Adventures In Vegas

My first trip to Las Vegas was from Sept. 19th to the 21st of 2001. I had been laid off by AT&T Broadband at the beginning of the summer and given what I realize now was a pretty decent severance package. We all whined about it at the time, but it was enough to prevent me from looking very hard for a job those first few months of unemployment. (It doesn't help that the unemployment started in mid-June, not exactly the time of you want to rush back to work) Anyway, I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream and visit Las Vegas. Looking back on it now, I don't know why I waited as long as I did. I always had this impression that it would be prohibitively expensive. Little did I know, Las Vegas was the perfect town for anyone no matter what your level of income. If you've got money to spend this town will gladly help you spend it.

My sister and I booked the trip through expedia. She wanted to stay at the Stratosphere for some reason, and not knowing enough about the casinos to argue, I agreed. After the trip was booked I discovered cheapovegas.com and bigempire.com. It's safe to say that my life hasn't been the same since. I devoured every bit of info they had in the two months before our trip and I'm damn glad I did. If you're reading this and planning your first trip to Vegas, check cheapovegas.com FIRST for their hotel reviews. Sure they may be pretty lighthearted in nature but I've yet to find one that wasn't accurate.

We left from Boston's Logan Airport on September 19th 2001. As we all remember, on September 11th Logan Airport saw the departure of a couple of flights that brought America to a complete standstill for a few days. All air traffic was suspended for two or three days and Logan was closed for several days longer as the terror attack was investigated. Suddenly our vacation was in limbo, we didn't know if the airport would open again on the 19th and if it did, we didn't really know if we wanted to be on an airplane. I'd like to say that it was determination in the face of adversity that made us go regardless of the events of 9/11. It would be nice to declare that if we were too frightened to go to the land of sin and decadence then the terrorists would have already won. But the truth is, Expedia wasn't going to refund us if we backed out and we weren't going to waste about $500 apiece. Nope, it's not as glamorous but there it is.

So we were there at Logan in the early morning hours of September 19th with National Guardsmen prowling around with M16s or something. Very strange and unnerving thing to see at 5am. We were hardly the only ones a little rattled to be there, I remember getting onto the America West flight and looking at the flight crew and thinking how stressed out they all looked. WE had it easy in comparison. We only had to worry about one flight, these people did it for a living. It's bad enough that they had salary cuts and layoffs to worry about; now they had terrorists flying their workplaces into buildings. I'd like to also note that the in flight movie they showed was the comedy "What's The Worst That Could Happen?". I swear to God.

After the long, non stop flight we landed at McCarran Airport in Vegas. It's got to be just about the coolest airport in the world and you couldn't ask for a better introduction to the city than this place. An airport with slot machines, casino carpeting, chrome and mirrors everywhere? You've gotta love it. It's hard to say if it's a casino-themed airport or an airport-themed casino.


Here's my sister five minutes after landing in Las Vegas

So on to the Stratosphere. The exterior looks pretty cool and Vegas-like, certainly it's dominated images of The Strip for the past several years. And to the unsuspecting, you might think it was in the midst of all the other cool hotels. Sorry folks, it ain't. It's about as far removed from the rest of The Strip as a casino can be and still technically be part of The Strip. It's closest neighbor is the Sahara, which is where we found ourselves gambling when we weren't out exploring the rest of the city.


The interior of the Strat is fairly bland as well. It's a casino alright, with all the usual trappings. But it doesn't look too much different than the Indian casino you might have near you. There's just nothing particularly Vegas-y about it. Even as we were standing in line for check-in, listening to Tom Jones playing over the speakers, I had a hard time convincing myself I was REALLY in Las Vegas at last.

Our next mistake: we ate at the Stratosphere buffet. I don't know if it was 9/11 or budget related or what, but America West had just stopped meal service on its flights, so neither of us had eaten in about ten hours. Like I mentioned earlier, I had done my research before this trip and I had a whole list of great buffets that I wanted to try. The Stratosphere was not on it. But we were hungry and there arent't a lot of options in that area. You can walk down to the Sahara (I've always liked their coffee shop) but other than that there are places that look fairly suspect.

After spending some time (and money) in the Stratosphere casino we decided to venture out. We had seen the Sahara on the shuttle ride over and it looked pretty cool. I fell in love instantly with the Sahara upon entering and it remains one of my favorite places to gamble in Vegas. It might have something to do with the fact that they used to always have $1 blackjack tables open or that I have done better there than anywhere else in town. A big part of it though was that from the moment you walk in you feel like you're in Vegas. Plush carpets, gaudy chandeliers, cocktail waitresses who look like former strippers, and a goofy middle eastern theme that's carried through the whole casino. This is the sort of stuff you come to Las Vegas for. The blackjack tables at the Sahara kept us busy for the rest of the night. We headed back to our room knowing that there was a whole lot more Vegas to see tomorrow.


