My Trip to Las Vegas, December 2001
I couldn't sleep past 5:30 a.m., so I got up, wrote a bit in my journal, had a cranberry juice, and took a shower. While I was in the shower, Uncle Bo called to tell me he was running late, wouldn't arrive until noon, and I should go ahead to the Venetian without him. I had breakfast downstairs in the Garden Café at Harrah's. This is a great casual restaurant to eat at, festively decorated with lovely garden murals on the walls and columns with painted-on ivy, and '50s music playing in the background. I ordered a full breakfast (one egg, hash browns, 3 sausage links, and wheat toast), which wound up being way too much food. You don't order a cup of coffee here, you order a pot. It tasted great to my sleep-deprived self.
Next, I explored the casino area of Harrah's. It was pretty empty shortly before 9:00. Still, I heard the sound of coins dropping into coin slots. At first, I thought this meant someone was winning, but I later realized that when a person inserts a bill (say, a $20) into the slot machine, they often "cash out" and get it in quarters, using the slot machine like a change machine. It's still an exhilarating sound, if only for the possibility that someone is winning.
I walked out of Harrah's and onto Las Vegas Boulevard, a.k.a. "the Strip," snapping pictures of Caesar's Palace, the Mirage, and Treasure Island on my way to the Venetian. I tried so hard to wipe the goofy grin off my face so I wouldn't look like the dorky tourist I was.
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Inside, I wandered through the Canal Shoppes. I stopped at Houdini's Magic Shop when the magician/salesperson there started showing me tricks. He was very good; he drew me in with the ol' first you've got one fuzzy ball in your hand, now you've got two (I've seen this one before, and I knew what he was doing, but it was still pretty cool, because it was part of the whole Las Vegas experience). He even brought me back into this little vault-like room to show me how to do a particular trick (hey, get your minds out of the gutter! It wasn't like that!) that I purchased as a souvenir for my niece. While I was in the shop, the Gondoliers went past in the Gondoliers March, sort of a seven dwarves thing, where they march in line singing on their way to their gondolas. They wore the typical gondolier's uniform of short-sleeve red-striped shirts, scarves, and brimmed hats. I followed them to the canal, where they were mugging for the tourists' cameras. One young man began to sing; he had a gorgeous voice. No one was riding in the gondolas yet, so the guys just started pushing them back and forth, waiting.
The Canal Shoppes are hard to describe. They are like a shopping plaza more than a mall. (No mall is this beautiful.) Over the store fronts are imitation Venetian apartments, with balconies, and the ceiling has been painted with a blue sky with puffy white clouds, as if you were outside. They truly have recreated the feel of Venice (or what I imagine Venice would feel like, since I haven't been there), with a series of winding streets. So winding, in fact, I kept getting turned around. The fake sky is a bit disorienting, since it's closer than you expect it to be. I sat for awhile on an upholstered bench in the piazza where they have their Christmas tree. Few tourists were there yet. Some classical Italian music with female vocals was playing in the background. It was so peaceful and relaxing.
| Venetian Canal |
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Elsewhere in the casino, there are wide open rooms where the ceilings have been painted with frescos, recreations of the kind of art you see in cathedrals in Europe. It's exquisite. There is red marble everywhere, and gold detailing, and white columns, and gorgeous statuary. They have spared no expense here, obviously. This isn't "tacky" Vegas. (However, I have heard that sometimes what looks like authentic sculpted marble detailing in the casino interiors is often styrofoam coated with polyurethane! It boggles the mind. It looks so REAL.)
The Venetian recently opened a Las Vegas branch of the Guggenheim Museum, well-known the world over for its collection of masterpieces. I love the opportunity to see famous paintings, so I went into the Guggenheim Hermitage, where the paintings were. (The Guggenheim also currently has a classic motorcycle exhibit going on. That didn't appeal to me.) Admission to the Hermitage alone cost around $15-- totally overpriced for the size of the exhibit. I was asked to tie my jacket around my waist instead of carrying it, so it wouldn't swing and accidentally brush a painting. And of course, I had to put my camera away.
