Category: Travel

I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos. I wasn’t planning on doing a photo essay. So I left the Nikon in the hotel room.

Too late I realized there were some interesting photo ops.

SO I figured it was time to learn how to better use the camera in my iPhone.

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Las Vegas is a place where you buy a Stetson, and they serve you Jack Daniels.

This is of course probably necessary, have you seen the price of a Stetson 20X lately?

Not that I’m complaining, Stetsons hold up for ever with minimal care and I wear mine a lot in the snow & rain of winter and early spring.

Las Vegas is a place where if I lived here, I’d walk or ride my bike more than I drove.

Traffic is nuts, but walking isn’t too bad in and around the center of town. That being said, once you get out of the unreality of the strip Las Vegas is a pretty normal slice of suburbia.

The thing is, like most of suburbia it’s spread out and homes are usually at a distance from business areas. So it’s still possible just as in California that covering the distance from “home” to work would be impractical walking or riding a bike. Is it any wonder we’re becoming a nation of fat asses, myself included?

The tramway is cool but it should really go a lot further. I think it would be great if they made it connect all of the “Strip” even if you had to walk through casinos to access the next station. I think they’d have to do that because of the shapes of the hotels and the layout of the strip itself.

Right now it just goes from The Monte Carlo to The Bellagio. You can access Caesars via a bridge and then walk on to The Flamingo. I didn’t explore much further than that.

I will say this, it’s very disconcerting to get off at “Crystals” (A mall) after having had a drink or two. God help you if you also had recently taken Viagra because you’d be absolutely sure you were going blind. Or perhaps having a flashback to your drug hazed hippy phase.

FYI, It’s not you… the lighting changes to blue, pink, and a couple of other colors. But at night when you exit the tram into that intense color it can really mess with you.

The weird thing about the casinos is that after a short time they all look alike.  They’re on the darker side and they’re a labyrinth of tables and machines & lights. Even the faces of the people begin to blur together after a while.

Instead of perceiving the “grandmother in the corner happily playing the two cent slots” she becomes “generic old woman type #5 playing slots” it’s weird.

Where the Casinos excel is in their shopping  and hotel areas.

I really like Caesars Palace! Yes, it’s all a big set piece but I like the marble and columns. I like the statuary and I appreciated the illusion of an open sky in their mall.

You have to understand these are all pretty high end shopping centers and I’m betting that they make money hand over fist.

The traffic through these places is very high and I noticed that in almost every one of the mall areas, there were Tiffany’s, Coach, Vuitton, and half a dozen other high end vendors.

I even sampled the latest in Tom Ford scents. Although the sales lady spritzed me with some really nasty floral smell.  I washed it off in the mens room, rather, I tried.

The thing about really good colognes, & perfumes is that they’re made with more oils and far less alcohol. This means; first, that you need very little. Second that it soaks into your skin almost immediately, and stays with you for a long time.

The sales lady did me a favor. I like tobacco & wood scents, they work for me.  Gardenia is just right out of the picture. Gardenia is exactly what one of the major components of the cologne she spritzed me with was. Just as well, had I stayed I’d have probably purchased one of the new Ford scents, they’re pricy! a single bottle lasts a long time but it will put a dent in your budget.

I did enjoy the art and architecture of the shopping centers.  I liked Crystals the best, they’ve got a nice open air plan and some really cool or dramatic architectural elements.

Yeah, I’m not a gambler. Could you tell?

I’ve gambled, I’ve put quarters in slot machines, I’ve even won!

The odds are so not in your favor. While I enjoyed the heck out of spending a few quarters, winning, then spending the next few hours losing my huge $40.00 winnings, I can’t see it as a regular thing.

I like walking through the hotels, and shops, and treating Las Vegas like a Disneyland-esq place for adults.

I like being able to drink anything, almost anywhere on the strip. I like the general feeling of immorality of the city. I like that you can offend someone, (as my brother did by carrying a beer in a plastic cup into the elevator going up to the room.) and that they can’t really do or say anything about it.

I guess the bottom line is that I enjoyed the trip. I needed the time with my brother. I needed the time away.

As always when I come back from trips like this I ask myself why I don’t take more short trips more often.

I’m not sure that I have an answer. I guess it has to do with the other half not having weekends off and while I was working, not being able to take time off during the week.

I suppose that over time, that scheduling conflict has created a habit and the habit became a “normal” way of life.

I’m thinking it’s time for me to break that habit and do more. I need to find a traveling buddy, and spend more time doing fun stuff.

Time is the one thing we can never get more of.

Don’t waste yours.