Las Vegas definitely lives up to it's reputation as the "Sin City". The strip is larger than life and twice as noisy. Everything there is big: from the 22oz yard drinks to the massive casinos to the huge, elaborate hotels to the all-you-can-eat buffets offering cuisines of multiple nationalities and more food than you can shake a stick at.
After queuing an hour to check in we then got both confused and lost in the quest to find our room (no simple feat considering it had 5 different towers with probably a 1,000 rooms in each). After being escorted to the door by a friendly cleaner we settled in for an early night while the rest of Vegas partied on.
The next day we were up and out to explore Vegas. It's busy, bustling, noisy and hot. We wandered round trying to find our bearings before stumbling into McDonalds for an unhealthy breakfast/lunch and some free Internet. Then it was time to hit the casinos - well, give them a nervous prod anyway. The truth is we're not even gambling novices we're gambling no-ideas: neither of us know how to play poker in any of it's forms (3 cards, more cards, etc) or even vaguely understand fruit machines. The 2p sliders at Skegness are about our limit. Put this against a pretty tight budget and it was going to be an interesting few days. Despite this our first venture into gambling went quite well - we gambled $2 and won $6 but the cheap Dutch courage we bought from the casino bar spurred us on a little too well and we lost the lot and needed to go for a bit of a lie-down soon after. Undeterred we continued to venture into the casinos throughout our stay spending the odd dollar here and there. We never scaled the dizzying heights of our initial success again, despite working on our poker-faces, but it was all good fun. The casino in our hotel had extra entertainment too with it's "dealertainers" (croupiers who apparently bore an uncanny likeness to their celebrity alter-egos) - otherwise known as the world's most unconvincing bunch of lookalikes to turn up in 1 room at the same time. It became an ongoing game every-time we entered and left the hotel to try to work out who they were supposed to be. Only the Elvis-es (yes plural) were obvious and even then it was all a bit Father Ted and the 3 stages of Elvis.
The hotels themselves are impressive. Most have a theme which is reflected in the architecture. So, for example, the Paris has a scale size Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph and the shops are housed in a replica Palace of Versailles. The Vegas Strip has it's own Brooklyn Bridge, Venetian canal system, Sphinx and pyramid, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and pirate ship. On the street there are various Elvis Presleys, Darth Vadars, Yodas and Captain Jack Sparrows milling about and strutting their stuff. It's nothing like we've ever seen before - unique.
The highlight of our trip was definitely the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon which also took in the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead (the world's largest man-made lake) and the Colorado River. It was a real buzz and absolutely stunning. We took off from Boulder City, about a 45 minute drive out of Vegas into the desert. We were in the air for just over an hour and it was the smoothest air flight we'd ever encountered. Shane, our pilot, made the flying look easy as we cruised along at about 4,000 feet. The scenery was barren, dry and pretty un-inhabitable but then came Lake Mead which is mile upon mile of water. From there we arrived at the western rim of the Grand Canyon. It looked un-earthly, like the ground had opened up in jagged cracks or some lunar landscape. Awesome! On our final day we started off with breakfast in a greasy spoon cafe before having a run round some of the lesser sights of Vegas. The most random was the 4 floors of the M&M tower - a whole museum/thing dedicated to M&Ms - 4 floors of mugs and stuff dedicated to disappointing chocolate and annoying characters. And we didn't get a free single M&M between us (the shame). Next we planned a bit of fun with a visit to Gameworks, the only arcade in Vegas with video games that aren't slot machines. After loading our card with credit we played an After Burner game that didn't fly up, and another one that didn't move (no seatbelt), a pinball with one working flipper and about 20 balls, we were given tokens from a change machine for free as it required an attendant and played some crappy racing games. All in all, rubbish. Half the stuff out of order or malfunctioning.
The next day, it was back to Los Angeles on our last ever Greyhound (as we're in America, woops and yeahs all round)
Kelly and Mike