I jest of course with my previous post. My life isn’t nearly exciting enough to warrant use of the phrase. But Las Vegas was indeed an incredible and unforgettable experience, up to a point…
I awoke in my tent in Bishop, miraculously with no hangover except for a slightly niggling sore throat. Not enough to cause any particular bother. Secure in the knowledge that we were on our way to Las Vegas that day, a city i’d heard a lot about from my time as an internet poker geek, there was not a whole lot that was going to bring me down.
A few hours of sleeping on the minibus later, and I awake again, this time to the sounds of Elvis Presley singing Viva Las Vegas over the minibus sound system. Looking out of the window was the harsh desert environment that is Death Valley. Far off in the distance on the horizon however, the huge man-made silhouettes of the Las Vegas casinos and hotels were slowly coming into view. The ‘ball on a stick’ shape of the Stratosphere, the enormous outline of the MGM Grand and the Great Pyramid of Nevada, belonging to the Luxor Hotel and Casino.
Most of the casinos that you will have heard of, i.e. those featured on Oceans 11, are all situated on one street in particular, known as the ‘Las Vegas Strip’. Along this huge stretch of road you’ll find such entertainment meccas as The Venetian, The Mirage, The MGM Grand, Paris, New York New York, The Flamingo, The Tropicana, Monte Carlo, Caesar’s Palace, Excalibur, the list does go on and on from here. Each of these hotel casinos is enormous. You could fit dozens of football (real football) fields on the floorspace that these concrete giants occupy, and on the floors above there are thousands of hotel rooms.
The enormity of these complexes means that simply deciding to ‘go next door’ is not a decision to be taken lightly. If you definitely do want to move on down to the next casino on the strip then understand that, like most things in Vegas, the odds are against you. First you have to get out of the casino you’re in. This is easier said than done and first involves navigating your way past a plethora of distractions, because, believe it or not, casinos are full of things to see and do. Table games such as roulette or blackjack, hundreds of slot machines blinking and jingling at you hypnotically and scantily clad waitresses handing out margaritas for tips, to name but a few.
Casinos are designed to keep you in. They don’t want you going next door to spend your money obviously. As such the floor plans resemble labyrinths, and maps are few and far between and in many cases, don’t label the exits. (I am curious as to what they’d do if there was a fire). The astute observer will also notice that there are no windows or clocks in the casinos. The idea being that any time of the day is a good time to indulge in Vegas excess. In fact, forget about the concept of time and days completely. 9pm is 4am is 12pm. In Las Vegas it’s all the same.
So if you do make it past all of the above and out onto the Strip, you’ll now be part of the throngs of slow walking tourists that line the streets night and day. You can see next door’s casino, it’s right there, but first you have to walk past the casino complex you’ve just exited. Recall that it’s the size of a few football pitches and realise that there’s a fair bit of walking to be done.
Now they don’t really do pedestrian crossings on the Strip. Instead you cross the roads by walking across foot bridges that cross over each intersection. Despite not having to wait for the little green man to appear, the foot bridges do take a fair bit of time to get across. There’s a fair few steps to climb for one thing, and then when you’re on the bridge, who can resist the urge to add a few more blurred snaps of the Strip illuminations to your camera. For the record, taking good pictures of night-time illuminations is basically impossible.
Cross the bridge, make it through all the attractive crap that they stick out the front of these adult playgrounds such as fountains, restaurants and street performers and well done, you’ve completed your own version of Oceans 11 and gone next door. On average it probably takes at least 15 minutes every time you want to do that. So you’d better hope it’s a good casino.
There are no campsites that I know of in Vegas so we were instead staying at a rather nice motel one block from the Strip, behind the ‘Paris’ casino.
On arrival it turns out that half the rooms are still being prepared by housekeeping. Being gentlemen we let the ladies have the available rooms and we’re left with 45 minutes to kill. In Sin City though, even off the Strip you’re never too far from a casino. In this case there happened to be one attached to the motel itself. It seemed appropriate at 2:45pm to use those spare minutes and take our first foray into Vegas gambling.
