A Silly Grin In Las Vegas - #6

Monday 9 April

Let the tour begin!

The excess of the place is OTT, I seem to spend much of the time walking around going oh my gosh, much to the amusement of my fellow Mild Hogs!

It was hot and I hadn't been able to get any washing done so the same clothes two days in a row seem to keep the hawkers away anyway, (actually I wasn't that bad). I would not like to come to this place in full summer, spring was quite hot enough thank you very much.

We walked down to Lonely Planet but Bruce & Arney weren't in so we moved on.

We had lunch at the Harley Davidson Cafe which was OK. I don't think it helped that we were served by the surliest young lady I have ever met and that's a big call! She was appalling, she slunk us over to our table and dropped the menus on the table and just walked off. She clearly didn't want to be there. I watched her give the same treatment to everyone that came in and the place was busy so that was a lot of people. Fortunately another 'enhanced' waitress came over and she was excellent. Sorry, it shouldn't make any difference but when you come from a customer service background, it does! Anyway, I had my first 'biscuit', (a bun), buried in white gravy? With my omelette, and fries and hash browns that I didn't ask for. Fortunately American hash browns are quite nice.

The Harley Davidson Cafe

The chopper from Easy Rider
(apparently one of five)

We carried on down The Strip for a while with all the thousands and then turned back as I wanted to see the fountain show at Ballagio's at night. I was pooped, I needed a iPop nap. I had news from NZ not too worry, that my grandson Rios (13 months old) was looking after my bike was I was away!  Haha...

My Vegas dice lollipop

I did a little shopping. Murray had his bike changed over by Eagleriders as it really was too tall for him. We had locked the bikes together under the Luxor covered car parking, quite safe. It was quite nice to have a day off the bikes, but don't tell anyone I said that or I'll deny it!

The ceilig of one of the casinos - beautiful!

I PAID for Internet time to be able to edit the paragraphs on my blog so I hope you all appreciate it. I'm still trying to work out how to insert photos but Mr Apple is pretty hopeless!

Panarama of Bellagios and some of the strip

I watched Nev go through $5 on the pokies in .5 of a nano second so that was enough for me. I swear some of these people were still here from the previous night.

Nev & I caught the mono-rail down to Ballagio's at about 23:00 to watch the water fountain show, amazing! Only word for it.

Click here to see what I recorded. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i3tSllsgwl

Young and old there, all loved it. I recorded it so will put it up on YouTube if you're keen. Don't feel obligated to watch. On the way back we were prompted to go here and try this, men and woman handing out what I thought were playing cards; turned out they weren't! Try discount cards for woman with up to 70% discounts! We could have had our photos taken with naked angels, (well they may have well been), who were standing just along from a soap box evangelist. Both competing with each other.

Doesn't appear to be a dress code of any sort anywhere so you see all sorts, made me look quite neat really! And you can walk down the streets quite openly carrying beer or whatever, not toooo many intoxicated people though and quite orderly.

I probably won't wax on lyrical about Las Vegas because as fascinating as it is there is also underneath the sparkle an inherent sadness also. Or I found it so anyway. The whole concept of LV is to part people from their money and part them it does. There is a lot about the place that makes it quite good to bring the kids for a holiday as there is so much for them to do and see but they are also exposed to a lot of things that they shouldn't see.

Everyone seems on the hussle and the dollar rules all lives in some form or another. You can choose to spend up large or be really tight like us, and not spend to much, but generally you'd better be prepared to spend something. Don't come to Vegas without money. There are a lot of broken people that are very evident on the streets.

Back to base and lights out - stuffed!

Early start to tomorrow, down to Route 66....