What We Did in Las Vegas -or- The Tales of the Shot-Glasses
Okay, first of all, Las Vegas is completely insane.
I mean no offense at all to anybody who lives there or who grew up there. The thing is, if you *did* grow up in Las Vegas, then Las Vegas is what's normal to you. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, MA. You know what's normal to me?
Trees. Getting to see a tree every so often. Also rain. Lots of it. Lots of water in general; rivers, ponds, the lake, the bay, clean water, smelly water, water that has things floating in it. And squirrels. And buildings that are pretty old and don't have glowing things all over them. And angry people. Lastly, while walking through town, not having the sensation that everything in the entire world is happening around you all at once.
This is very, very important to establish right away. To me, Las Vegas was as alien as another planet.
It is a cool place to go to, of course. Just make sure that you have an idea of what you're getting yourself into before you go. Imagine being a minor character in an episode of that old "Jem" cartoon. There you go.
I had decided, early on in the journey, my journey named Bernie, to acquire a small souvenir from every place we went to. ("We" incidentally, is the small group of friends and relations who came with me. Rather, I came with them. Oh, whatever. Maybe one or two of my approximately a thousand relatives spend any time in Internetland, or even know that I have a website. Not like I'm about to dish any dirt here, but if I did, I'd be fairly safe. Man, that was a heck of a tangent, wasn't it?) I settled on shot glasses. Not that I'm a big drinker or anything, but they're small, inexpensive, easy to display, make cute tealight holders if you're never going to drink out of them, and if you hunt around you can find them in pretty nifty designs. I'm not sure how well the design part will come across in these awful little digi-cam jpegs, but eh, it's some visual interest. Here's where we went and what we did:
Bally's!
Nothing much interesting happened here. This was the hotel we stayed at. The room was better than some apartments I've been in. There was a sign in the bathroom explaining that the hotel couldn't launder towels every day (which is why they'd stocked plenty of extras for us) as "we must conserve our water". And across the street, there's the Bellagio hotel with it's fountain that is the size of a decent-sized lake. "Can't do ludicrous things with water in the desert, kids! No, wait, yes you can!" Funny.
Anyway, Bally's is cool and -this is very important later- easy to navigate. Also, they have a show, which we didn't go see, where they sink a ship and some other stuff. I think. I didn't quite understand the plot description. Anyway, next we visited...
Treasure Island!
Arr, matey, we didn't know where to go for dinner. Arr, so I called to get reservations at Buccaneer Bay, and by sheer dumb luck they let us scurvey cockroaches in. Arr! Pirates and booze and boats! Yo-ho, yo-ho!!!
Yeah, it turns out that Treasure Island (or "T.I." as it likes to be called now, just to be annoying) is a wee bit more upscale than we'd imagined. My fish special came with an espresso cup of... soup? I didn't know if I was expected to drink it, dip my bread in it, or just leave it there to look at. That was the first course. Next came my salad. Imagine if a professional arranger of flowers decided to make a display for the spring flower show out of lettuce. Presentation of the fish was at least sort of normal, as was the desert, and the food was *excellent*; but at that point, I felt way the heck out of my tree. Arr.
"T.I." is a cool hotel - casino - hotellino - cassitell - clefairy - atlean. Their show is free, but we never got to see it. It's got a bunch of pirate women who meet a ship of all-male pirates, and after they sing and dance some, the girl pirates sink their ship. Awesome.
Boardwalk!
This is a smaller casino, dominated by a giant hideous clown demon head on it's facade. We went there to see this band called Purple Reign. You must go too. It is at once slightly disturbing and a so much fun that you don't care.
Paris!
Paris is directly connected to Bally's, so we spent a lot of time there. Once again, it's very easy to navigate. They've nice (and not too-too formal) restaurants, and a shopping area of a size that won't make your legs want to kill themselves. Tu voudrais un sandwiche au pate???
The MGM Grand!
Grand doesn't cover the half of it.
Maybe MGM Brain-Explodingly Huge.
This is why I said I liked Bally's and Paris for being easy to navigate. MGM is freakin' gee-normous. Trying to find a restroom is an adventure. So here's your first Helpful Travel Hint: don't get sick.
The lion exhibit was neat. Also, they've a convenient walkway to take you over to...
New York, New York!
It's weird. And it struck me as weird in the same way I'm sure Paris would strike somebody who lives in France as weird. It's a strikingly accurate example of what people in Las Vegas must imagine New York City is like. Let me try and explain why it's so weird.
You know how the theory goes that aliens would learn the most about us from intercepting our television signals (they keep going and going and anything with an antenna can pick them up)? Imagine if all you knew about everyday life on Earth came from television. (I have a feeling that may be why nobody has formally made contact with us, but I digress.) Now imagine if all you knew about everyday life in the Northeast came from, say, "Friends" reruns.
Weird. Just weird.
New York, New York has a show involving naked people on a sinking ship, I think...
The Stratosphere Tower!
