Las Vegas field report, part 2 (at last)

A few new photo galleries now up on Picasaweb:

1. More photos of the Grand Canyon: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/GrandCanyonII
2. Hoover Dam: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/HooverDam
3. Las Vegas: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/LasVegas

It took me a little while to sort them all out using Picasa, but they're now there 3 weeks later :).

Hoover Dam was a mighty impressive piece of engineering, especially when you consider the conditions and speed with which it was built -- searing temperatures in summer, with little in the way of safety equipment, and not much in the way of rest and relaxation. It was a logical stop en route to the Grand Canyon, 1 hour from Vegas and sitting on the border of Nevada and Arizona.

Vegas, the first stop of the trip, is a strange kind of city. It seems to be built entirely on gambling and tourism, and the industries that support it. The original downtown, which is where we stayed, is a shell of its former self. There are still quite a few casinos in that part of town, but the buzz (and hence the tourists) has surely drifted to the Strip, where all the super-casinos that are made famous on TV are situated either side of a 10-lane monster of a road.

You have the Luxor, the hotel shaped like a pyramid clad in glass on all sides, with a giant sphinx reposing in its forecourt. You have Paris, complete with Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower. New York, New York, with a replica of the New York skyline (I wonder if they had the Twin Towers originally). The Venetian, with its set of canals along which you can take a gondola ride... And the list goes on and on... We stopped at most of them, to oooh and aaah and gawk at the extravagance and kitsch. Some casinos don't really have a 'hook' as such, like the MGM Grand, or Mandalay Bay. I'm sure they have some kind of 'theme', but eventually all casinos start looking the same from the inside.

Las Vegas is also not a cheap city. If you use the Starbucks Latte index (far more important to me than the Big Mac index), Vegas is up there with NYC -- we're talking $3.25 (+ tax) for a tall latte on the Strip, and certainly not even a good one. I admit though that we didn't exactly attempt to be frugal.

Food-wise Vegas won't leave you hungry if you're prepared to spend. We tucked into the all-you-can-eat buffets that Las Vegas casinos are famous for, first at the Luxor (good but not great), and secondly at Paris, reputedly one of the better ones. You definitely need to walk in with an empty stomach because there is a hard-to-ignore temptation to sample every morsel from every station -- salads, pasta, carvery, "Asian", seafood, desserts... And you end up waddling out but definitely with enough calories to last you the remainder of the day.

We also paid homage to Emeril (who I'm not really a fan of, but hey his joint was reasonably priced, didn't need a reservation and was in the same casino as where we were going to see a Cirque Du Soleil show), by eating at ummm "Emeril's"? I can't even remember the place, but I had a nice grilled salmon dish with what was essentially a fancy version of barbecue sauce! Just goes to show, fancy food is all in the presentation!

The Cirque du Soleil show we saw, Ka, wasn't bad. $75 a pop for a 'martial arts' extravaganza, although the only real martial arts style acrobatics were at the beginning. It was still impressive though, with an amazing set that rotated in three dimensions and high-wire tricks played out on platforms stretching out over the audience area. I didn't quite understand the storyline, mind you, but I suppose it doesn't really matter :). You have to admire Cirque du Soleil though -- it's its own mini-industry: they have half a dozen shows to choose from, each playing at different casinos and at varying prices ($75 is at the cheap end!) and from what I could tell, our late show at 9.30pm was as good as full. If you do the math, CDS must make a handsome profit indeed!

All in all, a great trip considering we only had 4 days -- it's amazing what you can fit in when you try. Now the question remains of where to go to next :).