In which I'm leaving Las Vegas
I honestly don't see the attraction. People excitedly anticipate vacationing in Las Vegas, but frankly I find it tedious. Granted they don't tend to stay for two weeks on the Strip in a hotel underging renovations, but still.... I honestly don't see the attraction.
While I was there I did learn a few things.
1) The cabbies always have the right-of way. Always. They don't simply nose into traffic; they aren't just agressive drivers. They own the streets of Las Vegas. I saw cabbies speeding down long blocks (plural) of left-turn lanes. I had a cabbie try to broadside me out of the lane so he could have it. I saw cabbies make right turns out of left lanes.
2) Never, ever stay in a hotel under construction for two weeks. This was not the first time I had ended up in this sort of a mess - the Candlewood Suites in Wichita was completely redoing the interior halls. Paint, carpet, tile. Guests would come "home" to doors cocked open, halls blocked off, sticky floors. The Aladdin was better and worse. The Aladdin is converting to the Planet Hollywood. They did a good job of keeping the effluvient behind temporary walls, but everything was moved and felt shifted, temporary. The walls could not quell the noise, and of course workers with materials and tools were constantly having to access the construction zones. The worst was in the valet area where every morning I waited for my car amid the cacaphony of large construction equipment coming and going, in addition to the usual press of people, cars and large tour buses. I was not relaxed on the way to work; I escaped.
3) If you're going to be in Las Vegas for more than three days, stay in one of the business hotels off-Strip on Paradise. There are several Marriotts and two Embassy Suites that would have done nicely. Don't let the party-girl co-worker talk you into Strip hotels. The residents don't go there. That should be a lesson.
4) Plan on spending twice as much as budgeted. Las Vegas will wring it out of you. The "value" fine dining resturant in the hotel cast $100 for a dinner and drinks and tip for 3, and one of us is four years old. The "free" show actually ran over $17, because you have to pay for two drinks - the drinks were $7.98, plus tax. I'm convinced that they lied about the alcohol at that. We probably didn't get hit as much as most, because we ate at Jack-In-The-Box and McDonald's for some lunches and breakfasts. I think we lost a total of $27 gambling, but then again, I think between Chris and me, we risked about $30.
5) There is one non-smoking casion in the city - the airport. I was there in the early evening, and there were not a lot of players. Of course I didn't win anything - not even a piddly credit or two to reinvest - at the airport, and so I'm guessing they don't bill themselves as "the loosest slots".
6) The highly-rated buffet in the hotel is not the best buffet value in town. I ate twice at the Spice Market in the Aladdin, which is the #1 rated buffet in Las Vegas. At $25 per person, the food was hit or miss - the crab legs were cold and the Mediterranean section made me long for the Damascus Grill, but the roast beef was outstanding. The selection was huge, but we never felt like we ate $25 worth of food. Wine selections were low quality single-serve bottles at $6.98 each - which is about what I pay at the neighborhood liquor store for my favorite Sterling Vinyards, when you figure that there are three of those little ones in a fifth. The Paradise Buffet in the Fremont Hotel downtown cost us $25 for the three of us - Chris, Me and Evan - and had better sushi. Not so many selections, but the quality was consistantly good, and we felt like we'd gotten our money's worth.
7) The best landscape is outside of town. Sunday found the Bays clan touring. We drove the hour north east of Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park. Now here was a value at $6 per car. Not only geologic but aboriginal human history. If you love Mesa Verde, you have to go here. The same mysterious exodus happened from the Valley of Fire region in about the 14th century as in Mesa Verde. It's one of mankind's biggest mysteries. The red rock outcroppings (not contiguous with Colorado's Red Rocks), beautiful on their own, have been sculpted by wind and water into fantastic shapes.
8) The biggest travesty is outside of town. If you take the Northshore Road south out of Valley of Fire, through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, you can see a lot more of the countryside than driving south along the interstate. There are three springs to the west of the road; one of these is a warm spring in which bathing is encouraged. As our destination was Hoover Dam, we didn't stop. The road is twisty and turny, and so the drive takes longer than you think it should, but eventually we got to the left turn towards the dam. The traffic was bad - it seems that everyone wants to go to the dam on a Sunday afternon. There is a security checkpoint (ha! - no terrorist car bomb would be enough to take out that dam). Eventually the traffic jam moves you to the vicinity of the dam. It's a circus. With propaganda. Huge parking garage, gift and snack shops fill the canyon on the Nevada side. No Colorado resident will be surprised to hear that Lake Mead is low - so low that the ruler painted on the lake side of the dam ends probably 40 feet above the water. The 60' - 80' white margins of the lake (salts??) are stark testimony to the ongoing drought conditions in the western US. The Colorado River leaves two years of it's flow inside Lade Mead. The irony is that no matter the amount of water we bottle up in western dams, there simply isn't enough precipitation to make the propaganda a reality. The travesty is that we continue to try.
9) Sinus medicine is a daily necessity. Las Vegas is the smoking capital of the world. It's not restricted anywhere but the airport and in sections of resturants. You simply can't avoid it. It takes four or five days to work Las Vegas out of your lungs.
And last but no least:
10) The best views I had of Las Vegas were on the approach to the airport and the departure two weeks later.
I frequently leave a job site with a sense of relief. But the reasons are usually different. The client was remarkably good - demanding, but not nasty. I usually develop some sort of connection to places I go - I get fond of the landscape, or I regret leaving the hotel. Las Vegas was easy to leave behind. I had Sheryl Crow in my head all Friday.
