It’s called the “City That Never Sleeps” – but it’s not “The Big Apple”; it’s also the other “City of Light”, but it’s not Paris.
These “cities” ARE here and so are “Rio”, “Venice” and “Lake Como” too.
I’m talking, of course, about the glitter, glare and gambling capital of the known universe – the City of Las Vegas or as one wag described it – “The City of Lost Wages”!
Everything in Vegas is BIG.
How about a “HUMMER” stretched-limo with five doors on each side? Or a Harley Davidson with 2-metre wheels, crashing through the wall of “Harley Heaven”? And what about that giant guitar outside The Hard Rock hotel/resort? It’s even bigger than the one in Australia at Tamworth NSW!
Speaking of hotel/resorts, some of them are as big as small towns.
The “MGM Grand”, for instance, has more than 5000 rooms and a “lazy river” network to explore; “Mirage” has a tropical rainforest growing in its 27-metre atrium and an exploding volcano outside with flowing lava on-the-hour. Every hour there are cannon-firing pirate ships – with a sinking – to be seen at “Treasure Island” resort and you can sail the canals of old Venice in genuine imported gondolas at “The Venetian”.
There are two roller coasters here – one at “New York–New York” with a 360º loop followed by a gut-wrenching spiral, before plummeting between the Empire State Building and the iconic Chrysler Building, all the time seemingly close enough to shake hands with “Lady Liberty” herself!
The other is atop the tallest building in this neon city, ”the Stratosphere”, a needle-like tower reaching for the much duller stars.
This one whirls you around the outside of the very top of the building and is constructed in such a way as to never let you see anything but daylight between you and Las Vegas Boulevard, hundreds of feet below – it’s a real sphincter clencher!
Tame, by comparison, is the other ride up here – “The Big Shot”. This one catapults you another 150 feet skywards – as if you weren’t high enough already – before dropping you back to rest with a soft, three-bounce “landing”.
The view from up there? Well, you can’t see much with your eyes closed!
The Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe stand side-by-side at “Paris”; a near-full-sized Sphinx guards the entrance to a huge black-glass pyramid that is the “Luxor” Hotel Casino; brightly coloured turrets and minarets adorn the “Excalibur” Casino, a medieval-themed playground for adults; a pride of lions roams free at “MGM” and there are eight huge “swimming lagoons” to splash around in at “Mandalay Bay” – two of them with white, sandy beaches!
Then, you can venture downtown to “the old strip” of the original Las Vegas, first laid out and run with an iron fist by the 1930’s gangster/mobster Bugsy Seigal, so he could “launder” all his money.
The “Golden Nugget” is still here, so is “Binion’s”, “The Four Queens” and Bugsy’s pride and joy, “The Fremont Hotel”, which now gives it’s name to “The Fremont Street Experience”, billed as “the largest TV screen in the world”.
Here, the entire length of Fremont Street has been roofed over, studded with hundreds of thousands of lights and plays hourly to hundreds of neck-stretching visitors as they crane skywards to see the moving light show above.
Everything from scenes of nature to glimpses of the Grand Canyon, “teasers” for some of the big shows to military jets screaming overhead, trailing plumes of red, white and blue smoke that then morph into a huge “Old Glory” to the strains of The Star-Spangled Banner.
“Only in America”, and only in Vegas, could you expect to see such excess.
There are a number of other things you notice about Vegas and one of them is the amazing quietness of the almost uncountable numbers of slot machines.
They all flash enticingly, of course, but there’s no “ding, ding, dinging”, “whoop, whoop, whooping” or other noises to jangle the already frayed nerves of the glassy-eyed automatons who stare unblinkingly at the constantly rolling video “reels”.
The other things you notice are the distinct lack of clocks and windows.
The aforementioned automatons have no idea of the time they have been sitting transfixed and, in fact, don’t know if it’s day or night! (But the “big one” will “definitely” come up on the next spin.)
Such is the stuff of dreams.
Gone are the $1.99 steak dinners, the $4.99 “all you can eat” seafood buffets and the $1 cocktails. Replaced, all by the likes of Joël Robuchon, Miko of New York, Wolfgang Puck, et al, brandishing their Michelin stars and Plates d’Hote like light sabres in a good galaxy – far, far, away.
Gone also are the “quiet areas” where one could watch (for the price of a cocktail) the “Vegas second stringers” or “Lounge Acts” performing in the quite decent cocktail bars, with their plush Club chairs and medium-priced menus.
For the little kids, there is “all the fun of The Big Top” at Circus Circus. Housed under a huge, billowing, candy-cane striped canvas, kids of all ages can enjoy the free entertainment of roaming clowns, magicians and balloon makers, while enjoying hourly performances by acrobats, jugglers, aerialists and animal tamers – there’s something to delight everyone!
But a trip here isn’t complete, without taking in at least a couple of the big-budget spectaculars.
The famous, (infamous?) “Rat Pack” of Frank, Dean, Sammy and Joey have long given way to the likes of Celine Dion, Bette Midler, David Copperfield and the marvellous, mystical, mind-boggling Cirque du Soleil – which now has no fewer than five shows on stage at various venues.
“Mystére”, the Cirque’s original foray into the big-budget show scene, is now in its 24th year here and has been joined by the hugely “splash-tacular O” at Bellagio (home to “Lake Como”), “KÁ” at MGM Grand, the slightly risqué “ZUMANITY” at New York– New York and their latest offering, “LOVE” – based on the music of The Beatles – playing to sold-out houses nightly at The Mirage.
To miss seeing at least one of these shows is like travelling to Sydney and not seeing the Opera House, San Francisco and not seeing the Golden Gate Bridge or New York and not visiting the Statue of Liberty – but wait, didn’t I already mention that she was here, too.