15th – 23rd Jan
We had a date in Las Vegas, a weekend rendezvous with my brother Martin. He works remotely for a large Los Angeles based company from home in London, mostly wearing his pyjamas, but about once every three months he gets dressed and flies to LA for a couple of weeks to show his face and go to meetings. We clashed diaries several months ago and a plan was hatched. We could meet in Vegas on his mid-trip weekend and share our Sin City experience with him. We booked hotel rooms on the Strip for the Friday and Saturday nights, he booked flights, a few Vegas-centric activities were organised and we were ready for fun!
Our meanderings brought us to Las Vegas three days before our ‘Trip to the Strip’. We booked into the RV park at Sam’s Town, a casino hotel complex on the outskirts of the city, immortalised by The Killers in their eponymous track. This was cheap, had all the facilities that we needed and had a free shuttle bus to both the Strip and to the Downtown area. We arrived on Nick’s birthday and after a wash and brush-up we walked over to the main building, navigated our way through the cigarette smoke and flashing light filled gaming hall and found a bar and then a steak restaurant. These are the places my husband chose for his birthday treat. He was happy.
The next day we took advantage of the shuttle bus and took a trip into town for our first glimpse of the craziness. The Las Vegas strip is a mythical place. Familiar but mysterious. The location of countless movies and TV shows and the setting for many a tale of woe or glory. Neither of us had been here before and we were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves. Of course, at about midday on a Wednesday Vegas is a fairly subdued place. Most folks are inside, either still sleeping, eating or feeding a slot machine. We joined the small procession of tourists drifting down the pavements, taking in the casino hotels with all the familiar names and initially thinking that overall The Strip seemed a bit smaller and more intimate than we had imagined. We cruised through the lobby, gambling hall and along the ‘Grand Canal Shoppes’ of the Venetian, which is where we had booked in for the weekend.
The hotels here are not normal. Their scale is enormous. Thousands of rooms, hundreds and hundreds of slot machines, and bars and restaurants at every turn. It is easy to get disorientated and lost and I wonder if that is part of the strategy for making money. ‘Oh, I am lost. I cannot find my room/the way out/ the gym. Never mind, let me sit down and throw $50 into a slot machine instead…’ We managed to escape back outside, crossed the Bridge of Sighs, passed the Venetian Tower and gondolas and headed up to one of the equally massive shopping malls. We had a rare hour apart to do a bit of clothes shopping and then headed back to the shuttle mid afternoon via a couple of scoops of ice-cream.
The next day it rained, but we were prepared for that. We had booked appointments for late morning at the casino’s in-house hair salon and having emerged with surprisingly half decent haircuts, we filled the rest of the day with laundry. Life is just one big adventure, you know.
Friday came, the rain was gone and we packed a bag and headed back to town. The check-in area of The Venetian was more like that of an airport with ropes creating a snaking queue. We were quite early so luckily avoided a long wait. We got our keys and headed upstairs. We had booked adjoining rooms with Martin, who was not due until mid evening. The room was one of their ‘basic’ ones: with a sunken lounge area, 3 TVs and an enormous bathroom with the all important tub. No kettle or coffee machine though. How’s a girl meant to get a cup of tea??? After lunch we filled the afternoon with a movie and I had the first of 4 baths in 48 hours. If I couldn’t get a hot drink then I was going to get my money’s worth in hot water. The afternoon had one interruption, with a delivery to our room. A bottle of champagne and a box of luxury chocolates. A very generous gift from the lovely Jeromes. What impeccable taste and timing!
After a few glasses of the champers (oh all right, all of it) we went down to one of the hotel’s cocktail bars to await Martin’s arrival. He had pulled of a successful ‘Friday Evening Dash’, getting from work to Las Vegas without any delays. His timing was perfect, arriving with time for a quick change and a G&T before our 9.30pm dinner booking. This was at a great steak restaurant in the hotel. It was excellent, and should have been for the price. It was great to catch up with him, much rubbish was spoken and wine drunk. We were officially the last to leave, and headed back to the casino floor via another cocktail or two. The spirit for a night of gambling was strong, but the flesh was weak (and fairly drunk by now). Martin and I lost Nick for about an hour somewhere in the casino hall. Plan A for finding him was to stay put, but he didn’t come back. Plan B was to wander around and around the vast room filled with hundreds and hundreds of flashing machines and hundreds and hundreds of people to ‘see if we could see him’. We couldn’t. Plan C? Check the room in case he had done a very uncharacteristic ‘take-himself- t0- bed’ move. Nope. It wasn’t until we got to Plan D that we remembered that savour of ‘getting lost in modern times’, the mobile telephone. We rang him, he answered and we found him. Duh. I managed to convince the re-assembled party that our beds, not the Black Jack tables, were the place be at 2.30 am, and thence we went.
