Crazy in Vegas

Las Vegas. Wow what a crazy place. The minute you land you know it’s going to be when you’re welcomed by the buzz of people trying to win (or loose) their last buck on the slot machines at the airport.

I have to say I was a little bit skeptical about visiting Las Vegas. But if you accept it for what it is – a huge adult play pen in the middle of the desert in 40 degree heat then actually you’ll end up having a pretty damn good time.

Though many people come here to gamble, there are many people – packs of men, gaggles of girls, couples, families and everything else in-between that are here to soak up the sheer entertainment of this man made dream.

It really is like someone had the most crazy brainstorm and took all the most outlandish, blue sky ideas and then created them all in Vegas, with budget no issue at all.

So I decided that the best way to sum up Vegas would be to celebrate the madness of it all by picking out some of my favourite highlights so here goes.

Where else can you find the following all crammed into a strip under 7km long....

NYC complete with the Statue of Liberty (and a massive roller coaster going round and through the hotel complex) and Studio 54 nightclub at New York New York...

Paris with the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph...

Egypt and its ancient wonders at the Luxor...

Venice with its canals, opera singing gondoliers and fake blue sky (which by the way is really trippy when it's night time) at the Venetian. If that's not enough to blow your mind, add another layer and hook yourself up at the oxygen bar for 20 mins. Buy hey, probably no need for that seeing as all the casinos are pumped fall of oxygen in any case. 

A chocolate fountain with 2 tons of chocolate being pumped through it (a dream for fellow chocolate addicts out there) and a train made of marshmallows at the Bellagio...

The Bellagio is also home to one of the most incredible dancing water features with over 100 fountains soaring as high as 245 feet in the air. It's truly spectacular as you can see from this video...

Lions in a hotel lobby at the MGM Grand...

Girls dancing up in glass boxes at the Cosmopolitan enticing eager men in off the strip...

A show girl production (Jubilee) with a a $3 million opening number and more feathers and sequins that a girl could ever know what to do with...(yes I was in heaven). Plus so many other incredible shows it puts the West End and Broadway to shame.

The best and biggest steak (for this go to Mon Amis Gabis at Paris it's super good value by Vegas standards)...

People cramming the tables and slots at the casinos at 2pm (or any o clock for that matter). I got to say I found it pretty disturbing when I went through the casino at 6.30am heading for my trip to the Grand Canyon and there are these old grannies still playing the slots and I'm wondering, did you get up early to do this or have you been here all night?!  Either way, I had a couple of goes and it had my attention for all of 1 minute before I got bored. How do people play the slots for hours on end? Hope can sometimes lead nowhere guys.

Some undercover footage for you here...

More fake boobs, bad face lifts, hideous outfits and wrongness that you should just not have to see but that is highly entertaining at the same time. I think this was summed up best by my Grand Canyon travel buddy who said "Put it this way - you wouldn't want to drink the water at the Wet Republic pool party." To go into details in this blog would be XXX and no I didn't go myself and though I was really tempted to try and take pics or video some of this general wrongness I didn't want to get in trouble with security. 

People shoving flyers for "girls direct to your door in 20 minutes" every 2 minutes on the Strip who  looked very puzzled when I asked them if they had any guys. 

Anyway I wanted to end up this blog post with some of the lyrics from the above mentioned Jubilee! show which made me chuckle and which also sums up a big part of Vegas. They go something like this...

Girls to the left of me, girls to the right of me, girls to the front of me, girls behind me, girls all over me, I don't mind! Hundreds and hundreds of girls. Tina for breakfast, Leena for lunch...

I'll leave it to you to make up the rest!