I was totally blown away by Las Vegas when I first flew in. I had a night flight and just happened to be on the good side of the plane. I was trying to spot “The Strip” from looking out the window and figured it must be the strongest little groups of lights, until it just appeared literacy right outside my window. Las Vegas international airport is only three miles from the strip, so it’s an amazing sight when you fly in. As soon as we landed I wanted to go again, it totally felt like a ride at a theme park.
Every single hotel is completely lit up with neon lights and just about every hotel has a crazy theme to it. There is a pyramid hotel here. It’s a hotel that is a an actual pyramid. It’s massive and has a huge light beaming up from the tip of the pyramid into the sky. There’s another hotel that looks like a castle straight out of Disney Land, another that’s a replica of Paris, and another that’s a mini New York complete with a full sized roller coaster that wraps around the hotel, upside down loops and all.
We stayed at the MGM Grand, so it was movie themed and had a huge gold lion out the front. There’s a real lion den inside the hotel too, which I was very upset about until I found out there are actually 30 or so lions that live on a ranch miles away from the strip, and they just come to the hotel in shifts to hang out for a couple of hours at a time during the day. They’re very pampered and very loved by the staff and the den is massive with little caves and waterfalls, and they just play with their trainers while they’re there. I guess that was okay.
Standing in front of millions of m&ms
Vegas is really only good for a day trip for people like me who don’t gamble, don’t smoke and don’t drink. Every single hotel has a massive casino on the lower floor, and it’s very loud and very smokey. It’s worth it to come here just to see how strange the buildings look (sometimes a wander into the hotels is worth it), and how ridiculously elaborate vegas is, but there’s not much more too it than that. It’s difficult to find good restaurants that don’t cost a fortune (you need to look for places outside of the hotels) and there’s not much else to do except see shows. We saw Cirque De Sole Mystere, and I was going to see David Copperfield but strangely ran out of time. Continue reading →
