Las Vegas

Las Vegas

While I was living for a year in Oregon on the west coast of America
some friends and I decided it would be a good idea to do a driving tour
of some of the sights of the west coast. Las Vegas was our ultimate aim
and we would spend two days in the city before taking a meandering
drive back to Oregon. We saw a lot of other stuff on this trip, a lot
of great stuff that deserves many rambling pages of description, but
Las Vegas is what I really want to talk about. As we closed in on Las
Vegas it was approaching 3am. I was in shotgun, Dan was driving, and I
was flagging. Dan had driven this route to Vegas many times before (his
parents have a house near Las Vegas) and he knew what was about to
happen. He flicked soda at me to wake me up (or piss me off, I couldn't
really tell and I've never asked him) and told me to stay awake for a
while, just till we got over the rise that was approaching. He said
there was something I'd want to see. Puzzled, I looked around me.
Outside was a vast expanse of dark, dull desert. The same dark, dull
Nevada desert we'd been driving through for hours. Nothing anyone would
want to see at three in the morning. I trusted Dan, though, and stayed
awake by quietly humming themes from cowboy movies. We drove up over
the rise in the road and, quite without warning, the valley ahead of us
was flooded with lights and in the middle stood the infamous Strip. The
casinos were clearly visible from the distance we were at (I believe it
was 30 miles) and the lights of the city dominated the entire
landscape. In stark contrast to the miles and miles of black
nothingness we'd been driving through only seconds before. I was
informed by Dan in a bored, matter of fact tone that one of the casinos
had over 5,000 rooms and that they all kept their lights on all hours
of darkness and that the money they made from gambling alone more than
payed for their electricity bills. We didn't drive through the Strip
that night. We made our way to Boulder City ("dam builders and dam
proud of it" apparently), found the house we'd been lent by Dan's
family for the few days we'd be in Vegas and slept for a long, long
time.

We awoke the next morning (actually, it was the next afternoon if you
want to be completely accurate) and went to a casino called Railroad
Pass between Boulder City and Las Vegas. Dan, again displaying his
extensive knowledge of the area, told us that this was the oldest
casino in Nevada. The casino sold all day breakfasts for some
ridiculously low sum so we ordered those. The great thing about Vegas
is that you can get a lot of good food for pocket change. We decided
that we would go back to the house for the few hours of sunshine that
were left and then drive down to Las Vegas and have our first sight of
the Strip in its nighttime glory. As we drove down the Strip my
vocabulary was dramatically reduced to a handful of expletives and
exclamations. There are way too many stimuli to take in in Las Vegas.
We drove past the casinos at the slow pace that the traffic imposed.
Looming above us were replicas of the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel
Tower, a hot air balloon, pieces of ancient Rome and modern Venice. Las
Vegas is big and it's bright. I loved it. I love Las Vegas. Only the
terminally dull could go to Las Vegas and not have a good time. If
someone tells you that they don't like Vegas, they're lying. There's
nothing to dislike. It's made all the sweeter by the delicious irony
that it was originally settled by Mormons and has evolved into the
definitive city of sin. We parked the car and walked down the strip for
a while. Outside the Mirage casino, just off the road, is a huge water
feature made to look like a tropical mountain and lagoon, water flowed
down the edges of the mountain and into the pool. It's spectacular in
itself but if you stand there long enough the fake mountain erupts in a
cataclysm of spitting flames and coloured water. You can feel the heat
on your face and you can't help but be utterly astonished. That's the
thing about Las Vegas, it's fake, it's manmade, it should be an affront
to nature. But it isn't. It has a self-deprecating charm and it
wouldn't dream of taking itself seriously. It's entertaining,
mind-numbingly fun and above all, cheap. All the attractions outside
the casinos are free to watch, most of them inside are. The food is
inexpensive and the hotel prices could definitely be worse. The only
way you lose significant amounts of money in Vegas is through gambling
(which we were too young for at the time) or if you buy too much stuff
from the overpriced gift shops.

