BlogADoodle.org

What can I say about Vegas?  Let me start off by putting in a disclaimer, because people (Micka) are saying that this sounds like a “Wah Wah Bitch Bitch.”  It was not intended to come off that way, it was just a play by play of the experience I had.  I was not disappointed in the experience of Vegas, and I LOVE THE PEOPLE I WENT WITH!!!  I would go there with them again, or anywhere else in the world they want to share with me.  I had my own preconception of what I thought we would do, and we didn’t do those things.  Doesn’t detract from the experience and it was great to be able to cross Fabulous Las Vegas off my bucket list.  So read on knowing that if it sounds terrible, it wasn’t….  most of the time!  The Hotel choice was mine and mine alone, and nobody is responsible for me choosing it.  I simply wanted to be close to my friends.

SATURDAY

I got in at 16:30 hours my time, 14:30 Vegas time on Saturday.  I was exhausted.  Everyone else was flying in and were supposed to land around 17:30.  (For those that don’t know how to do military time, if it’s greater then 12:00 it’s PM, just subtract 12:00 from it).  Anyway, that gave me plenty of time to get to my room and take a nap for a couple of hours.  I picked the Imperial Palace simply cause that’s were some of my friends were staying.  They’re Vegas Regulars so I figure they know best right?

Well their parking garage is in the middle of the hotel.  It’s a screwy setup and the people walking on the sidewalk would not stop to let me in.  After almost 2 minutes standing perpendicular to the road with traffic backing up because of me I just threw it in neutral, revved the engine a couple of times to let them know I was coming whether they liked it or not and then I just proceeded.  Screw ‘em.  Then it took me another 15 minutes to find a spot within the garage.  I then wind my way through the hotel until I finally figure out where the check in desk is.  You have to go up a flight of stars, wind around for a while, go up another escalator, double back, wind around and then it’s there in the most random place you can think of, all by itself.

The lady at the counter is rude.  Not New York City, I haven’t got time for you rude.  I’m a New Yorker, I can deal with that.  It’s the “I hate this job and don’t give a rat’s ass what you need rude.”  I tell her that I am here to check in and after she checks my id and takes my credit card she tell me, “Check in is not until 16:00.”  I  tell her that on the website I requested a 14:30 check in and she tells me,  “Well that’s not guaranteed, what do you want?”  I’m thinking, “I want to take a nap Bitch!” but whatever.  She gives me all my paperwork and a map and tells me to go to the other desk at 16:00.  OK, fine.  I ask, “What’s the easiest way to get back to my car?” Her reply, “Well how am I supposed to know where you parked?”  They have no street parking, there is no outside parking lot, all they have is 1 parking garage.   Whatever Oren, walk away before you hurt someone.

I wander around, exhausted and seeing double until 16:00.  Then I go to the front desk and give a girl my paperwork.  She says, “we haven’t got the final list from housekeeping, can you come back in 20 or 30 minutes?”  NO.  Well the only single King non-smoking they have available is on the noisy side.  What’s the noisy side? I ask.  Right above the bar where they play music till 4am.  OK, screw that, give me any room, not on the noisy side, I don’t care what kinda bed, just something now.  I get a double double.  Whatever.  My view?

It’s the central courtyard that connects the street to the parking garage.  It’s also where bus after bus drops off large groups of noisy, rowdy, drunk people throughout the day and night.  Oh, and they always honk, apparently to let the door people know that they are there or something.  I’m just 3 floors above it.

I asked the front desk where I get a baggage cart to take my stuff from my car upstairs.  “We’re not allowed to do that.”  WTF?  How do I get my stuff to my room?  “You can park on the main driveway and a porter will help you.”  It just took me 15 minutes to park and now you want me to move so you can help me with my baggage and then go try and find a spot again?!?!  Forget it, I’ll schlep it.  Keep in mind I’m packed for 3 weeks. Does the room have internet?  That’s $10 extra per day.  Of course it is.