The "World Famous" Chapel of the Bells near the Stratosphere on the north part of the Strip. Well, it was featured in "Vegas Vacation", does that qualify as "World Famous"?


I awoke at 6am the next day to the sound of my sister leaving the hotel room. She said she was going downstairs to see if she should find some cough drops. I couldn't get back to sleep after that and half an hour later I headed downstairs to see where she'd gotten to. Sure enough, she was sitting at a Monopoly nickel slot! The machine had a messed up screen, I don't know why she chose that one out of the row of machines she had to pick from, but she said she had won over $60 on the five bucks she put into it. (her slot machine luck is like that) For the rest of the trip she kept going back to the machine with the messed up screen although it never paid out that way again. When we went back a year later she looked for it again but couldn't find it. It must have been too lucky and costing the casino too much money. :)

If you're up early in Las Vegas - and if you're from the East Coast chances are you will be - this is a great time to walk down The Strip. There aren't many tourists about, no one will try to solicit you for an "entertainer" or a time share, and you get to see the maintenance crews working up and down the street doing the sorts of things you don't think about. Yes, somebody's got to water all those gorgeous palm trees and pressure wash the wino urine off the sidewalks. So take in that early morning sunshine and be thankful that it ain't you. Just remember, things are ALOT farther apart than they appear in Vegas. While it may SEEM like a simple thing to walk from, say, the Tropicana to the Bellagio, it really isn't. Its something to do with the clarity of that humidity-free desert air along with the huge scale of the buildings themselves.

Giant slot machines mean giant winnings at "Slots A Fun"!! Umm... right?


That first morning we walked from the Stratosphere all the way to The New Frontier, stopping in the Riviera and the Westward Ho along the way. We ended up getting breakfast at the Frontier. I remember they had an omelet bar and I grabbed a handful of jalapeno peppers for mine. I'm pretty sure the Mexican guys behind the grill were laughing at me and I can't blame them. Those suckers were hot, not at all like the jalapeno peppers you get around here. Breakfast at the New Frontier was okay, but little did I know the Peppermill was pretty much right across the street. The Peppermill is the best place in town for breakfast if you ask me, but I wouldn't learn about this well kept secret until our next trip.

The Westward Ho! Come for the HUGE 99 cent margaritas, stay for the... hell, I don't know. They've got some cheap blackjack at least.


I like this part of The Strip. Sure, it's not for everybody. If you want pirates and volcanoes and medieval silliness then you'd better keep walking south. But if you like cheap gambling and you don't mind casinos that are past their prime then this is the area to be in. I know with the ever-increasing expansion in Vegas these places may not be around forever, at least not in the slightly dilapidated form that they are in now. So enjoy it while you can.

After our big breakfast we decided not to walk anymore (we had this foolish idea that we were going to walk the length of the strip) and we grabbed the shuttle and headed down to the far end of the Strip. THIS is the Vegas most people know with its monster hotels and casinos with goofy themes. We stopped into the New York New York, which is admittedly kind of neat. Out front by the Statue of Liberty replica, the strangest thing was happening. A collection of tributes and memorials to those who had died in 9/11 had been spontaneously started by visiting tourists. I guess it grew substantially from what we saw in September of 2001, so much so that it is now a permanent display, but even then there were a surprising number of mementos left by people. The whole thing was very surreal to say the least. Heartfelt and honest, definitely, but why here of all places? It wasn't really New York! It was a big New York themed casino! I really wish I had taken some pictures of this. We also managed to visit the MGM, the Luxor, Excalibur, all places that felt more like theme parks than casinos. We did next to no gambling down here because the table minimums were so much higher. You know this is a great town when you can pass up a $5 blackjack table because it's too expensive. Try even finding a $5 blackjack table anywhere else, let alone one for less. The only place we did gamble in was the Boardwalk, a little casino that was apparently trying to capture the skanky thrill of east coast resorts like Atlantic City and Coney Island. Why you'd want to is anyone's guess but at least I was able to play some $3 blackjack.

AAGGHH!! Big scary clown head!! The Boardwalk is a small hotel/casino which looks out of place among all the monster properties in the south part of the Strip. It's the only place around that has $3 blackjack, though.


After this we were pretty wiped out, you can only walk through so many monster casinos before they all start to look the same. We managed to get up to the Bellagio for their amazing lunch buffet just before they stopped serving. Even though we were right at the tail end of the buffet, all the food was out and it was really fantastic. Well worth the steep price. We wondered around the Bellagio for a bit goggling at all the excessive stuff. It's tough for a place to appear both sophisticated and garish but the Bellagio pulls it off. The conservatory is definitely worth a look.