H-i-g-h......
We ate dinner in the rotating restaurant here. They had little chocolate cakes shaped like the Tower, but we were too full by then.
The Tower has a trio of thrill rides for clearly insane people at it's summit. One of them simulates what it'd be like to fall out of the topmost window. Heh heh........
the Venetian!
I couldn't get a glass from here because we were there rather late at night. Damn.
ADDENDUM: April, 2005 - Thank you, Auntie!
Anyway, we went to see a show called "V!" "V!" is a variety show. Which is to say that I can't really say if it's good or bad, because the overall quality depends on who is available to join in. With that said, we had a good cross-section of comedians, magicians, acrobats, and so on. While it would have been nicer to have gotten tickets for one of the headliner shows, I liked it.
the Mirage!
So... many... jokes...... Must... resist...
Well for those who don't know, the Mirage is the hotel/casino that is -or was, rather- the home base of Segfreid and Roy. It's very lovely, meant to simulate a lost city in the jungle. Most interestingly, their animals are still on display in the menagerie out back. There is also a free snow tiger display (enter the hotel/casino through the entrance nearest to Caesar's Palace) and a gift shop selling some pretty surreal items.
Caesar's Palace!
Caesar's Palace is even more Brain-Explodingly HUGE than the MGM Grand. Do not -and I say this in all seriousness- do NOT save it as the last thing to see on your trip. Especially if you have a plane to catch. You will go completely b!!chcakes trying to find an exit.
The Forum Shops have three HUGE traffic-stopping fountains, two of which are featured in free shows. It takes a good hour to get from one end to the other... and then you have to get through the casino.
I wonder if this isn't some crazy dream and that I'm really *still* wandering around that crazy place.
So that was our trip to Las Vegas. We had great fun and I'd gladly go back with more of a plan next time. And maps.
Special Disclaimer Thingy!
I am solely responsible for any inaccuracies in the preceding. If you want to know what you will in fact see at the various places in Las Vegas, as well as showtimes and plot descriptions that are actually halfway accurate, please visit the related links, listed below.
Everything on this page that I did not think of myself is copyrighted to its owners and creators, none of which I am affiliated with, so no endorsement is intended. No libel is intended either, so please don't hurt me.
Links
The following sites are very helpful for those who want to go to Las Vegas. Have a good trip:
Vegas.com
Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce
What's On?
I mean no offense at all to anybody who lives there or who grew up there. The thing is, if you *did* grow up in Las Vegas, then Las Vegas is what's normal to you. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, MA. You know what's normal to me?
Trees. Getting to see a tree every so often. Also rain. Lots of it. Lots of water in general; rivers, ponds, the lake, the bay, clean water, smelly water, water that has things floating in it. And squirrels. And buildings that are pretty old and don't have glowing things all over them. And angry people. Lastly, while walking through town, not having the sensation that everything in the entire world is happening around you all at once.
This is very, very important to establish right away. To me, Las Vegas was as alien as another planet.
It is a cool place to go to, of course. Just make sure that you have an idea of what you're getting yourself into before you go. Imagine being a minor character in an episode of that old "Jem" cartoon. There you go.
I had decided, early on in the journey, my journey named Bernie, to acquire a small souvenir from every place we went to. ("We" incidentally, is the small group of friends and relations who came with me. Rather, I came with them. Oh, whatever. Maybe one or two of my approximately a thousand relatives spend any time in Internetland, or even know that I have a website. Not like I'm about to dish any dirt here, but if I did, I'd be fairly safe. Man, that was a heck of a tangent, wasn't it?) I settled on shot glasses. Not that I'm a big drinker or anything, but they're small, inexpensive, easy to display, make cute tealight holders if you're never going to drink out of them, and if you hunt around you can find them in pretty nifty designs. I'm not sure how well the design part will come across in these awful little digi-cam jpegs, but eh, it's some visual interest. Here's where we went and what we did:
Bally's!
Nothing much interesting happened here. This was the hotel we stayed at. The room was better than some apartments I've been in. There was a sign in the bathroom explaining that the hotel couldn't launder towels every day (which is why they'd stocked plenty of extras for us) as "we must conserve our water". And across the street, there's the Bellagio hotel with it's fountain that is the size of a decent-sized lake. "Can't do ludicrous things with water in the desert, kids! No, wait, yes you can!" Funny.
Anyway, Bally's is cool and -this is very important later- easy to navigate. Also, they have a show, which we didn't go see, where they sink a ship and some other stuff. I think. I didn't quite understand the plot description. Anyway, next we visited...
Treasure Island!
Arr, matey, we didn't know where to go for dinner. Arr, so I called to get reservations at Buccaneer Bay, and by sheer dumb luck they let us scurvey cockroaches in. Arr! Pirates and booze and boats! Yo-ho, yo-ho!!!
