Ah Las Vegas! Sin City! If the devil wears Prada, then he bought it in Vegas…along with some Gucci shoes and a blinking lapel pin that says ‘I Saw the Strip’!

Just got back from our lovely visit to that high and dry town and now we can hit the highlights:

PROS:

1. Buffet, Buffet, Buffet (I gained a new appreciation for the concept of ‘all you can eat’ at the Belagio! Highly recommended!)
2. Crazy Architecture (Can you think of any place in the world with a downtown like Las Vegas?)
3. Free Alcohol (only while you gamble, and only at certain locations. Otherwise you’ll be paying eight bucks to walk around with a plastic Eiffel tower full of booze like everyone else.)
4. Warm Weather (even with the high winds kicking up, it was perfectly warm, day after day)
5. Romance (We saw no less than four couples in wedding outfits headed for the perma-twilight gondola ride inside the Venetian Hotel and Casino, and we were only there for a half and hour.)

CONS:

1. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic (between 1985 and 2000 the population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area went from 500,000 to 1.6 million, the fastest growth rate of any city in the U.S. for that time period.)
2. Tight Slots (I’m not attempting to be lurid here, just noticing that RARELY did we win in our slot adventures.)
3. Old Matresses (Stay at the newer hotels! Forget the old standbys like Circus Circus and the Stardust.)
4. Poorly Attired Americans (Must everyone on the street be decked out in same shorts and a t-shirts?)
5. SMOKE (Wow, that one really caught me off guard. Wasn’t expecting that a 65 year old women would light one up next to us in Tony Roma’s!)

All in all it was a fabulous three days - so much to see - so many ways to burn through a wad of cash! As VTGirl described it, it’s ‘Disneyland for Adults’, and while we were disappointed that several things were closed due to high winds (including our hotel pool one afternoon!) we did finally get to see the Belagio fountain, which I made a short video of…it’s very cool!