Bright Lights, Excalibur…Action
Despite the really nice room and extra comfy bed we didn’t get the lie in we needed as the curtains were very thin and the sunlight woke us up. Still, we were excited and the adrenalin would get us through the day.
We knew that Vegas is a 24hour city and is at its liveliest in the evenings, so we had a lazy morning at the hotel and got the 2pm shuttle bus to the famous Strip. We began at the Southern end of the 4km long Strip. The hotels are huge and loom out of the desert as you drive into town. The rest of Vegas seems to be bungalows compared to the extravagant hotels on the Strip. The first hotel/casino we went into was MGM Grand. The ringing of fruit machines and cheers from betting tables hits you as soon as you enter. We’d heard that there are no windows in Vegas casinos so that punters lose track of time and spend more time losing money. Sure enough there was only artificial lighting inside, mainly from the thousands of fruit machines as far as the eye could see (actual visible distance about 200 metres due to low lighting conditions).
A hotel doesn’t last long in Vegas if it doesn’t have a theme. The MGM logo is a lion, the one that roars at the start of MGM films, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when we found two lionesses in a glass enclosure right inside the casino! We were realising very quickly that Vegas is all about separating you from your money (but in the most entertaining way so you didn’t feel bad about it), so weren’t further surprised to find that we could have our picture taken with three lion cubs…for $25 each (person not cub).
From MGM Grand we took the monorail its full journey to get our bearings of the city. We were disappointed that the monorail went round the back of the hotels and casinos and didn’t give us a better view of the Strip, but it did whet our appetite. We got off back at MGM Grand and decided to walk out to the end of the Strip to the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. On the way we came across a small chapel and saw a couple getting married. We knew you could get married in Vegas and were excited that we’d seen a wedding on our very first day in town. We soon realised that a Vegas wedding wasn’t such a rare occurrence because when we got to the Vegas sign there was another couple getting their wedding photos taken under the sign.
Nearby to the virginal weddings we found newspaper bins only they didn’t contain newspapers. Instead we found brochures for call-girls, apparently they were available to come to the privacy of your hotel room.
On the way back up the Strip we went into Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur and Tropicana hotels. Mandalay Bay has a tropical island feel to it, with lots of water features in the hotel and gardens and huge shark reef aquarium. We saw our first scantily clad cocktail waitresses and thought that this hotel must have the edge over the others because of this (naïve? Us?). We had our first go at the fruit machines in Mandalay Bay. We put $2 in, got down to 50 cents and then won 20 cents so Sarah said we should quit.
Luxor, as it’s name suggests is based on ancient Egypt. The hotel and casino (invariably one building) is a huge pyramid with blacked glass covering the exterior. There’s a 100ft Sphinx outside the hotel and the entrance lobby is styled as a pharaoh’s temple. To give you an idea of the size of these hotels, the Luxor pyramid can house nine 747 aeroplanes! Oh, but what I liked most about Luxor hotel was that, purely for the sake of doing it, at the apex of the pyramid, pointing straight up into the sky, is a light beam equivalent to 4 billion candle power. It is so powerful that airline pilots can see it from 200 miles away and astronauts (and aliens, provided they have developed eyes that detect electromagnetic waves in the band from 400-800nm) can see it 10 miles away in space!
Excalibur has a medieval theme. The hotel is shaped like a castle and the prime entertainment is the tournament of kings medieval banquet. We noticed that the waitress’ were just as scantily clad as those at Mandalay Bay and realised that maybe a good idea travels quickly in this town. We didn’t eat at the medieval banquet, instead choosing the more modern delights of Sherwood Forest restaurant.
Our last stop was the Tropicana hotel. Not as extravagant as the others we’d visited and we thought it could do with a good clean inside. Our reason for lowering our standards was a free show. We had a bit of trouble finding where the show would be performed until a nice member of staff pointed out that the show would take place above the fruit machines! This was so that people wouldn’t have to take time away from the machines in order to see the show. Always thinking, you see. Anyway, this show was called AirPlay and was an acrobatics show. There were three acts, a couple who were out to prove they were fantastic in the bedroom, a woman who could hula with any part of her body and a couple of guys who flung each other around whilst barely hanging on to a one handed moving trapeze.
