Hooley dooley – what does one say about Las Vegas! Well it certainly is a place everyone should experience – just once anyway! We were there for 3 nights and I’d say that we walked continually all that time. The hotels are enormous (really, really enormous) and all theme based. The MGM Hotel has real lions, the Flamingo Hotel has live flamingos, the Luxor is housed in a huge pyramid with an enormous sphinx at the entrance, New York New York Hotel is a mirror image of New York, Paris Hotel is built around the Eiffel Tower, Circus Circus Hotel is under a Big Top, Excalibur Hotel’s façade is a castle, The Venetian (where we stayed) has a gondola filled canal running through the 2nd floor of the hotel, Caesar’s Palace has a Roman flavour filled with amazing statues including the Statue of David, The Bellagio Hotel has an 8-acre artificial lake between the building and the Strip, which houses the Fountains of Bellagio, a large dancing water fountain synchronized to music (The Bellagio employs over 10,000 staff so you can just imagine how large these hotels are!!) There are many, many more hotels and each have more than 3,000 rooms available – mind boggling eh! Each hotel also hosts many big shows – Elton John, Cher, Bette Midler, Cirque Du Soleil, Donny & Marie just to name a few.
All are located on ‘the Strip’ which is filled constantly with people (and traffic) – it is an experience just trying to walk between hotels. Most intersections are so busy that pedestrians are not allowed to cross at street level. Instead hotels are linked by overhead pedestrian bridges. There is also an overhead monorail that connects most hotels along the strip as well as a bus service. We rode on both these just to experience them but mostly we walked – and walked and walked and walked!
Of course the place is just brimming with casinos – mostly located near the entrance of the hotels which means you have to walk through them to get to the front desk or your room or wherever you need to get to in the hotel. This is the biggest downfall in this amazing city as the casinos are not smoke-free and although they have ventilating systems, the smoke is still there and still very much in your face (and eyes and nose) – not pleasant. We actually had a $25 voucher for the pokies and finally used it at 11pm the night before departure and guess what – we walked away with $85! Sitting in a smoked filled room pushing a button on a machine seems pretty monotonous, uninspiring and pointless to me, however I’m probably in the minority as all the casinos were filled with people 24/7.
All are located on ‘the Strip’ which is filled constantly with people (and traffic) – it is an experience just trying to walk between hotels. Most intersections are so busy that pedestrians are not allowed to cross at street level. Instead hotels are linked by overhead pedestrian bridges. There is also an overhead monorail that connects most hotels along the strip as well as a bus service. We rode on both these just to experience them but mostly we walked – and walked and walked and walked!
Of course the place is just brimming with casinos – mostly located near the entrance of the hotels which means you have to walk through them to get to the front desk or your room or wherever you need to get to in the hotel. This is the biggest downfall in this amazing city as the casinos are not smoke-free and although they have ventilating systems, the smoke is still there and still very much in your face (and eyes and nose) – not pleasant. We actually had a $25 voucher for the pokies and finally used it at 11pm the night before departure and guess what – we walked away with $85! Sitting in a smoked filled room pushing a button on a machine seems pretty monotonous, uninspiring and pointless to me, however I’m probably in the minority as all the casinos were filled with people 24/7.
And did I mention the myriad of wedding chapels – some cute, some tacky, some drive through!! We actually saw a couple being married on a gondola floating along a canal in our hotel complex. We saw quite a few brides over the weekend – obviously a popular wedding destination.
On Saturday 
we met up with Marg & Pete & Julie and caught up on all their travels since leaving Houston 2 weeks ago. They are on the last leg of their 7 week holiday and as I type this they will be in the air jetting towards Australia. Great to spend time with you guys – it was fun and we look forward to our next get together somewhere in the world.
On our final night together we met in downtown Las Vegas in Fremont Street. This is known as the ‘old Vegas’ and used to be known as "glitter gulch", because the casinos here were so brightly lit that it seemed like daytime when they were all turned on at night and it is still like that – amazing!
we met up with Marg & Pete & Julie and caught up on all their travels since leaving Houston 2 weeks ago. They are on the last leg of their 7 week holiday and as I type this they will be in the air jetting towards Australia. Great to spend time with you guys – it was fun and we look forward to our next get together somewhere in the world.On our final night together we met in downtown Las Vegas in Fremont Street. This is known as the ‘old Vegas’ and used to be known as "glitter gulch", because the casinos here were so brightly lit that it seemed like daytime when they were all turned on at night and it is still like that – amazing!
Oh I nearly forgot our excursion to the Hoover Dam. This is one of America's Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders. It was built during the Depression and stands high above the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada. It is one of the examples EDN use in their training programs to demonstrate how far safety has progressed in the workplace - back then the company budgetted for so many deaths per day - amazing! It was actually during the construction of the dam that hardhats were created. It was a really enjoyable and interesting tour and one we highly recommend. It's such a contrast to Las Vegas - like stepping out of fantasyland into frontierland.
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