Friday, November 4, 2016

Vegas in the Fall


                      Vegas in the Fall

As some of my gentle readers might recall, I had bit of a health issue this past winter.  A heart attack to be specific, and some surgery – quad bypass - followed soon after.  Due to this interruption in my “normal” way of life, my wife and I had to cancel a cruise we had been planning.  I guess I could have possibly gone on it, but realistically it was way too soon after the surgery and my recovery would have still been ongoing.  I was weak and not yet done getting well.  It was not an ideal situation for a cruise.  So we canceled it and also canceled the airfare tickets for the flight, which was to take us to the cruise port.  Southwest Airlines is nice enough to allow you to use the money you spend on flights you have to cancel on other flights as long as they are booked within a year, so our deadline was around the end of November.  My wife and I discussed the options and decided to use the airfare money on a trip to Las Vegas in October.

Last week we used it and this blog is a bit of an account of that trip and a few things we did while we were there. 

Come along with us if you like.

We flew out of Cleveland this time instead of Columbus.  Better deal on the tickets.  We noted that Hopkins Airport still has a very awkward entrance to the ticketing counter from where the off-site parking shuttle busses drop you off.  Through an unheated plastic-sheet walled kind of entrance, then down an escalator, across a large area and back up another escalator to the ticket counters.  I’m hoping what’s there now is temporary as they seem to have been remodeling forever, but it just could just as likely be just poor design.  Our Southwest Airlines flight was comfortable and we were into Vegas early on a Sunday morning.  We used Uber from the airport for the first time and it worked quite well besides being noticeably less expensive than a taxi would have been (a little more than half as much).  We stayed on the strip this time at Bally’s.  I’d asked for hotel suggestions from an old friend and he suggested this one.  (Thanks Jim!)  Prices were higher than I’d have liked, but it was center strip and it was Vegas. 

My brother Chuck flew into town from where he lives in San Jose, California to join us.  It was great having him around to share this vacation.  He was scheduled for knee-replacement surgery the following week, so he was a bit anxious most of the time. 

(Side note: the surgery went fine and he’s happily convalescing now.)

I think I’ll break a bit with tradition here and not give you a day-by-day account of our time in Sin City, but just recall some of the highlights of our five days there.  Be assured that we did a lot of walking and wandering around the hotels and casinos along the strip, having the occasional adult beverage here and there, checking out the people everywhere and soaking up the unique abiance that only Las Vegas seems to be able to impart.  We saw an abundance of street performers who ran the gamut from a silver-painted gladiator to topless girls wanting to have their picture taken with you.  For a price of course.  (The girl’s tops were painted on.)  Then there were musicians of various accomplishments on all kinds of instruments.  And we must not forget the street people begging for money.  Not a huge amount of them, but there were there.

We took in a show one afternoon at Harrah’s just up the street from our place.  I ordered tickets from my netbook in the hotel room for the Mac King comedy/magic show for the three of us, but Mac was on hiatus for a while and we saw his replacement instead.  Quite a funny guy and we enjoyed ourselves. 

One day we took a ride on the “High Roller”.  This is a huge Ferris-type wheel that overlooks the strip.  It is 520 feet in diameter and advertises itself as the world’s tallest observation wheel.  It has 28 glass-enclosed cabins holding 40 people each.  Your ride lasts ½ hour for a full revolution.  We rode it in the late morning and there were only five of us in our pod so we had great views in all directions.  The sights of the city from the top of the wheel were remarkable and I snapped a ton of pictures from there.  Definitely a high point in our trip, literally and figuratively.

On Tuesday we took a break from the city and visited the Grand Canyon in nearby Arizona.  If you checked the distance from where we were to the canyon you would see it’s somewhere around 270 miles. 

We did it by bus. 

It was quite a long day as you might imagine.  We left Las Vegas around 7 a.m. and returned somewhere around 11 p.m.  About ten minutes into Arizona our bus’s air conditioning went kaput along with its wi/fi and we spent about 90 minutes at a roadside stop waiting for a replacement vehicle.  Lots of views of creosote bushes and raw rock mountains.  When we finally arrived at the Grand Canyon we were actually there for about three hours.  And the canyon was, as advertised, magnificent!  I’m sure you’ve seen pictures.  And, of course we took pictures also.  But none of them could or would ever do justice to the actuality of the place.  Gigantic, huge, gorgeous, incredible, breathtaking, colorful, awe-inspiring, deep, one-of-a-kind, and etc. and more etc.  Pick your favorite adjective(s) and describe away.  It was cooler there than in Vegas.  Higher altitude.  We wore sweatshirts and were comfortable, but it wouldn’t be much later in the year when it would be outright cold there.  The bus dropped us off at two places.  At the second one my brother and I walked to the trailhead of the Bright Angel Trail – the one you’ve seen the mules going up and down on.  You could see bits and pieces of the trail as it descended over a mile from where we stood.  There are NO railings on this trail, so yours truly only walked down the first hundred feet or so before my acrophobia started kicking in and I had to sit and relax for a bit.  I was quite happy when I was again back on the rim and had a sturdy railing to hang onto between me and all that thin air.  To put it in a nutshell, it was a long day in a bus seat, but the payoff was truly worth it. 