Saturday morning was well underway by the time we reconvened. Heads were slightly fuzzy and Martin was also still dealing with some jet lag and a cold. Breakfast was needed. We decided to wriggle out of the embrace of the hotel and walk up the Strip in the sunshine to a breakfast diner with good reviews that Nick had found online. Unfortunately a bazillion other people had had the same idea and there was an hour’s wait for a table. We couldn’t wait that long. Hangovers needed feeding. Stat. The first place that we could find that fitted the bill of serving coffee and cooked breakfast was a rather elegant garden restaurant in the more snazzy hotel, the Encore. Out of one embrace, straight into another, but it was perfect. A bit fancier than we had planned, but this was a survival situation…. After breakfast, which was actually at lunchtime, we shuffled back to the hotel, and back to our beds. More sleep was needed if there was any hope of making it through another night on the town and an afternoon nap is practically compulsory in this town, I hear.
It was dark again by the time we surfaced for our 6pm rendezvous. Rested, washed, dressed and ready for another meal. Our first choice burger restaurant was packed, with another long queue, so we found another that had plenty of space. In retrospect, there was a very good reason for this as our meal was very mediocre, but it was food, served with acceptable beer and didn’t cost a small fortune. Tonight’s focus was more on the entertainment. We had booked tickets to see Penn and Teller, the magicians. They are grand-daddies of Vegas and their show has been running here since 2001 in an older hotel off the Strip called the Rio.
We grabbed a cab and headed over there a bit early to be in good time to pick up our tickets and visit the Voodoo Bar, a roof top ‘nite club’ with good views of town. The bar didn’t open until 8pm and we were first in the queue behind the little velvet rope at the entrance to the lift lobby. There was a security check before we could go up in the lift, from which we emerged into possibly one of the most soulless establishments in this town. ALL the seating inside, and outside was cordoned off and reserved, but empty, and the view from the open-air area was good, but the way to it blocked off by the empty seating. We had one very overpriced drink served in plastic (Hate, hate, hate) and then happily it was time to go.
Penn and Teller were brilliant. Magic shows aren’t usually my thing. I am too logical and need to know how the trick works. But they were very entertaining and actually gave away a fair few secrets along the way. Or did they? I’m not sure now. I certainly don’t know how they made the elephant disappear. (NB. Not a real elephant.) From the Rio we bypassed the long queue at the taxi rank and walked back to the Strip.
We stopped to watch the Bellagio fountains do their thing and then cruised with the throngs back in the direction of the Venetian. Now the place was alive. There were scantily clad ‘showgirls’ with feathered headdresses trying to lure tourists into having their photo taken with them for a hefty tip, no doubt. Folks handing out leaflets for clubs/tours/casinos. There were normal people and the weird. The sober and the merry. There were all ages and all nationalities. (The Russians were easy to spot.) There were kids in push chairs and adults on mobility scooters. And there were countless people like us, just drinking it all in, in wonderment. It is like Disney for the vices. We arrived back at the Venetian and found a classy bar in which to spend our $100 drinks voucher. This is almost exactly the same amount as the ‘resort fees’ that the hotels charge for seemingly nothing other than to annoy everyone. We could call it quits this time….. By the time the voucher was spent, so were we, and we again resisted the call of the tables and the slot machines and called it a night.
We all emerged on Sunday morning a bit brighter eyed and bushier tailed than the morning previous and had a better plan for breakfast: the French restaurant in the hotel. We checked out, stored the bags and after only a short wait, had a (mostly) good breakfast at ‘Bouchon’. Fed and caffeinated we finally did some gambling and hit the slot machines. These are our stats: Sara: $5 stake. lost it all. Martin: $10 stake, lost it all. Nick $40 stake, won $70. So overall we came out of Vegas having made a (gambling) profit of $15. Woohoo. High Rollers, Baby! Now, in already good spirits, we were ready for the next fantastical ‘only-in-Vegas’ activity. Shooting guns.
