Vivaaaa Las Vegas!

I write this entry at the Las Vegas McCarren Airport awaiting my flight to Vancouver. I’ve segregated myself from the main area of the airport which is filled with slot machines. Genius. Bored people waiting for flights, why not gamble away the little money that you have left?

Firstly, just to comment, SouthWest is the bomb. It was like a half hour flight from LA to Vegas and not only do they not charge me to have check in luggage but they give me soft drink and pretzels? Awesomeness. Another general comment is that my Vegas experience was tainted with a flu/cold of some description. I suspect I picked it up on the plane from Australia. I was okay in LA but my throat was sore and the day of my flight to Las Vegas I was sniffling and sneezing and picked up some medicine straight away when I got to Vegas which has made me drowsy pretty much the entire time.

I come from a gambling culture. In Australia, gambling is a very prevalent part of society. Pokies (a.k.a. slot machines) are in most pubs and taverns, and my mum is a frequent user of them. I turned eighteen and it was this big Even I, coming from gambling focused society, was not prepared to step off my plane and see slot machines in the departure lounge. And in the baggage terminal.

I’d booked at a youth hostel for Las Vegas; the comments on hostelworld.com had indicated to me that it wasn’t right among the action, something that was confirmed when I was trying to obtain a shuttle from  the airport and was being told ‘we don’t go there.’ Finally I was told that they go to Stratosphere which is about six blocks away and fortunately for me, my driver was nice enough to take me closer. I arrived early at the hostel but they were able to check me in – sometimes this is a good sign, sometimes it’s  a bad sign. Either way I was grateful because it meant I could settle in and then go exploring without having to leave my suitcase to come back later to check in.

Nevada is hot.

Really hot.

Yes, I realise that it is a desert and I should’ve anticipated it but seriously, it is HOT. I come from a warm climate but it’s more of a humid heat, Nevada is a dry heat, and you’re not cowering inside in the air con like I would be at home when it’s hot, you’re out being a tourist. I don’t like shorts but I think I’m going to have to buy some if any of my other stops are going to be this hot. Anyway so I had Monday afternoon and evening to explore. On the shuttle ride from the airport going via the other hotels I’d seen a few of them but Las Vegas by night is far more spectacular than by day, and at this point it was day light so I was impressed but not blown way. During the day it is architecturally pretty – pirate ships, fairytale castles, circuses and all. I had a $1.99 hotdog, played some slots, immersed myself in tourist culture, taking photographs of all the surrealness that I was surrounded by.

I got the bus back to the hostel to chill out for a couple of hours, waiting until sunset to head out for the night. I took the bus further away from the strip downtown to the Fremont Street Experience area. Fremont Street is where Vegas essentially began, all the old school casinos are up there. They don’t have the architectural majesty of the strip but boy the electricity bill for that end of town must be insane. Elvis, Michael Jackson and some bikini babes were hanging about taking photos with tourists, there was a band playing. I don’t know if this is every night at Fremont Street or if the Memorial Day celebrations were amplifying the atmosphere. I got the express bus back down to the far end of the strip, so I could then get on the slow bus that would go right to near my hostel via a night tour of the city.

Tuesday was my Grand Canyon tour. It was a looooong day. I was picked up from my hostel at 6am. The pick up driver got a bunch of people and then we met our main bus for the day and other passengers at the ‘town square.’ (I use ‘’ around this because it would indicate that the town square was in the middle of town. It wasn’t. And I don’t even really know what it was, a parking lot and some shops? We loaded onto the main bus; it was full and I wound up with a guy named Dave who was on the tour with his wife and two sons and one of the sons wife. They’d wound up split up on the bus since it was full and they’d gotten on last. He was friendly; not forcing me to talk when I just wanted to nap but not acting like I wasn’t there. We made small talk. The tour guide was a Hawaiian lady named Louwanna who needed to slow down because I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying because her accent was quite thick. She had a memorised spiel as she drove, and then put on The Lake House onto these tiny screens that were scattered about the bus. I slept. The drive was long and it was made even longer because they stopped a bunch of times for ten minute breaks, including at a crappy spot of the Hoover Dam. We’d stop at rest stops with conveniently placed souvenirs and overpriced items for sale. On the way we had breakfast and lunch provided, pretty good value really. It was 12:50 when we arrived at the Grand Canyon; we were given our instructions (three options of tiny walk/medium walk/long walk and where to meet in three hours) and the advice of ‘keep the Grand Canyon on your RIGHT and you can’t get lost.’)