Yeah, it turns out that Treasure Island (or "T.I." as it likes to be called now, just to be annoying) is a wee bit more upscale than we'd imagined. My fish special came with an espresso cup of... soup? I didn't know if I was expected to drink it, dip my bread in it, or just leave it there to look at. That was the first course. Next came my salad. Imagine if a professional arranger of flowers decided to make a display for the spring flower show out of lettuce. Presentation of the fish was at least sort of normal, as was the desert, and the food was *excellent*; but at that point, I felt way the heck out of my tree. Arr.
"T.I." is a cool hotel - casino - hotellino - cassitell - clefairy - atlean. Their show is free, but we never got to see it. It's got a bunch of pirate women who meet a ship of all-male pirates, and after they sing and dance some, the girl pirates sink their ship. Awesome.
Boardwalk!
This is a smaller casino, dominated by a giant hideous clown demon head on it's facade. We went there to see this band called Purple Reign. You must go too. It is at once slightly disturbing and a so much fun that you don't care.
Paris!
Paris is directly connected to Bally's, so we spent a lot of time there. Once again, it's very easy to navigate. They've nice (and not too-too formal) restaurants, and a shopping area of a size that won't make your legs want to kill themselves. Tu voudrais un sandwiche au pate???
The MGM Grand!
Grand doesn't cover the half of it.
Maybe MGM Brain-Explodingly Huge.
This is why I said I liked Bally's and Paris for being easy to navigate. MGM is freakin' gee-normous. Trying to find a restroom is an adventure. So here's your first Helpful Travel Hint: don't get sick.
The lion exhibit was neat. Also, they've a convenient walkway to take you over to...
New York, New York!
It's weird. And it struck me as weird in the same way I'm sure Paris would strike somebody who lives in France as weird. It's a strikingly accurate example of what people in Las Vegas must imagine New York City is like. Let me try and explain why it's so weird.
You know how the theory goes that aliens would learn the most about us from intercepting our television signals (they keep going and going and anything with an antenna can pick them up)? Imagine if all you knew about everyday life on Earth came from television. (I have a feeling that may be why nobody has formally made contact with us, but I digress.) Now imagine if all you knew about everyday life in the Northeast came from, say, "Friends" reruns.
Weird. Just weird.
New York, New York has a show involving naked people on a sinking ship, I think...
The Stratosphere Tower!
H-i-g-h......
We ate dinner in the rotating restaurant here. They had little chocolate cakes shaped like the Tower, but we were too full by then.
The Tower has a trio of thrill rides for clearly insane people at it's summit. One of them simulates what it'd be like to fall out of the topmost window. Heh heh........
the Venetian!
I couldn't get a glass from here because we were there rather late at night. Damn.
ADDENDUM: April, 2005 - Thank you, Auntie!
Anyway, we went to see a show called "V!" "V!" is a variety show. Which is to say that I can't really say if it's good or bad, because the overall quality depends on who is available to join in. With that said, we had a good cross-section of comedians, magicians, acrobats, and so on. While it would have been nicer to have gotten tickets for one of the headliner shows, I liked it.
the Mirage!
So... many... jokes...... Must... resist...
Well for those who don't know, the Mirage is the hotel/casino that is -or was, rather- the home base of Segfreid and Roy. It's very lovely, meant to simulate a lost city in the jungle. Most interestingly, their animals are still on display in the menagerie out back. There is also a free snow tiger display (enter the hotel/casino through the entrance nearest to Caesar's Palace) and a gift shop selling some pretty surreal items.
Caesar's Palace!
Caesar's Palace is even more Brain-Explodingly HUGE than the MGM Grand. Do not -and I say this in all seriousness- do NOT save it as the last thing to see on your trip. Especially if you have a plane to catch. You will go completely b!!chcakes trying to find an exit.
The Forum Shops have three HUGE traffic-stopping fountains, two of which are featured in free shows. It takes a good hour to get from one end to the other... and then you have to get through the casino.
I wonder if this isn't some crazy dream and that I'm really *still* wandering around that crazy place.
So that was our trip to Las Vegas. We had great fun and I'd gladly go back with more of a plan next time. And maps.
Special Disclaimer Thingy!
I am solely responsible for any inaccuracies in the preceding. If you want to know what you will in fact see at the various places in Las Vegas, as well as showtimes and plot descriptions that are actually halfway accurate, please visit the related links, listed below.
Everything on this page that I did not think of myself is copyrighted to its owners and creators, none of which I am affiliated with, so no endorsement is intended. No libel is intended either, so please don't hurt me.
Links
The following sites are very helpful for those who want to go to Las Vegas. Have a good trip:
Vegas.com
Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce
What's On?
Yet Another
Reiteration: Any
movies, cartoons, songs and such mentioned herein are © their respective
owners, and no endorsement (or it's opposite for that matter) is intended
by the webmistress; with the possible exception of such cases in which she
says that said material either "Rules" or "Sucks". Even
so, she is NOT getting paid for it. >:P
Home | About
| Writings |
Cyberpets |
Collections
| Links | E-mail