A Day On The Strip, Las Vegas March 2012

So, on Friday March 16th, I eventually managed to drag myself out of bed just before 11am – not bad after a million-hour flight and a very late night! I washed the flight off myself with a nice long shower, and then Aunty C and I set off for a day on Las Vegas Boulevard. We started off with a walk to a nearby strip mall, where we had lunch at a restaurant called China Roll. It was a good, old-fashioned, old-school Chinese place; cracked linoleum floors, pea-green walls, plastic tablecloths and waving golden Feng Shui cats. The young guy working there was spectacularly uninterested in his job; taking our order was obviously a great chore BUT he managed to squeeze out a smile eventually! We both had the Mongolian beef, which was probably stuffed full of MSG, but it tasted pretty damn good. After eating I was approached by a random Philipina woman who was obviously nuts; the wierdos always seek me out. It’s like I’m some sort of freak magnet. She started telling me all about her family and the guy that she fell in love with when she was 16 but just couldn’t get over, and that she had spotted his car outside… at this point we tried to make a run for it, smiling and backing away slowly…!

From the restaurant, we walked around the corner to the bus stop. A word to the wise: catching a bus in Las Vegas is a dicey business, to say the least! I guess that car culture in America is such that only the people who really can’t afford a car, or for whatever reason can’t drive a car, catch public transport. This means that the bus is stuffed with alcoholics, nutjobs, bogans, freaks and the occasional normal person, elderly person or disabled person. While waiting at the bus stop, we gasped repeatedly as a screeching witch of an old woman (with a bad dye job) kept stepping into moving traffic to see if she could spot the bus coming. As if that was going to make it come any faster! Then when the bus eventually came, we went to the top deck but we could hear her prattling on downstairs about one thing or another. She kept shouting at the driver, “AIR CON! We need AIR CON!” even though the driver repeatedly told her that it wasn’t working. Funnily enough, though, as soon as she got off the bus, he switched it on! He must’ve encountered her before and just decided to wind her up… 🙂

Arriving at the Strip, we started to explore some of the casinos. The first stop was Caesar’s Palace, a wildly extravagant ode to excess. The main casino is surrounded by mile-high towers, alabaster statues, golden nymphs prancing in fountains, and of course The Coliseum (where Celine Dion still sings almost every night… how the hell do they find enough people to buy those tickets?). We didn’t go inside, but instead ventured to the Mirage and decided to pay a visit to Siegfried and Roy’s ‘Secret Garden’. Here, we were able to spend a little time watching the dolphins, one of whom was particularly friendly and kept nosing up to the glass in the underwater aquarium area. There were also two recently-arrived baby dolphins who spent the whole time swimming in formation with two of the older dolphins; I guess they were being trained by their superiors! We also saw the white tigers, white lion, panther and leopard that Siegfried and Roy used in some of their shows (I’m not sure if the one that eventually bit Roy was included in the exhibit). I always thought that those guys were a little freaky; Roy (and his eyebrows) always gave me the creeps in particular. But I suppose, really, that they were a major part of the glitz of Las Vegas, so I’m glad we visited.

From the Mirage, we crossed the road to the Venetian, an extreme imitation of Venice, and wandered along The Grand Canal, occasionally dropping into shops and watching the gondoliers serenade their passengers as they passed us by. I cringed a little bit at the cheesiness of it but then reminded myself that I’m in Vegas, after all – just go with it! I tried a delicious orange sorbet, and treated myself to a chocolate-coated strawberry at Godiva, which cost a stellar $9… my Aunty nearly had a heart attack when she heard how much I was paying, but I figured that I’m on holiday, and how often do I do that…? (The best excuse to do anything on holiday, really!)

