We decided to visit Uncle Harold who lives in Las Vegas. He showed us his beautiful house and took us out for a fabulous Italian dinner. That was the first day and after dinner we did a little gambling and went to bed. Of course, I did not win anything, but I did enjoy the new Game of Thrones slot machine. They have used Peter Dinklage's voice (I wonder what they get paid for that) and sometimes the dragons come out. Yay!
We knew that we were very close to Vegas when we saw these highway sculptures.
We stayed at the Flamingo. On the back of the bathroom door (really) there is a "postcard" from Bugsy Siegel to his girlfriend in Palm Springs and vintage newspaper clippings. He started the Flamingo in the 30s with the help of the mob -- who later killed him. But at that time, there was nothing in Las Vegas except desert and the Flamingo was the first casino hotel.
The hotel room was a disappointment in many ways (the phone was broken, etc.) but the worst was -- the beds! They were so high, I even had trouble getting onto the mattress. I did enjoy, however, seeing Mom get a running start and taking a flying leap onto the bed. Seriously, though, had she been in a wheel chair, there is no way that she could have accessed the bed. We had asked for a handicapped accessible room and there was a roll-in shower, but that was the extent of the accommodations.
View from our hotel window
Walking along the hotel corridor -- which is VERY long -- there are many shops. I could have taken many pictures including Sweets which had so much candy that the air outside of the shop smelled like SUGAR! But I limited myself to bling that caught my eye.
In between each regular shop, there would be a nook with an attractive young person standing outside of the door. "Hello, Gorgeous!" one young woman called to me. She was trying to give me a free sample and sell me $300 collagen cream. This was repeated many times as you walk along the "shopping" corridor of any hotel. Also, there is constant loud music blaring (inside and out). Needless to say, all of my sensibilities were assaulted constantly.
By the time we were at breakfast on our departure day (Friday), I was stuffing paper napkin in my ears because the noise had jangled me so much. I am amazed that I didn't get a sinus infection, because there are clouds of cigarette smoke practically everywhere. I didn't know so many people still smoked!
Originally, I thought my friend Sue might like the glittery boots above. But the ones below might be more practical with the ice cover.
And how about these men's jackets fit for The King?
The Flamingo had a nice decorative pool with these residents below.
It's hard to see the brown headed ducks, but they seemed happy.
View from the monorail walkway
We actually had to walk A LOT. You couldn't just go across the street. Everything was up, down, up, down. And since Mom had her walker, the ramps doubled our number of steps. We figure we walked six miles in one day! But our first stop was at the Bellagio.
View from the Monorail
Street Scene
Above is actually the exit to the underground Bellagio parking garage. It's very steep and when it was busy, people were backed up in line waiting to get out. Not a good thing IMHO.
Bellagio lobby and front desk
Close up of ceiling
Then it was off to the Conservatory at the Bellagio where they went to great lengths to wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year.
The happy children are covered in flowers. The shooting waters in front of the bridge is colored but it didn't show in the picture. It's the Year of the Dog.
The bridge is 26 feet long by 18 feet wide.
This huskie is huge and his tail wags.
Lovely fountain
It was just as pretty outside.
Then we went to Paris. We actually got lost in Paris and walked and walked and walked ... we texted Deb but she couldn't figure out what we meant when we said we needed help getting out of Paris.
We hustled off to situate ourselves for the dancing fountains in front of the Bellagio.
From Wikipedia:
The fountains are set in a 8-acre (3.2 ha) manmade lake. Contrary to urban myth, the lake is not filled with treated greywater from the hotel. The lake is actually serviced by a freshwater well that was drilled decades prior to irrigate a golf course that previously existed on the site. The fountains actually use less water than irrigating the golf course did.[10] They incorporate a network of pipes with more than 1,200 nozzles that make it possible to stage fountain displays coordinated with more than 4,500 lights. It is estimated that the fountains cost $40 million to build. The fountains were created by WET, a design firm specializing in inventive fountains and architectural water features.[11]
Four types of nozzles are used for the various effects:
- 208 Oarsmen – jets with a full range of spherical motion
- 798 Shooters – shoot water upwards
- 192 Super Shooters – send a water blast as high as 240 ft (73 m) in the air.
- 16 Extreme Shooters – send a water blast as high as 460 ft (140 m) (added in 2005)
We did manage to do some gambling. I lost my $100, but it was fun playing the new Game of Thrones slot machine. If you "won" something, the chair moved accompanied by a rumbling roar of the dragons. Woo hoo.
Then it was time to go home. Mom started the driving, so I snapped a few shots out of the car window. (She had taken the horse sculpture photos because I was driving then.)
We figured this is an energy farm. Those two oblongs of white are VERY bright lights and below them are low-lying solar panels.
They actually are looking for fruit here. You can't bring any fruit into California. (A jailhouse converstation: What are you in for? Fruit.) We were waved through, luckily, because the traffic was fairly heavy at this point.
And that's our fun trip. I now know that I never have to go to Las Vegas again and I cannot tolerate more than two days of Vegas!
Cheers!
Vegas looks like a very interesting place
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