The Luxor casino is the Egyptian themed one, the one with the Sphinx
they always show on TV. Atop the pyramid-shaped casino is a very
powerful lamp which shoots a beam of white light into the desert night.
It is one of only a handful of man-made things that are visible from
space. Caesar's Palace imitates ancient Rome; Venezia does a passable
impersonation of modern day Venice; Paris at least has cobbled paths
and shops with names like 'Le Patisserie' or 'Le Gift Shop' in its
casino to lend a French atmosphere. The Luxor took some sphinxes,
obelisks and a pyramid, threw them together with a tasteless carpet,
little in the way of entertainment and some slot machines. Not that the
sphinxes and obelisks aren't imposing and magnificent. They are, but
the Luxor missed something. It's hard to say what it is, but whatever
it is the others have it.

The following day was our second and last day in Las Vegas. Our first
stop on the Strip was Circus Circus. We had a wonderful time. We stood
and watched a trapeze act, 'oohing' and 'aahing' with the best of them.
We utterly failed to win anything on the side show games. We bought
candy floss and I was berated for not calling it cotton candy. We
played a laser quest type shoot-em-up game. It's the best casino for
kids, and big kids. This was our last day so we were determined to fit
in as many casinos as possible. Next on the list was Caesar's Palace, a
truly magical place. It doesn't take an enormous stretch of the
imagination to believe you're walking along the streets of ancient
Rome. The ceiling does a jolly good job of being the sky and
alternating between dawn and dusk every 15 minutes or so. As we
explored the casino we found another of those free entertainments they
lay on in Vegas. One of the fountains was rigged so that the statues on
it moved. They portrayed the sinking of Atlantis with copious amounts
of fire, brimstone, waves of water and loud booming voices saying
sentences with words like 'smite' in them, because that's how
Atlanteans talked...everyone knows that.

Next to Treasure Island, outside the casino is an enormous lake where a
life-sized pirate ship and an equally life-sized British buccaneer ship
engage in a fiery battle to the death. Naturally, the British lose
every time, the brave bloke playing the Captain going down with the
ship many times a night, night after night. The final casino we visited
was Bellagio's. And here, I have to admit to something. Much as I have
raved about the entertainment and the dizzying spectacles in Las Vegas
it has to be said that even after two days it all becomes too much. Or
rather, too little. It might be to do with sensory overload. More
likely it's because after too long it becomes perfectly normal to see
pirates waving swords on the blazing remains of their ship. It's
ordinary for a volcano to erupt every 15 minutes. And you're not
surprised to walk past an innocent looking fountain only to find that
the statues of Roman Gods move, talk and make merry. It sounds odd, but
with each new casino it was becoming much harder to be impressed by its
offerings. Bellagio's was different. For a start, we were not planning
to visit this casino. It doesn't have a huge gold lion, or a Venetian
canal outside it. Nothing to draw us in. We were on our way to Paris
which is across the street from Bellagio's. Music piped out from hidden
speakers as we walked past the lake outside the Bellagio. We all turned
to see a dazzling display. Jets of water rose and fell in time to the
music, forming circles and figure of eights; chasing each other across
the lake; pulsing and dancing around to the strains of Mr. Frank
Sinatra. We were enthralled. It was beautiful and captivating. In a
city that relies so much on over the top gimmicks and larger than life
attractions the Bellagio's fountains were understated and serene. The
choreography of the balletic water jets was ingenious. The music was
chosen well and it was not crowded around the lake. Most tourists were
watching the bigger and better publicized displays in the other
casinos. The music finished and the water fountains faded into the
lake. We hurried into the casino to see if we could find out how often
the fountains danced. We were told every half hour. Inside the casino
we found another calming diversion. A little greenhouse set just off
the foyer. A sanctuary of tranquillity and aromatic plants. When the
time came we went back outside to the man-made lake and were once again
hypnotized by the dancing water.