Next, we walked across the road again and went to the Fashion Show Mall, a hideously overpriced mall with an inexplicable spaceship-shaped blimp floating above it. There, we hit Macy’s (I had to top up my makeup) and had a little browse at a whole bunch of shops where we couldn’t really afford anything! A Top Shop has just opened there, but I resisted the urge to go inside and splurge all my spending money in one go. By the time we came out of the Fashion Show, the sun had gone down and the seething crowds had come out. Walking back along the Strip to the bus stop, I was reminded that this was one of Vegas’ most busy weekends – it was Spring Break, St Patrick’s Day and March Madness (a basketball thing) all at the same time. Drunk people filled the streets, bright purple yard-glasses of beer in hand, stumbling and shouting. We caught the end of the ‘Sirens of Treasure Island’ show; it used to be a family-friendly outdoor pirate show in which two giant ships fought each other and one actually sank into the giant outdoor pool, but obviously it wasn’t sexy enough for Vegas, so they got rid of the traditional pirates and replaced them with hot chicks in pirate bikinis. Classy.

Overheard on the Strip… a man is talking animatedly to his friend, gesturing at the woman by his side: “BUT THE BITCH GAVE ME HERPES!!!” I didn’t need OR want to hear the rest of that conversation!

I marveled, as always, at the lights of the Strip, flashing and sparkling; the intensely high volume of noise; the mass of humanity all on the hunt for a good time… it really is a surreal place. I’ve been to Vegas 3 or 4 times already, but things change so often that there’s always something new to see, and even the old stuff is fun.

We made our way back to the bus stop near the Flamingo (outside, a man dressed as Bumblebee from The Transformers was raking in tips for photographs), and once again I was treated to a bus encounter with some of the wierdest people on earth. A large group of men were having a loud conversation about all the different basketball games and who they’d bet on, and when that conversation finished a man and his girlfriend kept us entertained until we got off. Girlfriend: “Man, I gotta stop smokin’ weed! I can’t keep goin’ to school smellin’ of weed! Some damn parent gonna call the police!” Then the guy called his mother about something. His side of the conversation: “Mama, what the hell you mean, I never call? I’M CALLING YOU NOW! And I just spent three hours with you! You want me to hang up? Imma hang up! … HELLO? (man turns to his girlfriend) BITCH HUNG UP ON ME!!!!!”

From the bus stop, Bethany and Caroline came to meet us in the car. They handed me a bag of the best onion rings EVER… I think they were from some fast food joint called Sonic. They drove us home, and Aunty C made a salmon curry for dinner, which was delicious. By the time we got to bed, it was past 1am. I actually had one of the worst nights of sleep that I’ve had in years; I think we ate too late, and I was a bit hot under the blankets. I remember having bad dreams for a couple of hours, and then I had an awful awful night terror (I think that’s what they call them) – I haven’t had one of those in over ten years, and I had never had one before that one. I woke up screaming at about 3:30am, and then I was too scared to let myself fall asleep again! Silly. Then, at about 4am, my mum called, and after the phone call my Aunty’s cat, Cally, spent over an hour scratching and meowing at the door to be let into my bedroom; the last thing I wanted was to be rudely awoken by a cat in my face after that nightmare! By the time I fell asleep again, it must’ve been around 5/5:30am, and then Karl came to pick me up at about 7:30am on the Saturday morning – yikes! Still, it was a great day with my aunty, and so nice to be pottering the Strip again.

Saturday the 17th of March was a pretty quiet day, and that was exactly how I liked it. My lack of sleep and the jetlag combined had made a bit of a zombie of me, and Karl, Bethany and Caroline all had stuff to do around the house so I just spent the day quite happily on the couch, watching them come and go, and cuddling their disgustingly cute puppy dog Ottie. We had a delicious brunch made by Bethany (fried potatoes, asparagus and tomato accompanied by little spinach, sausage and cheese omelettes, plus sourdough toast and blueberry scones… yummmmm!). I watched most of Season 1 of Game of Thrones, which I’d never seen before. My, my, my. Sex, blood, sex, violence and more sex! Just my kind of thing. 🙂 Ladies: Khal Drogo. Blimey. I don’t think I need to say anything else about him! Bethany caught a red-eye flight to Hawaii for business on Saturday night, and Caroline went to visit her great-grandmother for the night, so Karl and I hung out at the house, chatting and catching up. It was another late night – again, I didn’t get to sleep much before 2am, but it was definitely worth it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tara.

Tags: travel