Thursday in Las Vegas! (10 May 2007)

Another day in Las Vegas!

I woke up around 0800, got up, and showered in a big glass shower that was nice but really not the best design. I could find a hair dryer, so I just let it go. I dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts and went to the Flamingo hotel and casino for the Paradise buffet breakfast. My parents went there and highly recommended it.

On the way out I stopped at the concierge and got a reservation for the half-day tour to the Hoover Dam. I got it for the 0735 bus pick-up, since I easily get up early anyway.

There were tables up against huge panes of glass and outside the glass was a jungle sort of set up, with rocks and fountains and a big pool of water. There ducks with ducklings (the really cute little fuzzy buggers, still yellow but with little bits of dun coloured fuzzies coming in; beautiful white trumpeter swans with the big orange bills and enormous black and orange fish under the surface. I had a good sized breakfast with heavy emphasis on the protein and then headed out through the glass doors to go through the rest of the jungle provided by the Flamingo.

I went through tropical garden, which included flamingos and other exotic birds which I could not name and no penguins (apparently they went home, back to their normal habitat in California or something) and various other creatures, like turtles and more colourful fish.

Walked around to get appropriate batteries for my camera (it can use normal AA cell batteries, but it blows through them very quickly whereas the AA cell with lithium holds up to a whole lot more use. I found that normal AA cell batteries were done in a few hours if that but lithium AA cells hold up to more than one day of full use – five to seven hundred images with zoom, flash, etc). So I went through the Flamingo, another tacky casino and some place else looking for batteries. I ended up getting regular batteries, knowing that the current batteries would not last long. I figured I’d have to find them in Caesar’s mall, for way too much money.

I did stop in one of the lower-cost casinos and took out $300, for gambling as well as sight-seeing, and found that selecting an ATM was an art in itself. The first couple wanted a charge of $4.75 or more! I get bent paying $3.00 and around here, not a chance I will shell out that much. But this, as many things, is all relative. At $3.00 I was delighted to take money out… it was the best possible price!

After finally getting money and the crappy batteries, I hopped on one of the trams that take you anywhere for $5.00 over 24 hours from when you purchase the ticket. I went to the Mirage to see the volcano, dolphins and tigers – in that order – but I never did get to see the volcano. It erupts every hour on the hour from 1800 to 0000. Waiting every hour is kind of ridiculous. And while I can see where it is so much more prestigious and amazing at night, it could erupt during the day, too. No. Just at night.

So I went into the casino and walked through to find the dolphins display. It took a little while. The signs were occasionally misleading… and the casinos are so bloody big that getting lost is likely par for the course! I wended my way through the casino, shops and outside to the ungodly heat (100F) and the dolphin area. It was $12 (I think) and this gets you the dolphins and the tigers.

The dolphins were pretty neat, but there was no specific show and the real disappointment was the difficulty of taking good images of them – they did do stupendous leaps out of the water, and fun things, but I could not capture the fast-paced things on the camera. I did get some images – some really good ones – but I was disappointed to not have the phenomenal leaps in it.

The tiger display was really just a small area with various pens for each different type. Tigers, striped, white, orange, lions, etc. Big kitties everywhere. But it was hot as hell, not the mid-80s that it should have been, and the kitties were all napping in the midday heat, not much too see. Some pictures did come out very well, however, due to the fact that they were not mobile. Still… it was a lot like going to a zoo, which is bittersweet – lovely to see the animals, not nice to see them in captivity.

After spending an hour and a half there, I finally headed out to the street to pick up the tram to the Stratosphere, what used to be Bob Stupak’s Vegas World. It most certainly does not look like Vegas World any more! Not that it has in years and not that I expected it to. It was a tiny casino and an unimpressive hotel. The shows weren’t all that and a bag of chips, either. The neighbourhood is still not all that either – or should I say it is more than I’d want to see. They’ve made Fremont Street much safer and different but don’t take one step off of it… I didn’t go there for this trip, just the Stratosphere.

I got my tickets and went first to the observation deck and took a zillion pictures from there, walking around and getting images of the mountains, the local buildings, the Strip… everything. It was so worth it. The view was incredible! And then… I went for the rides…!

The first one was the Big Shot, a zero-G ride that looks like a box on the needle of the Stratosphere. It shoots straight up, pushing four or more Gs, and then it drops like a stone – free fall! Oh, amazing! It went up and down a couple of times, and then stopped and came down to the landing pad. It was INCREDIBLE! I got off and said to the attendants, “That was fucking fabulous!” I may freely use expletives, but rarely in public settings like that. I wanted to do it again!

Then I went for Insanity the Ride, my other ticket (I had heard about the roller coaster and opted not to do it – Luis and Tom mentioned it throws the head around. So I got tickets for the Big Shot and Insanity. Insanity is a structure with five arms, at the end of which there are two seats each. We got in to our seats and were strapped in and then the arm slowly pulls out over the edge. Yup – sitting there with my feet hanging out 1,440 feet over the street. Wow…! Then it begins to spin around and the legs stick out. Far enough that it was not an effort to look down! It was great. It was not a real screamer for me – I’m not afraid of heights. But it was a worthwhile ride.

