It is funny how a place like Las Vegas doesn’t need much of an excuse to visit. Our friends Penny and Adam said to us “So, if you are near Vegas around the end of the month we should catch up” – we weren’t anywhere near Vegas, but that was all the invite that we needed to get the ball in motion.
We had a couple of extra legs on our ’round the world’ ticket to use up, and we needed to phone Qantas anyway to change our home flights to three weeks later, so after 1 ½ hours on the phone to Qantas, it was all booked and sorted. We’re Goin’ to Vegas!! It was kinda awesome, a trip within a trip J
For Duncan it was a lucky second time round within 12 months (lucky bugger!), but for me this would be the first time in my memory (I went when I was 7 years old with my parents, but Vegas isn’t really a kids kinda place, one of the few places I think that the adults have more fun than the kids. All I remember from the original trip was a Boxing Kangaroo at Circus Circus).
Accommodation is pretty cheap compared with the rest of the States, so I wasn’t going to pass up staying in a pretty plush room for next to nix. Through much research we ended up staying at the Flamingo because, 1) It had one of the great pool complexes in Vegas; 2) The location was right in the heart of things; 3) We could have one of the newly renovated rooms which looked over the famous strip and the Bellagio Fountain; 3) We were staying in a little bit of history, with the Flamingo being the first original casino on the Vegas Strip – You know me, can never pass up a historical experience 😉
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect of ‘Sin City’. We get a pretty ‘out there’, crazy and glitzy impression of it and I think I wouldn’t have been surprised if it didn’t live completely up to all the hype. However, when I saw ‘The Strip’ emerge impossibly out of the desert with all of its cacophony of buildings, I instantly knew that this was a place like no other, and I started to get excited in the anticipation.
Doing Vegas, I think, is best doing with friends. It was such an awesome opportunity to experience the glitz with Penny and Adam while they were also traversing the States at the same time we were. We took the 3 hours flight from Chicago, they did an epic 6 hour drive through the desert (with quick stop-offs at the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam) to get there.
To mark the occasion of our reunion and arrival in Vegas we had a toast with our Canadian duty free vodka in our room while watching the magnificence of the Bellagio fountain – superb start!
That night had had my first introduction to ‘playing the tables’. Back in Australia I never played the tables because I was far too nervous that I would do something wrong, like asking to ‘hit’ on 21 while playing blackjack. I was soon convinced that Vegas was the place to start, even more so when I discovered that it was free drinks for as long as you are gambling – cha-ching!! I took a deep breath and sat down at one of the Flamingo’s Blackjack tables, and to my honest surprise, ended up having a wonderful time. I got a lot of help from the croupiers, which helped with my understanding of the game (I am all too aware that it is in the Casinos best interest to help and encourage newbies like me 😉 ). There is also this strange camaraderie that you have with the other players, everyone wishes you well and I like blackjack because I feel that the decision is ultimately up to me to ‘stay or ‘hit’. The money comes and goes, but if you have the opinion that you put down what you are prepared to lose then it doesn’t hurt (much).
We were nicely settled in for the night and ‘Vegas time’ started to come upon us… (i.e. having no idea what the time is). 2am and it was time to call it quits. I staggered up stairs and fell into my wonderful marshmallow bed in the plush Flamingo Hotel room – so amazingly soft compared to the somewhat hard camping mattresses J.
Next day was time to get some rays by the pool. (During our stay in Vegas the temperature hovered around 42 degrees – wonderfully air-conditioned Casinos are all part of the ploy to get you to play J ). The Flamingo’s pool is one of the largest in Vegas, I think due to it being one of the original hotels and (back in the day) having the space available to build a substantial lagoon style pool complex. We found our little pozzie and Pen and I stretched out to get some rays while the boys navigated through the lagoons (Duncan was kicked out of the kiddies pool area for going down the slide head first). It was a wonderfully relaxing afternoon topped off by a Bootie Shaking competition by the side of the pool (the girl with the g-string bikini won) – only in Vegas!
Another cool thing about Vegas was the cheap live shows. We ended up seeing 2 very different live shows while we were in Vegas. First show was Penn and Teller, two very funny comedians who do a series of magic acts and then show you how they did it. This show got us on the ‘other side of town’, down at the Rio, where we spent before the show at Vegas’ largest buffet, the famous Rio World Buffet. Here we could choose food from a 200 meter long buffet, with chefs cooking freshly made teppanyaki, steamed seafood, Dim Sum, French gateaux just to name but a few! We were so lucky that we only had 30 minutes to eat otherwise it would have been far too tempting. After the show we enjoyed ourselves at the Rio Bar watching the barman mix our cocktails Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown style ;). Once again Vegas time ensured that we staggered out of the bar at 5am, swearing that we had only spent just over an hour there.
Our second show was one of the Cirque du Soleil productions called ‘Viva Elvis’. Apparently there were about 5 Cirque shows going on in Vegas while we were there! This production was the Vegas whole hog, with fireworks, mouth dropping acrobatic acts and live music. I loved the spectacle of it all and although not a huge Elvis fan, I enjoyed watching the story unfold about his life.
It was a spectacular end to the huge and totally exhausting couple of days in Vegas, but oh, so worth it! Vegas baby! It is hard not to get totally wrapped up and carried away in the atmosphere like some little kid on a Disneyland rollercoaster ride – it was fun!
