarded a different bus to take us the last leg of the trip down to Fremont St. After a bit of a chit chat a particularly shady character on the bus asked where we were heading, and on hearing we were going to Fremont he told us to watch out and not veer off the main road...so that was reassuring from a guy dressed all in black with a hat and dark shades.
On arrival at the hostel, they told us our booking seemed to have vanished but they gave us keys to a dorm and asked us to come back in an hour or so to check in proper. We went up to the room, opened the door, and
found the walls crumbling and the toilet pulled out from the bathroom and sitting in the middle of the dorm room. Fortunately this wasn't the general state of the hostel (which had quite a nice kitchen and a swimming pool...!) but they'd been having some renovations and just given us the wrong room. After swapping rooms and sorting ourselves out, we headed out to see Las Vegas.
Up the street from where we were staying was The Fremont Experience; it's that bit with the lit-up cowboy that you tend to see in film/ads about Las Vegas. As we walked up the street (still only early evening and light) a guy walked past us and muttered something about us being stupid, did we realise where we were walking round 3 girls on our own. Again, encouraging. So we wandered up to the Fremont Experience, had a go on some slots and had interesting 99cent daquiris, before the light show began overhead. It's hard to describe, but the walkway through the casinos and shops is pedestrianised, and over head is basically a canopy or ceiling made of thousands of lights and every hour they put on a light show. The one
we saw was somthing about aliens attacking earth I think...you might get a better idea what it looked like from the pics. After we saw the show we hopped on the Deuce (shuttle bus up and down the strip) to go and visit the bigger casinos. While we were in the queue, a Vietnamese woman and her son who were staying in the same hostel as us came over waving at us...she was very keen to let me know her son was a very good paediatrician in Vietnam ("he see you in hostel yes! he like you! he paediatriiiiician in Vietnam yes! Where you going now?!"). We ambled past hundreds of casinos on the bus, and got off near the Bellagio to have a look round. We caught one of the fountain shows that regularly happen outside the front of the Bellagio (think the end of Ocean's Eleven), we saw a few more over the next day or so and they were really impressive. The inside of the casino was no less impressive ...in amongst the tourists were the kind of people who could quite obviously afford the $100 per course menu in the main restaurant. As it was my
birthday, we jokingly considered dinner in the Bellagio, when we discovered that the Bellagio Cafe actually wasn't any more than a restaurant would've been so we thought what the hell - dinner at the Bellagio it was.....
After dinner and an amble round the casino (attempting the slots but not really having a clue) we met up with my uncle who happened to be in town on business and my cousin who's living out there at the moment. We met up with them in the Aladdin casino in the shopping mall area called Desert Passge. This place is mad, all the shop fronts are as if they've been taken from the Aladdin set, and there is a lit sky on the ceiling so its totally confusing what time of day it is - we went in at about 10pm at night and it was broad 'daylight' indoors. On top of that, every hour or so it rains. Indooors. They have a simulated rain storm with thunder and rain actually falling from the ceiling.....crazy. After having a quick drink with Uncle Paul and being filled in about some of the sights not to be missed in Las Vegas, Paul and
Danny gave a us a lift back to the hostel (for which we were very grateful considering the time of night and the unnerving comments we'd heard about the area during the day!). Uncle Paul was also our saviour in that he sorted somewhere for us to stay for the next 2 nights of our stay in Las Vegas - the Excaliber Hotel right on the strip which was brilliant and a lovely bit of luxury after packed 8 person dorms!
On the Thursday morning after Paul picked us up and checked us into the hotel, we wandered round some of the main casinos - New York New York, the MGM Grand (with the lion enclosure and cars that can be won on the slots machines...) and the Luxor (Pyramid shaped and Egypt-themed...surprisingly...). We spent a few hours in the afternoon just savouring having a room to ourselves and doing exciting things like hand washing (beginning to loath that already). In the evening we headed back out to see more of the strip, which really comes to life at night. We saw the Venetian which is just amazing, the outside is just so striking with all the venetian architecture
and bridge. Inside was just as extravagant with gondolas floating though and the same indoor sky and ventian buildings - it even had its own Piazza San Marco... We visited the newest addition to the strip, the Wynn, which had to make around $3million a day, and has a Ferrari dealership in the casino for when you hit the jackpot and feel the need to celebrate. After dinner we managed to catch the outdoor Pirate Show outside the Treasure Island casino (full size pirate ships in the water, explosions...) and the erupting volcano outside the Mirage. After that it was back to the hotel for a good night's sleep (without half a dozen snoring strangers in the room...)
The next morning Paul picked us up and took us for breakfast American style, i.e. masses of really good food. Our excursion for the day was our treat - a flight over the Grand Canyon which was just amazing. We were in a 17 seater little plane and the view was fantastic, we flew over the Hoover dam and were in the air for the best part of an hour before landing back on the ground and heading back to the
hotel. We had a quiet evening and wandered round the casino, psyching ourselves up to play poker or at least roulette, but in the end were overly intimidated by the other gamblers and put off by the minimum amount you had to bet on each game... Early to bed and early to rise with an 8am flight to LA the next morning............
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Clare Wood
non-member comment
Glad you are all having fun!!
Hey Anna, Great to follow your journey sounds like the three of you are having a lot of fun on your travels which is awesome. Hope all is going well in NZ atm and I'm looking forward to seeing you all in Oz :-) Love Clare xxx