There were some paintings where my reaction was "eh" but then there were the ones that kept drawing my eye back to them over and over. My favorite was Picasso's "Guitar and Violin," a cubist work with lots of browns and earth tones. I also very much liked Robert Delauney's "Red Eiffel Tower." I've never even heard of Delauney before, which shows you what a layperson I am when it comes to art. The Guggenheim had a few of his works. I also saw Van Gogh's "Landscape with Snow," and a work by Monet, called "Lady in a Garden." I'm not normally into Monet's particular style of painting (I wouldn't want one on my wall, for instance), but I really liked this one. Also on the walls were works by Wassily Kandinsky (he had some very nice pieces, but I can't recall the names of any of them), Renoir, and Gaugin. Gaugin's most interesting piece, I thought, wasn't due to the subject matter or his artistic skill, but the fact that he used oil paints on burlap instead of canvas to create the painting. Cool. If nothing else, I expanded my internal Rolodex of artists' names by visiting the Guggenheim.
| Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum | ||
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| O'Shea's | |
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I met Bo back at Harrah's at noon. He checked in, and then we had a very forgettable lunch at a little casino down the street that has a fast food court in it, called O'Shea's. After lunch, we began what felt like a ten-mile trek up and down the Strip. (The Strip is actually only four or five miles long, but when you factor in the trip down and back, and the depth of casinos-and inevitably, whatever attraction you want to see is at the exact opposite end of the casino from where you enter-you can add miles to your journey. Hell, you can add miles to your journey just walking through the MGM Grand!) As we walked along the Strip, people who work for the casinos were constantly trying to draw us in with flyers and coupons and free drinks, etc. They often began the conversation with "Where are you from?" We started just telling them the truth, that Bo is from Nevada, so they'd stop thinking we were tourists, but I think at least one of them thought we were lying. |
Our first stop was the Flamingo Hilton, because I wanted to see the penguin and flamingo habitats. It took us quite a while to locate them, and in the long run, they were fairly overrated. (But not overpriced, as they were free.) I also saw the plaque tribute to Bugsy Siegel, the gangster who owned the original Flamingo and pretty much helped build Las Vegas into the gambling mecca it is today. God Bless him. Rumor has it he was so paranoid about his personal safety he had secret tunnels installed in the Flamingo from his apartment to a getaway car in the garage. (Well, I guess it's not really paranoia when people do want you dead....) Anyway, there was no point in looking for those tunnels, as his Flamingo burned many years ago.
| Flamingo Hilton | ||
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After the Flamingo, the order in which we saw casinos and sights gets hazy for me. Let's just say there was a LOT of walking involved. We used people movers whenever possible, criss-crossed Las Vegas Boulevard using pedestrian walkways that stretch over the eight lanes of traffic below, and took the monorail from Bally's to MGM Grand. People recommend the monorail as a way to save your poor feet some walking, but in reality, I'm not sure how much walking we saved ourselves. The monorail is at the back of the MGM Grand, and we had to walk all the way to the front to get back out onto Las Vegas Boulevard. At the MGM Grand, we saw tour buses unloading clothing racks and stuff out back. I think it must have been in preparation for the Billboard Music Awards, scheduled for the following night at the MGM.
| The MGM Grand | |
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| New York, NY Hotel | |
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I saw the Harley Davidson Café I'd heard about, with a giant motorcycle bursting through the front of the building, above the door. Great photo opportunity. |
We saw the Paris hotel from afar, which is impossible to miss for its 50-story replica of the Eiffel Tower and a giant blue and yellow balloon that says "Paris" on it. We walked past the Monte Carlo and past one particularly tacky, godawful hotel with a giant clown's head on the façade and a fake ferris wheel with dummies riding it. This is the infamous Boardwalk. This place needs to be imploded. Soon. After the first time I saw it, I couldn't look at it again. Every time I walked past, I had to cover my eyes with my hands so I wouldn't have to look at that hideous clown face again. Gagh!
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Earlier in the day, I had felt foolish for bringing my bulky fall coat with me, as it had been so warm, I had to take it off and carry it at the Venetian. Now, however, the day turned cooler and a brisk wind kicked up, and suddenly, I was very glad I had my coat on. We stopped at the Bellagio to see the dancing fountain show. It wasn't yet time for them, so we went inside. On the way through the lobby, we passed this amazing ceiling sculpture of colorful, glass-blown flowers. I have since learned that this work of art, called "Fiori di Como", is composed of over 2,000 individually blown glass pieces and covers approximately 2,000 square feet of ceiling. Wow. It apparently cost an ungodly amount of money. We decided to check out the Conservatory (botanical garden), which we thought would be decorated for Christmas.