We knew that Vegas is a 24hour city and is at its liveliest in the evenings, so we had a lazy morning at the hotel and got the 2pm shuttle bus to the famous Strip. We began at the Southern end of the 4km long Strip. The hotels are huge and loom out of the desert as you drive into town. The rest of Vegas seems to be bungalows compared to the extravagant hotels on the Strip. The first hotel/casino we went into was MGM Grand. The ringing of fruit machines and cheers from betting tables hits you as soon as you enter. We’d heard that there are no windows in Vegas casinos so that punters lose track of time and spend more time losing money. Sure enough there was only artificial lighting inside, mainly from the thousands of fruit machines as far as the eye could see (actual visible distance about 200 metres due to low lighting conditions).
A hotel doesn’t last long in Vegas if it doesn’t have a theme. The MGM logo is a lion, the one that roars at the start of MGM films, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when we found two lionesses in a glass enclosure right inside the casino! We were realising very quickly that Vegas is all about separating you from your money (but in the most entertaining way so you didn’t feel bad about it), so weren’t further surprised to find that we could have our picture taken with three lion cubs…for $25 each (person not cub).
From MGM Grand we took the monorail its full journey to get our bearings of the city. We were disappointed that the monorail went round the back of the hotels and casinos and didn’t give us a better view of the Strip, but it did whet our appetite. We got off back at MGM Grand and decided to walk out to the end of the Strip to the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. On the way we came across a small chapel and saw a couple getting married. We knew you could get married in Vegas and were excited that we’d seen a wedding on our very first day in town. We soon realised that a Vegas wedding wasn’t such a rare occurrence because when we got to the Vegas sign there was another couple getting their wedding photos taken under the sign.
Nearby to the virginal weddings we found newspaper bins only they didn’t contain newspapers. Instead we found brochures for call-girls, apparently they were available to come to the privacy of your hotel room.
On the way back up the Strip we went into Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur and Tropicana hotels. Mandalay Bay has a tropical island feel to it, with lots of water features in the hotel and gardens and huge shark reef aquarium. We saw our first scantily clad cocktail waitresses and thought that this hotel must have the edge over the others because of this (naïve? Us?). We had our first go at the fruit machines in Mandalay Bay. We put $2 in, got down to 50 cents and then won 20 cents so Sarah said we should quit.
Luxor, as it’s name suggests is based on ancient Egypt. The hotel and casino (invariably one building) is a huge pyramid with blacked glass covering the exterior. There’s a 100ft Sphinx outside the hotel and the entrance lobby is styled as a pharaoh’s temple. To give you an idea of the size of these hotels, the Luxor pyramid can house nine 747 aeroplanes! Oh, but what I liked most about Luxor hotel was that, purely for the sake of doing it, at the apex of the pyramid, pointing straight up into the sky, is a light beam equivalent to 4 billion candle power. It is so powerful that airline pilots can see it from 200 miles away and astronauts (and aliens, provided they have developed eyes that detect electromagnetic waves in the band from 400-800nm) can see it 10 miles away in space!
Excalibur has a medieval theme. The hotel is shaped like a castle and the prime entertainment is the tournament of kings medieval banquet. We noticed that the waitress’ were just as scantily clad as those at Mandalay Bay and realised that maybe a good idea travels quickly in this town. We didn’t eat at the medieval banquet, instead choosing the more modern delights of Sherwood Forest restaurant.
Our last stop was the Tropicana hotel. Not as extravagant as the others we’d visited and we thought it could do with a good clean inside. Our reason for lowering our standards was a free show. We had a bit of trouble finding where the show would be performed until a nice member of staff pointed out that the show would take place above the fruit machines! This was so that people wouldn’t have to take time away from the machines in order to see the show. Always thinking, you see. Anyway, this show was called AirPlay and was an acrobatics show. There were three acts, a couple who were out to prove they were fantastic in the bedroom, a woman who could hula with any part of her body and a couple of guys who flung each other around whilst barely hanging on to a one handed moving trapeze.
posted by Ian @ 1:00 am
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