Viva Las Vegas! (7 April)

Where to begin?  To say that arriving in Las Vegas after a week in the National Parks was a culture shock would be the understatement of the holiday so far.  Big time.  We stayed at the Mirage Hotel, right on the Strip: 31 storeys high, 3,000 bedrooms; different lifts to use depending on which floor you were staying on.

Once again, the scale of everything was overwhelming.  It took a full ten minutes to walk from reception, through the casino, past several bars, restaurants and shops, to the elevator, and then down a long corridor (I liked that we were in the West Wing) before we finally reached our room.  One of the first things that struck us was the relaxed drinking laws.  It's fine to drink alcohol walking along the street.  In fact, there are several bars serving right on the street.  What a contrast to Utah, where no beer could be more than 4% alcohol by law!

Monster-sized cocktails seemed to be the order of the day - often costing $20 or more each.  The next shock was realising that cannabis is legal in Nevada.  We passed several shops selling it, and judging by the aroma in some places, smoking in public didn't seem to be much of a problem either. 

After taking the bus downtown to Fremont Street we were challenged for ID buying breakfast in a cafe ... because it was assumed we wanted alcohol.  At 10.30 on a Sunday morning we were more than content with coffee and orange juice, but clearly we were in a (tiny) minority here.

We spent the afternoon wandering around, "admiring the local architecture" (or gawping at the hotels).  Here's the Mandalay Bay Hotel for starters, with carved stone elephants at the top of the waterfall outside.

Then there's the frankly bizarre Excalibur hotel ...

Or New York, New York ... complete with its own roller-coaster.  (The MGM lion is photo-bombing bottom right.)

Needless to say, there were all manner of sports cars burning up and down the Strip from lunchtime until the early hours.  The typical American V8s were two a-penny: Chevy Camaros and Corvettes, Dodge Chargers, and Ford Mustangs.  There were also options to rent by the hour, as Tom discovered.  The blue Lamborghini was *just* $299 for one hour.

The daytime fountains at the Bellagio were just as good as the illuminated ones in the evening.  This performance was set to the song 'All That Jazz' from Chicago.

Treasure Island was pretty outlandish ...

And the Venetian had gondolas outside, obviously.

Finally, this blog wouldn't be complete without a special 'thank-you' to my friend Louise.  Here's a flamingo specially for you!

Next up, Tom will be blogging.