Unfortunately, the Bellagio Conservatory was still transitioning the Autumn display to the Christmas display, and most of the plants were missing entirely from the room, so there wasn't much to see. A woman next to us said "I walked all this way for this?" We laughed and agreed with her. She was a very well-coiffed middle-aged woman, and wore an expensive, short leather jacket. She looked like someone who belonged at the Bellagio. She glanced at my uncle and me and nodded knowingly, and said "You're staying here?" in a tone of voice that implied she thought so. I stared at her for a couple of seconds before I could reply "No," because all I could think was "Do we look like we're staying here?" I mean, there we were, both in jeans, Bo in a sweatshirt and me in my hick fall coat. We definitely did not look like the Bellagio's typical clientele.
That was the thing that struck me about the Bellagio. It's like the Nob Hill of Vegas. Too hoity-toity for me. I was sure security probably had their eye on us from the minute we walked in. I would not be comfortable staying there. That's not to say it's not elegant and lovely and all of that, because it certainly is.
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We went outside for the fountain show. It was dusk, but not night yet. The show turned out to be brief-it only lasted for the duration of one Elton John song: "Your Song". I was a little disappointed. I thought it would be longer than that. But it was a must-see. Whoever realized they could choreograph dancing jet streams of water set to music was a genius! It's impressive. (I visited the Bellagio Fountains again on my last night in Vegas, and it was a much better show. See page 6 for details.) |
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Our next stop was Caesar's Palace. We wound up being there for a long time, because we wanted to catch both of the statue shows, and they're only shown every hour on the hour. The Forum Shops are designed much like the Canal Shoppes (or vice versa, since Caesar's Palace was built first), with an artificial sky above the winding halls of stores. At the intersections are large replicas of ancient-looking statuary and Roman ruins. The sky here changes from day to night and back again in the course of an hour. It's very cool. The first show we saw involved statues of Bacchus, Brutus, Apollo, and Venus coming to life. It was okay, but not "all that," although the ceiling light show that accompanied it was pretty cool. |
While we waited for the second show, we went to FAO Schwarz, the toy store. This one has a gigantic replica of the Trojan Horse sticking out the front of the store. You can actually go up inside the horse. It's neat. In fact, there were a lot of neat things here. There was a Star Wars section that had life-size Darth Vader and Cantina Band figures, as well as the "walkers" from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. There was a giant Monopoly game in one area, and tons of other cool toys. Kids must love this place. I know I did.
We also stopped at an art gallery in the mall that specialized in the paintings by Christian Riese Lassen, who mostly paints dolphins, but also some white tigers, in a fantasy style of art. His work is absolutely gorgeous, but I'm not sure what kind of décor you'd have to have in your home for them to look appropriate on the wall. The salesman there was very persistent in trying to get us to look at certain works-as if we could afford paintings worth anywhere from $3,000 to $120,000!
| Caesar's Palace Forum Shops |
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Retreating, we sat for awhile on a bench in the Forum Shops, watching people go by, and I was noting that the sky was changing color to signify sunset. Bo said "And did you notice the clouds are moving, too?" I didn't see them moving, so I said "No, they aren't-are they?" He said, "Yeah. That one over there used to be over here." I totally believed him and then he laughed, and I knew he was pulling my leg. Smartass. We also decided it would be really funny if he called my parents when we got back to the hotel and told them that either I had never shown up in Vegas, or he knew I'd checked into the hotel, but he couldn't find me. Unfortunately, by the time we got back to Harrah's, it was too late on the East Coast to pull that prank and have it still be funny. No one wants to get a call like that after they've gone to bed.