I grab some stuff and find a door that leads from the garage to the first desk where the bitch works.  All she had to say when I asked how to get my car, was “Through those doors right there.”  BITCH!  As I walk up to her counter dragging 3 bags she picks up the phone and dials.  She hasn’t talked to anyone yet so I know she’s still waiting for someone to answer.   I ask, “which way are the rooms?” Does she point with her finger?  No, she says, “I’m on the phone!” in a very curt tone.  I then end up standing in front of her for more then 5 minutes (NO JOKE) while she stands and talks about personal shit.  Not once does she say, hold on a sec I have someone in front of me.”  (Well he went on another break and I haven’t even had my 15 minute break and I leave in an hour, and I’m such a bitch whore slut skank…. yada yada yada) She never does get off the phone, I asked someone else that walked by in a uniform.

When I finally get to the room, after 3 trips (Including my cooler falling over and spilling water and ice all down the hallway), the first thing I do is take a shower, and the tub backs up.  Nice place.

I take a nap for a couple of hours and my friend K finally calls to say they’re going to eat “so wake up and call me when you get here.”  I take a few minutes to get ready and then I set off to where they were at.  I get there within 20 – 25 minutes from when he called.  Where are we eating? I ask.  “Oh, we just ate,” he says, “but if you want to eat something we’ll wait for you.”  Why call me to eat if you ate?  Forget it, where are we going?  To the MGM.  And off on a trot we go, down the strip, through throngs of noisy, drunk people and cars, through dirty, trashed streets, through the MGM, all the way too….  Is it  a show? A special event?  Something worth running for?…. Nope, for slot machines.  Is this what you plan on doing?  Yes.  I’m outta here.  A little bit of sight seeing by myself and try to find something to eat.  All the real food places are closed by the time I realized I’m famished so around 01:00 Vegas time I grab some crappy to go Chinese and head back to the room.  The mattress is hard, the pillows are soft and there is only a rough, old, thin duvet cover.  Did I mention nice place?

By the way, When I left the room Sunday morning, this tray was outside my door from the next room’s breakfast.

It’s still there at 02:20 then next morning.  And it stinks.

Sunday

Sunday I waited all morning for people to wake up and call for breakfast.  Nobody did.  Finally around 11:30 my friend T called to say she’s landed in town and is with her partner R at the Stratosphere.  It’s kinda far to walk so I get a Monorail pass.  Now this is Cool.  Vegas has this great Monorail system that runs from the all throughout the strip.  It’s clean, fast and efficient.  There are 7 stops and a train comes every 7 minutes in each direction.  It runs between Mandalay Ban at the Southern most end to The Sahara and the Stratosphere in the North.  It’s air conditioned and they’re a neat way to get around.  $12.00 gets you a 1 day pass.  I think the 3 day pass was $24.00.  It’s a neat way to travel and (sadly) one of my favorite parts of Las Vegas.

As I walked towards the Stratosphere I found an interesting business.  Las Vegas is a city that peddles smut all over the place, and to everyone.  There are lines of people standing together and trying to hand you cards with naked girls on it to advertise private “Dances” in your room.  I even saw one of those guys hand one to a preteen adolescent.  So this business has an interesting name:

I wonder if it’s that they massage the ass or that their massages suck ass.

I met T and R while the were at the oxygen bar.  We had a great time hanging out that day.  When they were done getting oxygen, we went to the top of the Stratosphere.  It’s $13.00 just to get to the top and each of the 3 ride at top were $12, which was OK since I was terrified of heights and there is no way in ungodly hell that I would ride them, since they cantilever over the edge of the building.  But R was going to ride all three since she’s insane.  So we went to the top and the views were fabulous.  You realize how high up you are when the helicopters come whizzing by at the the same height as the decks.  After R was done scaring herself to death we went to the Buffet to finally eat something.  These Buffets are unreal and way over the top.  There is enough food in this one room to feed a small African village, it’s ridiculous.  T says Buffet stands for Big Ugly Fat Fucks Eating Together.  I thought that was funny.  After lunch it was off to meet R’s sister and her sisters boyfriend and then to the casino.  I was having a little bit of luck on the quarter slots but then I went to play the penny slots where they were and on $20 I played for a long time.  Then I hit the Hella Bonus round and won $438.61.

