My First Trip to Las Vegas - Part 3

January 7, 2008

I had heard about check-in at Las Vegas hotels, and how the queues could be even longer than at airports, but when we arrived the long desk at The Mirage was almost empty, affording a perfect view of the massive aquarium presumably designed to entice gamblers into a trance whilst waiting to collect their room key, before heading into the casino floor. Neither of these factors were an issue though as we headed into the VIP check-in room, which actually turned out to be rather cramped, although with a large selection of food and drinks on the side. We considered spending the rest of the afternoon there, getting drunk for free and admiring the attractive girls employed to tailor to high rollers’ needs, but instead went up to our room where a bottle of champagne was on ice awaiting us.

There are generally two routes that people can take when checking into a hotel room: some carefully unpack their bags, arranging clothes in whatever furniture is provided, patiently realising that their stay is meant to be a pleasurable and comfortable one, whilst others chuck their bags on the floor before heading out to see what adventures await them, eager for the fun to begin. I did neither. I was mesmerised by the mini-bar. I could never have imagined such a wide variety of snacks and drinks could be available in a hotel room. Not only that, it was electronic - any item that was removed would be automatically charged to our bill. Amazing.

Down in the casino, and the gambling commenced. Slightly wary of the table games at first, video poker and slots were our games of choice, while we settled into our surroundings. The free drinks started arriving shortly after, and boosted by this dutch courage we decided to move onto blackjack. Just minimum bets mind, well apart from when the cards felt good. There was no point in trying to count cards, auto-shufflers had recently been installed in many Strip casinos, and anyway, playing by Basic Strategy takes enough fun out of the game already.We found Caruso wondering about shortly after, and invited him to join us at the blackjack tables, but he had heard about a full pay Double Bonus VP machine at some distant casino and was heading there to try and squeeze out a small profit for his troubles.

Gambling and Drinking. What wonderful partners. We did both in excess that first night, and to be honest I can’t remember the when’s and where’s of it all - a pattern that seemed to continue though-out the rest of the weekend and indeed every other trip. It becomes timeless. Yes, the casinos have no clocks or windows, we all know that, but even if they did knowing whether it was night or day would make no difference - I’d still carry on playing, until a dealer selfishly takes my last chip and I eventually have to retire, be it to bed, the bar, a pool (or sometimes just for a quick visit to an ATM).

We rose for our second day at the sensible time of 12 midday, still not quite believing where we were, it took a stroll through the casino to properly awaken us, the realisation that, yes, this town does gamble 24 hours a day, the most effective shot of caffeine we could ask for. Being sensible for one second, we decided that it would be best to get out of the casino. perhaps to see some sights, else we would most likely spend the entire weekend on The Mirage casino floor. Once out into the dry desert air we started walking, and needing some sense of direction for our wanders, picked out the tower at the Stratosphere as a good target to aim for.

Fairly soon we started noticing the deterioration in quality of both the casinos, and the people we encountered, realising that this was the older part of the strip. It was also quite surprising to see empty lots in between casinos, I had always assumed that all empty space would have been developed upon a long time ago. We mostly just walked along, although we did venture through Circus Circus to the adventure dome, but without going on any rides - it was so deathly quiet in there we were afraid they might shut the whole place down whilst we were mid-ride, and go off leaving us stranded there. We also popped into ‘The Worlds Largest Gift Shop’ - although it didn’t seem particularly massive to me - picking up all the souvenirs we would need to take back home in one swoop. (Of these the Las Vegas visors were by far the most popular).

We finally got to the Stratosphere, and thought we would take a ride up to the tower unfortunately they wouldn’t allow us up with the glasses we had bought, so instead we crossed the road and had perhaps the worst steak ever. It can with what I can only imagine was tinned spaghetti bolognese, although it may have been the undesirables wandering around the cafe that really made the meal a bad one.

After this we got a taxi back to the Mirage, with the driver warning us that the area we had just been in was not really that safe, not even during the daytime which is when we were there!

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