The place where the second statue show, Atlantis, takes place is bordered on three sides by a giant fish tank, with all kinds of strange, colorful fish in it. We looked at that for awhile before the show started. Atlantis is amazing. 1,000 times better than the other statue show. This one was about the King of Atlantis, who tried to decide which of his two spoiled, selfish, greedy, ruthless children (his son or his daughter) should inherit his kingdom. Finally, the king realized he couldn't choose, and the only solution left was that Atlantis must be destroyed. This show featured some outstanding special effects-smoke, fountains, flames, and the transformation of the king to a dragon with outspread wings, all set to music, with another ceiling show with additional catastrophic images of destruction. It ROCKED. I am devastated that none of my pictures came out. That's it; I'm buying a digital camera.
By the time this show was over, we were exhausted, hungry and thirsty, so we returned to Harrah's for their Fresh Market Square Buffet. The columns in this area were designed like veggies and fruit, so as you walk through the room, you're dodging around giant celery stalks and carrots and bunches of chili peppers. Funny. The food was excellent. Lots of choices, including crab legs, shrimp, prime rib with a mild horseradish sauce, Cajun style fried catfish, swordfish, Mexican food, "comfort food" like mashed potatoes and gravy, Chinese food (their lo mein noodles were great), soups, salad, fresh fruit, etc. They peel the shrimp and cut the crab's legs ahead of time, so you don't have to. I liked that. I ate too much.
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After dinner, we returned to Las Vegas Boulevard and crossed the street to the Mirage to see the volcano show. There is a fake volcano in the lagoon in front of the hotel that looks like a waterfall while it's "resting," but every fifteen minutes, it explodes as a volcano. This is really quite a spectacle, that I understand used to literally stop traffic along the Boulevard when it first debuted. The flames shoot high, red lights illuminating water so it looks like lava, the area around the volcano catches on fire, and there's hissing smoke rising from the area. It was neat. |
Next, we headed to Treasure Island to catch the Pirate Battle show. Alas, the show was closed from that very day through Christmas Eve! I was crushed, but what can you do? If I had arrived in Vegas with more energy the night before, I would have been able to see it on its last night. Oh well. (I guess that just means I've got to back to Vegas again sometime so I can see it.) The details of the exterior of Treasure Island were cool, though, from the pirate ship to the fortress, down to the skeletons of pirates guarding their treasure on rocky cliffs, etc.
On the way back to Harrah's, we swung into the Mirage to see the tropical rainforest inside. Wow! Those palm trees are TALL (60 feet under a 100 foot tall dome). Bo pointed out the 20,000 gallon fish aquarium that is set into the wall behind the registration desk and extends the entire length of the registration area (53 feet). The Mirage is a beautiful hotel. I would definitely stay there on a future trip.
Since our night out was cut a bit short, we sat down in the casino at some slot machines and began to play. My legs, by this time, would have been screaming in pain if they had mouths with which to scream. There was going to be hell to pay for all the walking I'd made them do, I just knew it. I only intended to play the few quarters I had on me, but that went too fast. So I bought $10 in quarters and played them. They were gone in no time, too. I bought another $20 in quarters and quickly realized this is how casinos make money. Luckily, I had a "loose" machine (one that was paying). Not only did I win back my $30 investment, I cashed out with $90 profit in my pocket. Not bad for my first experience playing the slots. The first thing I learned about playing slots is how filthy black your hands get from handling the quarters. I mean, it's as bad as newsprint and really gross. I also committed the cardinal sin of Vegas: I forgot to tip my cocktail waitress! (For those who don't know, in Vegas, you can get free drinks while gambling, even at slot machines or video poker, but it's protocol to tip the waitress $1-2 per drink.) AUGH! I felt so bad about it, I went looking for her all over the casino before I went to bed, but I couldn't find her. At 9:30, I finally crashed and burned and had to call it a day.
The interesting thought that occurred to me at the end of this day was that all of my frugal intentions before I arrived in Vegas flew out the window as soon as I arrived. I didn't sign up for any slot club cards that day, I didn't use any coupons, I never picked up a copy of What's On or Showbiz Weekly for the coupons. What a wonderful transformation. It was like I had an epiphany: Frugality is for my everyday life, so I can save money to come on vacation and spend as much money as I need to in order to have a good time! Convenience is everything in Vegas; cost means little.
Postscript: I went through almost three rolls of film today. And it's true that if you tip housekeeping $1-2/day instead of waiting until the end of your stay, you wind up with plenty of clean towels, shampoo and lotion in the bathroom.
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