Monday, May 14, 2007

Las Vegas

The first thing you notice when you arrive in the Las Vegas terminal is the slot machines in the departure lounge. Just in case you want to gamble a little bit more before your plane takes off I guess?

The second thing you notice is how hot it is! I thought LA was hot but that was just warm in comparison. This is Broome-like in it's heat. I was building up a sweat just sitting in the shade waiting for my shuttle bus to come.

The Las Vegas strips stands out as the only tall buildings surrounded by houses, retail, no noticable industrial, and then flat dry land out towards mountains that seem to be in all directions.

My hotel is okay. The check-in desk is in the middle of the casino which I found surprising. It's not a fancy room but it's pretty big for just little old me. Being on the first floor (yes this is one of the few US buildings I've been to yet that has a first floor that is not the ground level) I have a view of a few casinos.

Outside there's just so many people around, as you would expect from Vegas and staying in the middle of the Strip. Every casino looks the same when you walk in the door and I haven't laid any money down yet.

There's also a few malls, most of which have these cool fake sky blue ceilings with clouds painted on them. I thought they were moving through some trick of lights or projection, but they don't. When you walk you see them in your peripheral vision and they just appear to be moving.

I went out last night and saw "Phantom the Vegas Experience". It's a cut down version of the Lloyd-Webber Phantom of the Opera (down to 95 minutes) but it has all the songs and was pretty well done. The cast were good. The staging was well done, and so were the special effects which included a crashing chandelier and fireworks (a bit too bright for my tired eyes). I kept being thrown by changes to the lyrics from the movie version that I have the soundtrack of (and have listened to a lot) but I generally enjoyed the show.

Then tired I went back to my room and ended up watching Kill Bill Volume 2 on the TV. It was the first time I'd seen it again since it was on at the movies. (When will the special edition DVD of those two movies ever come out!) Speaking of "at the movies" I was thinking of seeing Grindhouse today but there's no movie theatres in the yellow pages. There must be some around!

I was concerned I wouldn't be able to sleep due to noise and light but I was still pretty tired from the Disney trip and the early rise to catch my plane.

I took the bus up and down the strip and out to the outlet mall. Picked up some new shorts for aerobics here and took the change to use an internet outlet.

Tonight I'm going to check out a few of the other hotels and get along to the Star Trek Experience museum. I won't have a long night because I've got an all-day trip out to the Grand Canyon tomorrow leaving at 6am and then the next day I'm getting picked up at 5am to go back to the airport.

At this rate I'm going to sleep all the way to New York!

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