Compared to the giants on the Strip this casino was pretty tiny. For our first taste of Las Vegas however it was still an illuminating experience. The small gambling hall was packed with slot machines and video poker games. There was also the odd blackjack table and a busy bar in the center of the room. Going to the bar need not be a dull experience in Vegas though, to keep you entertained they have slot machines built into the bar itself.
So there we were, standing amongst it all going on around us. Bright eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to get started. The question was who to give our money to first. Andrew opted for the bar and disappeared to get a first Vegas beer. Vince also disappeared into the maze of slot machines and Rum was probably taking photos of something somewhere. I decided to do the honours of putting the first Trek America dollar into a video poker machine.
A minute of fairly random button pushing later and I was up 20 cents, early retirement fast becoming a real possibility.
A minute after that and that dollar twenty had disappeared, as well as another dollar that was independent from the first…
“Hey check that out, just won eight bucks on that machine there” says Andrew, returning with his beer. I’m in awe and suddenly his success makes it hard not sit back down at a machine and keep playing. It was time to go back however and so we wandered over to the machine Vincent was sitting at in the corner of the room. The Danes mentioned he was doing quite well.
Quite well?! The Parisian was up $50 from the $1 he put in originally.
“I do not know what ‘appened” the lucky sod exclaimed. “I just put in zee dollar an zee machine…it just went crazy, and zee waitress, she bought me a margarita and I only ‘ad to tip ‘er. C’est excellent, no?” It most certainly was.
Prising Vince away from that slot machine took some doing. “I will be zer in a minute, jus let me ‘av one more go..” Vince actually works for a French investment bank in New York, instrumental in the financial crisis a few years back. This probably explains why he was in his element gambling with reckless abandon.
Vince and I were roommates for our time in Vegas and, after putting our bags in the room, we were straight out the door on our way to get a taste of the Strip. The closest big casino to our motel was ‘Paris’, and seeing as Vincent was from actual Paris, it seemed like a logical starting point. Paris is called Paris because on the inside and outside it looks like, Paris. So much so that the inside is all decked out to look like Parisian streets, complete with cobbled floors, French architecture and some Creperies thrown in for good measure. Out the front is a slightly scaled down replica f the Eiffel Tower. Scaled down or not it’s still pretty big, and if you’re a high roller you can pay to go up to the top for an expensive meal and fantastic view of the Strip.
Like Paris, all the big casinos have themes of their own and the casino designers go all out to impress the public. Both Vegas and New Orleans are on pretty much the same level when it comes to sin, excess and partying. But where New Orleans is a cheap and dirty (in all senses of the word) good time, you get the impression that with Vegas, no expense has been spared. Everything is of the highest quality. The hotels, the food, the decor and the entertainment. It is of course, incredibly tacky in places. Excalibur for example is designed to look like a fairytale castle. But nowhere does it come across as cheap.
That’s not to say you can’t enjoy Las Vegas on a budget. Obviously the more money you have then the more things that are available for you to do, but for the most part the casinos cater for everyone. Nice motel rooms can cost as little as $30 a night and slot machines start at a 1 cent per bet limit. The food in Vegas is some of the best in the world but you can also stop by ‘Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon’ for a $6 steak between midnight and 8am. Even the shows aren’t that expensive. This is thanks to a number of ‘Half Price Ticket’ shops along the Strip selling discount tickets to the famous Vegas shows.
After waltzing around Paris for a bit, Vince and I came across Andrew & Rum outside the MGM Grand. We popped into the MGM to have a look around. Inside there’s a $9 million lion enclosure where you can watch some of the casino’s lions enjoy their luxury accommodation. Like I said, no expense spared.
As well as being good for gambling, food and shows, Las Vegas is also pretty good for theme park rides. New York New York was just over the street and featured a rather exciting looking roller coaster that weaved in and out of the slightly scaled down replica of the Manhattan skyline. At $14 a ride it was a tad pricey, but then you’re not in Vegas everyday and it’s certainly not a city where you want to have your mind on your money. Think about that when you’ve left Vegas.
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