USA Road Trip - Vegas Baby

The first thing I noticed about our hotel is how difficult it is to navigate.  From the gaming floor in the Luxor from any perspective all you can really see are slot machines.  It's like being stuck inside a giant diamond with a peacock looking in at you.  No matter where you turn it's all the same.  I guess they want you to just give up and start ploughing quarters into the machines.

Or at least head to a roulette table for some respite.

Looking around Vegas it struck me that the decadence on show would make the Romans blush.  Everything is glitzy and expensive.  It's always top-of-the-range.  If you've done something before you can do it in Vegas.  Only this time it's bigger, with blinking lights on it and a pretty girl with a big bust beside you.  Woo.

In the old empire all roads led to Rome.  Here all roads lead to a money sucking vortex with glitzy lights.  When we finally found our way out of the Luxor, we surfaced in Exacalibur, the hotel with the fairy tale castle at its front.  When we got to the drawbridge, that led directly to another casino.  MGM grand I think.  Jeez, there are a lot of them.

Banished from the kingdom of Excalibur, to the streets of New York

For all the ridiculous-themed hotels, one is based on New York City (New York-New York) another a pyramid (the Luxor), and all the pimps on street corners, the flashing lights, the big cars, the whooping Americans - I never found it tacky.

Maybe it's because I was in awe of the concepts and imagination behind each of the landmarks.  Or maybe it's because I was haemorragghing money and so enjoyed the free schtick.  Except the schtick ain't free and landmarks in Vegas are just...money-sucking vortexes.

The first night we mingled with some Swiss folks who thought we were Irish folks in an Irish bar in New York-New York on the Las Vegas Strip (confused?  It's Vegas baby!  Just blink with the lights).


From there we desperately tried to find a club, but on Monday nights there's not much on so we ended up in a dark little corner called Soundhaus or Rockhaus.  The night is hazy as we imbibed a fair amount of alcohol, be it free beers at the poker tables or $8.50 beers in pubs. 

Daylight was a stranger to me the next day, but in the early evening we caught a performance of KÀ by Cirque Du Soleil at the MGM Grand.  Have to say, the guys and girls in that troupe really are something.  The performance was mesmerising.  We particularly enjoyed the thonged man flying through the air.  He reminded us of a man who ripped open Angus's shirt then exposed our friend's man-bits in Pacha in Ibiza a few years back.

As a budding journalist, I have to say, the thought of meeting the people with the imagination and craft to create such a show excites me.

After KÀ we headed to Studio 54 in New York-New York and danced the night away.  On the way home Mark1 and I decided to put $20 each on black in the Excalibur casino and walk away no matter the outcome.  I went to bed having lost $50 after that trip to the roulette table.  But we did enjoy some banter with a Colombian fellow, and an American chap and his Romanian girlfriend.  We called her 'Red' because she always bet on red.  Clever Scottish boys.

Oh we won that first bet by the way, the $40 on black.  But no-one walks away when they're up.

That's the first two nights in Vegas, and like our plucky young heroes at that roulette table, I'm out.