Inside the swank-tastic Bellagio conservatory.


So later on that night, we headed down to Freemont Street for our first experience of Downtown. Being in Las Vegas and all, we wanted to take in some kind of show, my sister wanted to see The Amazing Jonathan at The Golden Nugget. I figured why not. So we caught the CAT shuttle to downtown which conveniently stops right outside of the Stratosphere. While we were waiting for the bus we were entertained by some local who told us about terrorist plots to blow up the Stratosphere tower. You can always tell the crazy locals, they're usually men of an indeterminate age somewhere between 25 and 50, very thin and tanned as dark as leather wallets so they basically look like walking pieces of beef jerky. They also usually have long beards reminiscent of Yosemite Sam. Maybe I'm over generalizing here. Maybe we just kept running into the same guy over and over again.


Ethereal bikini-clad women welcome you to The Freemont Street Experience. The covered, pedestrian mall portion of Freemont Street has a party atmosphere yet you always feel safe. Venture outside of the pedestrian area though, and you're on your own.


Downtown instantly became my favorite part of Las Vegas. I like my entertainment a little on the sleazy, cheap and dangerous side and Freemont Street gives you plenty of that. Yet you still feel surprisingly safe walking through the pedestrian mall. (If you leave the pedestrian area, well then you're taking your chances) Remember when I said that the South Strip is what people think of when they think of Las Vegas? That may be true but I think in their mind's eye they visualize something like Freemont Street with all those garish neon signs everywhere jumping out at you. This may be due in part to the fact that the Las Vegas that you SEE on TV and in the movies generally IS Freemont Street. Since a few blocks of the area is closed off to traffic, it's a favorite spot for film crews. This is where the real gambling still lives, folks. At least for now. The big corporations seem to have their sites set on Downtown next so enjoy it while you can. Every time someone I know is going to Vegas for the first time I tell them two things: DON'T stay at Circus Circus and DO visit downtown. Usually they ignore me on both counts, the bastards. We didn't hit as many of the Freemont casinos as I would have liked on that first trip and never got to the Golden Gate to experience the 99 cent shrimp cocktail I've heard so much about.

We did get sucked into the evil that is La Bayou. A tiny little casino that lures you in with a pretty girl out front handy out Mardi Gras style beads. You don't have to show your boobies to get em either. Of course THEN she tells you about the free drawing that they'll be holding in "just a few minutes" and gives you a raffle ticket. The drawings are a good half an hour apart by the way. So by this point you're committed to seeing if you're the lucky winner so you sit there playing their incredibly tight nickel slots (slots are all they have, not even any video poker machines). My sister won the drawing once, and got another bead necklace for her trouble. The only good thing about this place is that they serve these huge frozen drinks in containers that look like yard-long test tubes. This counter is conveniently located in the back of the casino. There is another casino directly across the street called Mermaids that pulls the same scam.

A good chuck of our time was spent at the Amazing Jonathan show, unfortunately. Amazing Jonathan isn't really that amazing, and he may not even really be Jonathan for all I know. I guess his act might seem fresh and original if you had somehow managed to not have television in the 1980s. When my sister told me about the guy, the name wasn't familiar to me. She kept describing his stuff as if he was some up and coming comedian that I should know about. When he started doing his act, after a rather lame opening magic act, it suddenly came flooding back. He's basically a cross between a magician and a prop comedian, the two lowest forms of life. I remember seeing him on TV multiple times when I was a teenager. Probably David Letterman or maybe Saturday Night Live. I thought he was pretty cool at the time (but I was a kid and can be forgiven for that). The thing that amazed me was that his act has stayed essentially the same over the course of the last 15 to 20 years. Okay, I'm being a little hard on him I guess. His show isn't BAD. But if you're still doing the exact same jokes for all that time I don't think you can really bill your act as "edgy". Las Vegas isn't really known for it's "edgy" entertainment, I guess his well-worn jokes are as close as you're going to get.


It's 115 degrees and I'm at the Hoover Dam. Who's bright idea was this?



September 21st was a full day for us, we started out by walking down to the Stardust and catching a free shuttle that went all the way down Boulder Highway to Sam's Town Hotel and Casino. We did all this basically so we could have a $2.99 steak and eggs breakfast special and grab the next bus back an hour later. It was pretty good too. I didn't get to see much of the place but I liked what I saw. What I really enjoyed in the brief time I was there was the Atrium. This is a big indoor park for lack of a better word. It has a waterfall, fake trees, animatronics animals and piped in nature sounds. At night they put on a laser show. It all sounds very cheesy but some how it works and its more relaxing than you might think. I knew I wanted to come back again when I had more than the hour we allotted ourselves between shuttle buses, and I ended up having a great stay here a couple of years later.

