Vegas Vacation

We went to Mecca for college football wagering last week: Las Vegas.  It was, as Vegas always is, an experience, a whole lot of sights and sounds that you just don't get anywhere else.  Here's the short form:

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City Center and Aria, the newest Las Vegas Boulevard real estate project, is simply magnificent.  The magnitude of the project is enormous, and the architecture is stunning.  It is a visual symphony, a collection of shapes, colors and textures, weaving together ultra modern materials, shapes and colors and seasoning the mix with natural and organic finishes.   I was overwhelmed, finding myself walking around gawking and smiling at the sensory experience.

Mimsy, on the other hand, had a bit of a different interpretation: "A cacaphony of crap... straight out of The Jetsons."

I guess it's not for everyone.

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Hotel room telephones ring with the loudest, shrillest, most piercing tone imaginable, as discomforting as a smoke alarm. 

We stayed for the first time at the Flamingo, the antithesis of The City Center.  Flamingo is an old-style Vegas hotel.  It could use a little freshening here and there, but it's very nice, with its own unique charm. 

When visiting Vegas, we don't try to reset our body clocks, staying on Central time.  Vegas runs 24/7, so it works out ok.  On the second night of our stay, the folks next door checked in around midnight, which for us is 2 AM. We were in a deep, deep sleep after a long, long day of gaming.  The new neighbors came in banging doors, slamming them a couple times ( I assume to prove that the doors really locked ), thumping the locked adjoining room door (the presence of that door being why we heard everything from next door with such alarming clarity), slapping the brass safety locks off and on a few times and yacking to each other in really loud for 2 AM voices.  As you might imagine, I was most unappreciative of the manner in which they announced their arrival.
 
We rose early the following morning, as is our habit, and headed out.  Remembering the kindness that we had been paid a few hours earlier, I stopped along the way to avail myself of the utility of the house phones located in the long, long hallway to call our room a couple of times, letting it ring-ring-ring until the voice mail picked up, then hanging up to call again. We were able to clearly hear the shrill shrieking of the phone from way down the hall.

I imagine that the next door neighbors heard it, too, bright and early, loud and clear. 

The one raging complaint that I have about Las Vegas is difficult to convey politely. There are countless numbers of what I perceive to be recently arrived ersatz Americans standing on the sidewalks shoving handbills at you, advertising escort services, night clubs, etc.  They snap the cards in one hand against the cards in the other hand and then shove one at you as you walk by.  I don't like who they are and I despise what they're doing.  Las Vegas would be a much nicer place without them.

Their counterparts are the hundreds of timeshare hawkers who assault you inside the hotel lobbies.  "Hi, folks, how about some free show tickets?"  This pitch started ON THE AIRPORT SHUTTLE BUS!  Some guy who introduced himself as a "Las Vegas Ambassador" was shlepping show tix for timeshare presentations on the damned shuttle bus!

It takes a little conditioning, but we found that the best response (for us) was to act as if they didn't exist, both those in the street and those in the hotels.  It seemed to annoy them.

Mission accomplished.

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The last observation, people-wise, is a sad one. 

Simply put, America has become incredibly fat.  I was absolutely amazed at the number of leviathans that were lumbering about, everywhere we went.  I'm relating an observation;  I have no proposed solution.  Some people are bigger than others, that's no revelation.  The number of people that are bigger than two or more others, that's what I'm talking about here. 

Just sayin'.

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Can't wait to go back.