Stacks of tour buses were there, and people who’d driven there themselves. It was nice weather, warm, blue sky and white fluffy clouds. It was utterly surreal. I’m not really into scenery... I mean I can take a photo and be all ‘aww that’s pretty’ but I’m not into nature, I don’t know a lot about exactly how the Canyon formed. But I was astounded. I think coming from Vegas amplified the experience. Vegas is the ultimate of the manmade, unnatural and tacky even. Bright lights, fancy buildings, being entertained by machines and shows and glitz, high class shopping, men littering the streets wearing shirts that say ‘Girls Girls Girls’ and handing out cards with half naked ladies and a phone number to call to order a girl to your hotel (the number if you’re interested is 6969696). A good nap later and I was taken out of that world and into a world of something so pure and natural and beautiful just for simply existing as a part of the earth and nature. It was one of those sceneries where you’re taking photographs by the zillion in the hope that one more shot and maybe you can somehow capture the beauty, but it is simply impossible. There is no way to take what I was looking at and bottle it up into an image. The dozens of people simultaneously being wowed by nature. There was something very lovely about people at their best in this type of environment; offering to take photographs for each other. Several times I had people offer to take photos of me and not when I was in the midst of taking an arm shot, they’d just offer out of their good will.

I opted for the ‘long’ walk which really wasn’t all that long. I dawdled the first bit, and then took my time with the latter part, and I still had plenty of free time to use the bathroom, look in the gift shop, buy a drink and then sit and wait for the bus. The drive back was a little shorter because they only stopped the once. They showed The Blind Side and we began to suspect that the driver/guide was a Sandra Bullock fan. But then they showed Escape to Witch Mountain. I napped through both, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open, a theme which continued as I got back to my hostel, went on the internet briefly and then couldn’t even stay awake long enough to watch Glee.

Wednesday I had a game plan of the main hotels that I hadn’t had the chance to look at or look at in detail, a few touristy things, and then have a few drinks and a gamble before going back to the hostel to see if I could scrounge up a companion for the night. My favourite part of Las Vegas is the Venetian Hotel, closely followed by a tie between the hotels across the road from each other being Excalibur and New York, New York. The Venetian has this stunning detail on the outside with bridges and ‘canals’ and it truly did take me back to Venice. New York New York actually recreates the NYC skyline and the statue of liberty. Excalibur is a mediaeval themed fairytale castle. Seriously, only in Vegas in the one day can you visit Venice, Paris, New York, a castle, Egypt, a pirate ship, a circus, and go to some of the most prestigious and beautiful hotels ever. All while having $2 machine dacquiris, gambling your money and being enticed to acquire prostitutes. I saw the lions on display at MGM grand, went to see the circus acts at Circus Circus, walked through the Mile of Shops.

I went back to the hostel for a break and seriously, it was like fate or something. I’d remarked on Twitter that I needed someone to hang out with and then this girl walks into the common room, comes up, introduces herself to me, and within a minute we’ve organised to go out looking around. Neither of us were up for major partying but willing to have a few drinks so it was pretty perfect. Her name was Elma, she’s from South Africa, she’s been working in Florida (somewhere near Miami) for six months and then travelled around for about three weeks by herself before she was heading home – Vegas was her last stop. I’d only really seen Vegas by night from inside the bus on the Monday night; seeing it from outside of the bus was truly breathtaking and spectacular. We walked the entire strip from Circus Circus to Luxor, taking in the magic of the entire way. We caught a bit of the pirate show at Treasure Island; saw some volcano thingy, went into Margaritaville where we had an expensive cocktail, chatted with a guy on stilts and some fellow tourists who were playing this ‘game’ which involved swinging a ring on fishing wire and trying to hook it onto a hook on the wall. We caught two water shows at the Bellagio (absolutely spectacularly breathtaking) took many many photos and generally oohed and ahhed our way through the city.

Since we got onto the bus back at the far end of the strip we managed to score awesome seats at the front of the top deck of the bus so we had a final nighttour back in the direction of the hostel.

I’m now on the plane to Vancouver – maybe halfway through this entry I wrote on the plane, I had to  – and it almost feels like Vegas wasn’t real. Surely no city can actually entail of all that  Vegas did? And yet it did, I know it was there, I saw those sights and experienced the world of Vegas. It’s like Amsterdam and Times Square combined, crossed with some indefinable quality – Viva Las Vegas, perhaps?