After that it was on to the Hoover Dam. That's right, our last day in Las Vegas and how do we choose to spend it? By doing something vaguely educational and visiting the Hoover Dam. I have to admit, it was my idea and it seemed like a good one at the time. My logic went this way: I may never get to Las Vegas again (yeah right) and I'd be a fool to pass up seeing one of the greatest feats of modern engineering which was only a half an hour away. So the day before, as we were walking down the Strip, we stopped into a little tourist stand that offered Hoover Dam tours and signed up. What we didn't know at the time was that because of new Sept. 11th security restrictions, tours were no longer allowed INSIDE the dam at all. The guy behind the counter neglected to mention this to us as we forked over our $30 apiece. I think the driver let us know when we were about halfway there and had no choice in the matter. It was at least 100 degrees every day we were there, so we were delighted to hear that the Hoover Dam site averaged about 10 degrees HOTTER than Las Vegas. Our driver told us it was roughly 115 when we arrived. Dry heat or no, 115 is DAMN hot. We spent a good part of the time cowering in the gift shop, which was probably part of their plan. So basically, our three choices were the gift shop, the shadow of the parking garage, or walking around the top of the dam with no tour guide. We did a little of each but spent most of the time wondering when we were heading back. The driver was a decent guy with seemingly inexhaustible supply of Vegas knowledge, on the drive back he pointed out various sites of interest like the famous "Welcome To Las Vegas" sign (which is really a good distance down the Strip past Mandalay Bay. Unless you're driving you'd never see it at all.) and Wayne Newton's massive estate.

Illiterates with booze and guns not welcome here. Possibly my favorite sign of the trip. It made the trip to Hoover Dam worthwhile. Almost.



Later that evening we hit a few more of the north strip locations. We were taking the red eye flight back home so we had substantial time to kill. Even though it looked foreboding, we decided to check out Circus Circus. There is just nothing nice I can say about this place. Sure, if you have kids it's one of the few places in town with enough stuff to keep them distracted while you feed your gambling addiction. But that's just not a good reason in my book. Stay somewhere else and drop em off at Circus Circus in the morning, that's what I say. The place stinks like 30 plus years of stale cigarettes. I'd always liked the James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forever" when I was younger and I always though the scene in Circus Circus was cool. It's also featured in "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" although the name was changed to Bazooko's Circus. Both movies show the circus acts being performed being performed right above the gaming floor. Maybe it was that way in the early 70's when those movies took place but it's a much more typical layout now. The lame circus acts are performed in a different area from the gaming, I guess this is to keep kids and gambling separate. They're not performed above anything interesting that I could remember, so there's no danger of falling acrobats. Anyway, the whole place is old and lame and smelly and depressing. Clowns and gambling do not go together.

Spanky The Evil Circus Circus Clown says: "Send more children! The last ones were delicious!"



It was getting on towards the time that we would have to bid our sad goodbyes to this fair city and head towards the airport. But there was time enough for one more strange event. We stopped into the Rivera again for some more gambling and my sister decided to go for their $40 of slot play for $20 gimmick. Most people will tell you this is a bad bet. For $20 you get 40 credits on a section of "special" $1 slot machines. They DON'T pay out in cash. If you get a certain amount of credits, you get a prize. Usually something cheesy with the Riviera name all over it. Normally, you last long enough to get one cheap prize, so that "free" prize essentially costs you $20. However, Susie, with her strange slot machine luck, could NOT lose. She must have been on that machine for over and hour with no sign of stopping. She racked up hundreds of credits. They ran out of free crap to give her. I kept checking back in on her and she was still there. Eventually I told her we HAD to leave because we had to get our stuff together and head to the airport. Eventually she had no choice, she offered her machine to one of the other contestants who had been wiped out of her $20 and we left. The sad thing is, even though she won all those credits she got no more than a few pieces of free crap for her efforts.

Rushing her to the airport probably wasn't necessary in retrospect. Even though this was a week or so after 9/11 and you were advised to arrive at the airport in the neighborhood of two plus hours before your flight, McCarran International Airport really had their stuff together. I'm not exactly a world traveller. I've been in no more than eight different airports in my lifetime. But I've flown out of Boston and Philadelphia enough to know how badly air travel can suck. The people at both those airports could learn a thing or two from McCarran because they really know how to move people efficiently. We were through security in no time. And even though in the days after 9/11 where everyone was just winging it since there was no new security policy in place; we felt like they had done everything they could to make sure the travellers were secure. Fly out of Philadelphia International even now in 2005 and tell me how safe you feel. It's just one more reason to love Las Vegas. And as I sat in that plane during takeoff, watching the glittering city shrink away into the blackness of the desert, I knew I would be back. Oh yes, I would be back