Viva Las Vegas!

Viva Las Vegas!

What a contrast Las Vegas is to the back country national parks we’ve been visiting in January! We are very lucky to have friends living in Las Vegas; we met Fabi and Chris onboard the Ocean Victory whilst visiting Antarctica just over two years ago. They then invited us to stay in Las Vegas and, two years later, we finally arrived. It was great to spend some time with them and they looked after us very well! We had a drive to park on, a room to stay in, the use of a washer/dryer and, most importantly, Chris had an excellent workshop which Dave used whilst upgrading Big Bertha’s batteries.

Gambling

The scale of the gambling floors was staggering. And they were all quite busy, morning, noon and night. Francine wanted a small flutter (having in mind a casino like the one in James Bond films), but the casinos were more Morecambe than Monaco and in the end we didn’t gamble at all. Nonetheless we enjoyed walking through the casinos and people watching.

The Strip / The Fremont Experience

Walking The Strip and Fremont Street at night was quite mesmerizing. Each hotel/casino has a ‘feature’ to try and draw the crowds in, be it amazing flower displays or musical fountains. The shopping malls adjoining Ceasar’s Palace and The Venetian Hotel have ceilings painted to look like sky, so you could believe you were outdoors. It’s quite disorientating and, with the casinos open 24/7, you could easily wander away for a break from the tables and have no idea what time of day it was.

The Sphere

The Sphere is a new venue in Las Vegas and David, having seen YouTube clips, wanted to see an event here. The Wizard of Oz was showing while we were there, and although it would not have been our first choice, it was quite a spectacle. The theatre can only be described as like sitting in the inside of a golf ball with the screen all around you – as far as you head could turn left to right and up.

The Mob Museum and The Atomic Museum

We visited these two museums which covered very different aspects of Las Vegas’s history. The former covered the mob’s grip over the gambling and prohibition concerns, whilst the latter dealt with the history of atomic weapons testing in the desert outside Las Vegas. Dave visited a university friend in Las Vegas in the late 1980s – he was there working on the twelve atomic devices that the UK tested here at that time.

Scottish Country Dancing

Francine contacted a local dance group and we joined them for their regular dance class, which was pitched at exactly the right difficulty level for us. Even though we haven’t danced for some years (the last time being in Buenos Aires), the steps haven’t changed and we had a very nice evening.