A side note.  Our bus held 24 young travelers from Ireland.  What a joy it was to hear them talk among themselves with their clear lilting Irish accents.  And more a fun-loving crowd you could never imagine.  Good companions for the day.  Felt like a real St. Paddy’s Day!

Monday was a rainy one in the city, which was a bit unusual for the area.  Judy did a bit of shopping while Chuck and I took a hike down Las Vegas Boulevard, hopping in and out of casinos and shops to stay dry until we reached the M & M store – one of our favorite places.  We bought some of the famous candies and made our way back to the front door of the store.  It was still raining pretty hard.  Chuck saw a bus stop in front of us and said he was going to check something out.  He walked out and hopped on the bus!  I was a bit startled by his action but I hurried up and joined him. 

Please note that we had no tickets. 

We both looked at the machine on the bus that dispensed the tickets.  We started reading the lengthy sign that described how to buy tickets with cash or credit card.  Did I mention that it was a lengthy sign?  The bus started moving.  We then heard a man next to us say, “there’s no checker on this bus.  I wouldn’t buy a ticket if I were you.”  So we stood and watched the city go by until we reached the next stop, which was ours, and then got off.  What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, right?  But now you know.  Two desperate men, trying to stay dry.  

On our last night in town the three of us rode one the city’s double-decker busses, called Deuces, uptown to Fremont Street, the old Las Vegas downtown.  “Glitter Gulch”.  This is old Vegas and always seems a bit more open and wilder than the Strip.  Lots more street entertainers of every ilk, the overhead canopy with its hourly light and music show and the casinos along here all seemed busier, louder and brighter.  They still serve free cocktails to the slot players there as we can all attest and the games all seemed loser and more congenial.  We had our pictures taken in front of a million dollars cash at the Horseshoe and then had a tasty prime rib dinner at the 3 Queens for a MUCH cheaper price than anything on the Strip. 

The three of us made a pact that the next trip to the city would be based in a downtown hotel.

The next day it was off to McCarran Airport via Uber again and our flights home.  And, as usual, the last sounds we heard from the city of Las Vegas were the ding-ding-dings of the slot machines on the concourses vacuuming up the last of the tourist dollars.

Some various Vegas thoughts:

I never did memorize the route to our hotel room after we got off the elevator on our floor at Bally’s.  It was first a right turn then another right turn then a left.  I always missed one of the turns.  Judy and Chuck laughed at me a lot.  And I was sober at least most of the time.

We ate noodle dishes for supper one night at the Paris Hotel at a noodle-dim sum-dumpling place.  Chuck said the food was very similar to what he had eaten in Southeast Asia, which he raved about.  Very tasty soup but way too much in the bowl for me.  Chuck ate his and half of mine.

Listening to a gaggle of women party away on the top level of a double-decker bus as night fell on the city and our magic carpet motored north.  Maybe they were locals dressed up for a night on the town.  Maybe they were from Dubuque or Amarillo or St. Louis kicking up their heels on a girl’s weekend out.  Or maybe just working girls heading out for the night after nipping the bottle a time or two. 

I think the act of people watching might have been the most enjoyable of pastimes there.  Between the tourists, the entertainers, the locals scurrying from and to their jobs, the drunken college kids, the outlandishly dressed folks whooping it up and the “working” girls it was a fever dream colorfully come to life.  I do believe I could have sat in a lawn chair and watched the river of people pass me by and been wholly satisfied with my trip.

Las Vegas is, in reality, more a state of mind than just a city.  The backdrops of the gigantic hotels, the casinos everywhere and the bustle of the throngs of humanity might only serve as stage settings for the never-ending story of Vegas which is performed daily up and down the strip and nightly on Fremont Street.  You will not get the hum and buzz and flash and vibe of this place anywhere else in the world - the exuberance, the emotional highs and physical thrills of this one-of-a-kind American city.  The possibilities are endless and dreams can and do come true here. 

Roll the dice, turn the card or pull the handle on the slot.  Riches wait just around the corner.