The person sitting near me said he was on the extreme ride and that was the most terrifying ride he’s ever been on. He said it shoots you out over the edge, pulls back and does it again and this scared him. For a guy who sounds like he loves extreme kinds of rides, this must have really been something! I went down and got a ticket for Xtreme.

He was right, Xtreme is a big black stick that has a car on it. The stick tips down and WHAM! There you are, hanging over the side of the Stratosphere, with nothing beneath you. The way it races toward that is what is terrifying, but knowing too well what to expect, I was not scared and actually, I was thinking it would go a lot farther and hang down at a more vertical rate. So while the camera there got me in such a way that you could count all of my teeth (and maybe even make out which ones were crowns…), after that initial reaction, it was a little teeny bit disappointing. Luis mentioned that the photo is funny – I don’t look frightened, I look like I’m laughing! (I was – it was a ton of fun!)

So I loved it and was still wandering around the observation deck, thinking about getting more tickets when Luis called and said that there was an event for us (relating to his conference) and then we had the Cirque du Soliel show, REVOLUTION, to go to at 2200. Time to come home. It was 1645, a full day. By then, I was fried again and tired enough to grab a cab back to Caesar’s.

Once back at Caesars’, I stopped at the concierge desk again and changed my reservation to the 1135 pick-up… a 2200 show would mean getting to bed late and I did not want to chance it. I changed into my bathing suit and had my afternoon swim and float. The pool had a sign reading the Neptune pool was closed for a private event at 1600… I was relieved to find out that the Neptune pool wasn’t the one I went to. I was still able to hang out and swim and relax. I spent about an hour there and then returned to my room to get ready for the event. I showered, dressed and Luis came up. We looked at a huge plume of smoke coming up from beyond the airport... but we had no idea what was going on, so we down to the Neptune Pool, where the NARCA thing was.

I was not thrilled about this, but I hate these kinds of events no matter what. I did have a moment of hope, when the people running this at the table wouldn’t let me in – only NARCA participants allowed, no spouses or guests. Yay! I’ll go get food elsewhere, relax, rest my feet, read… but no, Jacqueline, the woman from the first breakfast we had, let Luis use her badge to get me in!

Now I know why Luis goes to the night time events. It’s nothing amazing… the food was good but only that, the company was… well… kind of boring, the hired entertainment was the rat pack dressed like the 40s (except that the one female was a Marilyn Monroe impersonator… and she was the 60s). We wandered around, grabbed some food from the buffet (I had pasta and something else… maybe fruit? Maybe. Tells you how memorable the buffet food was). And then it began… people were coming up to Luis and telling him what a god he is! Now, I’m certainly sold on it. But all these ultra boring lawyers were saying that, too! I was completely amazed by this. And then when we were wending our way out of there to stop in our room before going to the Mirage for Revolution, Luis grinned at me and said, “See why I love to come to these things?”

We headed up to the room, got my long-sleeved shirt and headed to the downstairs area to grab a cab. My feet were killing me and I honestly thought the Mirage had another casino resort between us. It turns out that the sheer screaming size of Caesar’s and its monstrous mall was all that was between us and Mirage. So the money was wasted on the cab but since I suggested it and was wrong, I paid for it. Only fair.

We got into the Mirage and couldn’t find the theater that Cirque du Soliel’s Revolution was playing in. We finally found it and found our seats – excellent seats! – and we were quite early. Looking around, the stage was a funny configuration; a long length but with four outcroppings from the main line. Each area was cut off from each other by a long tall mostly see through curtain or screen. The screen had clouds on it and there were ladders hanging from the ceiling. At about fifteen minutes to 2200, more people that Luis knew from the NARCA convention sat in our row. I didn’t like either the guy who sat next to Luis and I really didn’t care for the woman who was sitting next to him. The guy reminded me of the gay guy in Ugly Betty; she was just some annoying woman. But in the middle of the show they went to the bathroom… together…?! I did not like either of them because they chatted through the world’s most engaging show!

This was an amazing show. They were all over, hanging from the ceiling, swinging, parading out from behind curtains, etc. One character was so cute, carrying around a singe flower and shuffling along shyly. At the end he came out with an enormous bunch of yellow flowers. Very cute! I don’t what else to say about it and I couldn’t take pictures. There was one observation… there were a lot of M to Fs in the cast. I don’t know if enough women don’t go into acrobat work. Maybe they don’t have the desire to be clowns? These were not regular clowns. As a general rule, I don’t care for clowns. But these were artists of an incredible degree. And the music – all Beatles! I love the Beatles, I grew up on the Beatles. It was a delightful show. Thanks a million to Stevan Goldman, who bought us the tickets!

We walked back but honestly, after 90-plus minutes of this mind-blowing show, I was not feeling any pain in my feet! It was 2348 and we went over to the Bellagio but we missed the last show. We couldn’t get there fast enough. And so we went home to our room and it was time to crash!