While I was there I did learn a few things.
1) The cabbies always have the right-of way. Always. They don't simply nose into traffic; they aren't just agressive drivers. They own the streets of Las Vegas. I saw cabbies speeding down long blocks (plural) of left-turn lanes. I had a cabbie try to broadside me out of the lane so he could have it. I saw cabbies make right turns out of left lanes.
2) Never, ever stay in a hotel under construction for two weeks. This was not the first time I had ended up in this sort of a mess - the Candlewood Suites in Wichita was completely redoing the interior halls. Paint, carpet, tile. Guests would come "home" to doors cocked open, halls blocked off, sticky floors. The Aladdin was better and worse. The Aladdin is converting to the Planet Hollywood. They did a good job of keeping the effluvient behind temporary walls, but everything was moved and felt shifted, temporary. The walls could not quell the noise, and of course workers with materials and tools were constantly having to access the construction zones. The worst was in the valet area where every morning I waited for my car amid the cacaphony of large construction equipment coming and going, in addition to the usual press of people, cars and large tour buses. I was not relaxed on the way to work; I escaped.
3) If you're going to be in Las Vegas for more than three days, stay in one of the business hotels off-Strip on Paradise. There are several Marriotts and two Embassy Suites that would have done nicely. Don't let the party-girl co-worker talk you into Strip hotels. The residents don't go there. That should be a lesson.
4) Plan on spending twice as much as budgeted. Las Vegas will wring it out of you. The "value" fine dining resturant in the hotel cast $100 for a dinner and drinks and tip for 3, and one of us is four years old. The "free" show actually ran over $17, because you have to pay for two drinks - the drinks were $7.98, plus tax. I'm convinced that they lied about the alcohol at that. We probably didn't get hit as much as most, because we ate at Jack-In-The-Box and McDonald's for some lunches and breakfasts. I think we lost a total of $27 gambling, but then again, I think between Chris and me, we risked about $30.
5) There is one non-smoking casion in the city - the airport. I was there in the early evening, and there were not a lot of players. Of course I didn't win anything - not even a piddly credit or two to reinvest - at the airport, and so I'm guessing they don't bill themselves as "the loosest slots".
6) The highly-rated buffet in the hotel is not the best buffet value in town. I ate twice at the Spice Market in the Aladdin, which is the #1 rated buffet in Las Vegas. At $25 per person, the food was hit or miss - the crab legs were cold and the Mediterranean section made me long for the Damascus Grill, but the roast beef was outstanding. The selection was huge, but we never felt like we ate $25 worth of food. Wine selections were low quality single-serve bottles at $6.98 each - which is about what I pay at the neighborhood liquor store for my favorite Sterling Vinyards, when you figure that there are three of those little ones in a fifth. The Paradise Buffet in the Fremont Hotel downtown cost us $25 for the three of us - Chris, Me and Evan - and had better sushi. Not so many selections, but the quality was consistantly good, and we felt like we'd gotten our money's worth.
7) The best landscape is outside of town. Sunday found the Bays clan touring. We drove the hour north east of Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park. Now here was a value at $6 per car. Not only geologic but aboriginal human history. If you love Mesa Verde, you have to go here. The same mysterious exodus happened from the Valley of Fire region in about the 14th century as in Mesa Verde. It's one of mankind's biggest mysteries. The red rock outcroppings (not contiguous with Colorado's Red Rocks), beautiful on their own, have been sculpted by wind and water into fantastic shapes.
8) The biggest travesty is outside of town. If you take the Northshore Road south out of Valley of Fire, through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, you can see a lot more of the countryside than driving south along the interstate. There are three springs to the west of the road; one of these is a warm spring in which bathing is encouraged. As our destination was Hoover Dam, we didn't stop. The road is twisty and turny, and so the drive takes longer than you think it should, but eventually we got to the left turn towards the dam. The traffic was bad - it seems that everyone wants to go to the dam on a Sunday afternon. There is a security checkpoint (ha! - no terrorist car bomb would be enough to take out that dam). Eventually the traffic jam moves you to the vicinity of the dam. It's a circus. With propaganda. Huge parking garage, gift and snack shops fill the canyon on the Nevada side. No Colorado resident will be surprised to hear that Lake Mead is low - so low that the ruler painted on the lake side of the dam ends probably 40 feet above the water. The 60' - 80' white margins of the lake (salts??) are stark testimony to the ongoing drought conditions in the western US. The Colorado River leaves two years of it's flow inside Lade Mead. The irony is that no matter the amount of water we bottle up in western dams, there simply isn't enough precipitation to make the propaganda a reality. The travesty is that we continue to try.
9) Sinus medicine is a daily necessity. Las Vegas is the smoking capital of the world. It's not restricted anywhere but the airport and in sections of resturants. You simply can't avoid it. It takes four or five days to work Las Vegas out of your lungs.
And last but no least:
10) The best views I had of Las Vegas were on the approach to the airport and the departure two weeks later.
I frequently leave a job site with a sense of relief. But the reasons are usually different. The client was remarkably good - demanding, but not nasty. I usually develop some sort of connection to places I go - I get fond of the landscape, or I regret leaving the hotel. Las Vegas was easy to leave behind. I had Sheryl Crow in my head all Friday.
posted by Melanie Unruh-Bays at
12:43 PM
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