We had booked a visit to Battlefield Vegas, a shooting range on steroids, where you can fire almost any weapon combination that you can dream up. The courtesy shuttle that collected us from the hotel entrance was a canvas-sided Humvee with bench seating and the adrenaline flow was kick started by a white knuckle ride through the traffic of Vegas. We were chauffeured by an ex-soldier, barely looking at the road and definitely not considering the low co-efficient of friction of his passengers bottoms on the smooth wood bench seat as he accelerated and decelerated. Luckily there was a thin rope across the open back of the vehicle for safety…. We arrived at the range in one piece, signed the paperwork to say that we weren’t felons or mentally unwell, paid the money and entered the range. The whole place is staffed by ex-military. Still-young men who had done their 5 years of service, de-mobbed, then could not quite let it go. Still sporting buzzcuts and stomping around in para-military wear, playing with guns. We had all booked the ‘Platoon Package’, featuring weapons from the Vietnam War. A colt .45 handgun, an M16 machine gun, a grenade launcher and an M-60 (much bigger) machine gun. It was an amazing experience to fire such powerful weapons, but humbling to think that their primary function is not for the amusement of Las Vegas tourists, but to kill other humans. My ‘favourite’ weapon was the handgun. It was more tangible than the others, so familiar from TV and film but so alien to have it in my hands and be firing it. I can’t imagine being in the situation of using one in anger, and thankfully I never shall be.
The boys also spent some silly money to fire a Mini-gun. This is a mounted machine gun that fires 100 rounds in 4s. Our instructor said firing it for the first time is like another memorable ‘first time’. Huge expectation, very exciting and all over very quickly. I’ll have to take his word for it. We managed to resist spending $2500 to drive a tank over a car and, clutching our shredded targets, we were delivered back to the Strip in a less scary fashion. We collected our bags and were in good time to catch the shuttle back to Sam’s Town. As Monday was a public holiday, Martin had an extra night with us and was to be our honoured 2nd overnight guest in the Tin Can. You can read about it. You can see the photos. But nothing can quite prepare you for the magnificence of the beast until you see it in the flesh! Isn’t that right, Mart??!! From the Venetian to the dinette bed of a small habitable box. It was a weekend of accomodation extremes. We gave him the (very short) guided tour, installed him on the sofa and we had a few hours of down-time before the next activity.
Sunday evening took us to Downtown Vegas. This is where the original hotels and casinos are. It is just as glitzy, but less glamorous and is where the really weird and wonderful hang out. It has the pedestrianised Fremont Street over which is suspended the world’s largest screen.
It has Slotzilla, the world’s largest slot machine which is 11 stories high, and from which you can zip-line under the aforementioned screen along Fremont Street. it has countless bars and restaurants including the bizarre, ‘only in America’, Heart Attack Grill. All customers must don a hospital robe and wrist band on entry, the ‘nurses’ take your ‘prescription’ and the menu features delights such as endless Flatliner fries cooked in lard and an 8 patty cheeseburger. If you weight 350 pounds or more, you eat for free. If you don’t finish your meal your nurse will spank you with a paddle. We didn’t eat here, instead we found a lovely little Mexican restaurant up the road and our very delicious dinner and margaritas whilst watching the lunar eclipse out of the window. A good spot on many counts. We couldn’t muster the energy for another late night and the end of our meal saw us calling an Uber and taking our three mid-to-late-40s selves ‘home’. We constructed Martin’s deluxe, nearly-long-enough-for-a-grown-man bed from the dinette booth and all crashed.
After a slow moving morning we headed back to town and the fun continued with a mini-golf challenge. We found a course in the basement of one of the Strip hotels. Dimly lit with Twilight Zone theme and decorated with luminescent paint, the UV lights not only picked up the course features, but also any shoulder dandruff. Took me back to my black-clad night clubbing days of the early 90s. I lost, by the way. Martin came second. And Nick? Not important. (Such a gloater). Then it was lunch time. Time for another meal. We walked over to Holsteins Shakes and Buns in the Cosmopolitan Hotel, allegedly serving the best burgers on the Strip. The verdict? We can confirm that they are pretty darn good.
We ate too much, obviously, and then unfortunately had to bid farewell to Martin. We saw him into a cab to the airport and then sloped back to TC to rest and digest.
We hadn’t had the wildest of Vegas weekends, but we had had a lot of fun. We had eaten and drunken more than is healthy. We had spent a reasonable amount of money, but had won against the casino. We had gained a good sense of what this town is about and lost a bit of sleep, but not gained any regrettable facial tattoos, babies or tigers or lost any teeth or members of our party to kidnapping. A weekend was more than enough, but perhaps one weekend in a lifetime isn’t.