Woo Hoo, cash me out and I’m back to my room.

Turns out it’s already past 20:00, what the heck happened to the day?  Those casinos are black holes of time.  After freshening up and resting a bit T calls to say they’re heading to Coyote Ugly at New York New York so be there in 45 minutes.  Check.  I get ready and have to walk/jog to get there in time.  R‘s sister (let’s call her X) is a head honcho for like 12 places in Vegas.  When we get to Coyote Ugly we get escorted past the line of people waiting to get in, around the back of the bar and to a special roped off VIP area where it’s just us.

The throngs of mashed together people are on the other side of the rope just looking at us and trying to figure out who we were.  All the drinks were comped and all the bartenders were told who we were.  X‘s name alone apparently brings fear to everyone around.  I was standing there when a new waitress walked behind the bar.  The manager guy walked up to her and apparently mentioned that we were with X, and when he said her name the bartender shivered.  Literally shivered, I shit you not.  We were treated super nice.  The rest of the group showed up an hour later.  They had gone to take S to a strip club for his Birthday.  I don’t do strip clubs so I didn’t go along.  They make the drinks VERY strong at Coyote and I’m a light weight.   After 1 Rum and Diet Coke I was done.  Drinking makes me tired, and when I’m already tired it magnifies it.   Also, I can’t stand being around cigarette smoke for long and everyone is smoking.  The music is loud and after a while I just have enough.  It was great to be with everybody for a change, and Coyote Ugly is a cool place, but I am buzzing and tired, so I leave the group and walk back to my room.

MONDAY

I woke up early to blog.  Everyone must have been sleeping off the night before.  I was thinking about staying an extra night but decided against it at that point and I packed up my car and checked out.  The guy at the check out desk asked me how my stay was and I said, “Don’t you think “Palace” is stretching it a bit?”  I am definitely not going to stay there if I ever come back.  After that I left the car in their garage and started to walk around a bit to try and see of the things I didn’t get to.  The Venetian is definitely tops as far as casino architecture goes.  Maybe that’s because Italy is tops on my dreams list.  The design is spectacular and I found myself walking around with my mouth hanging down.  There is a river inside on the second floor where you can take a gondola ride.

The hallways of the mall were streets of Venice with the sky painted on the ceiling and each shop is made to look like a different building.

It’s beautiful.  And T and R called me finally and came over to meet me there.  We then spoke to K and he and M met us at Cesar’s Palace for the breakfast buffet.  Man is that amazing.  If you go you have to catch it.  Then we walked all over the place for a while. D joined us and we went to FAO Schwartz where I got to play the Human piano.

We also went to the Harley Davidson Cafe Store, the Coca Cola store, and the M&M store.  We were having a great time and it was awesome to hang out with my friends, but It was nearly 17:00 so I left everyone and took the monorail back to the Imperial Pal-ass and got my car.  Then I went back to the Stratosphere to cash out my points.  Turns out I earned $120 in players credit.  You can’t cash that, you have to play all of it.  But you can cash anything you win from it.  So I played the $120 and won $100 in cash…. which I ended up losing.  But then I realized it was 20:45 and I wanted to be on the road before 17:00… DANG IT!

This day was the best day i had in Las Vegas.

OVERALL

As I leave Vegas, I decided that I’m glad I came here.  #1, I love this group of friends, even though we sometimes don’t like to do the same kind of stuff.  They are amazingly cool people to be with when we are together.  Also, if I never make it back again, which is extremely possible, I can also say that I’ve been here once and seen it first hand.  Overall my experience has had positives and negatives, and if I do come back I’ll do some things differently.

I liked Vegas in the daytime and hated Vegas in the evenings.  Apparently I’m much older then I thought, because I have no patience for drunks, I don’t like crowds, and I find the bar scene aggravating sometimes.  The city itself was dirty and the people in general were rude.  That’s the locals, the tourist were annoying and obnoxious.  At night, the drunk and disorderly outnumbered the rest of us.

Some of the Casinos were just beautiful and amazing to walk through.  But on the flip side they also felt so fake and far reaching.  They tried so hard to try to make the casinos that represented other cities feel like you’re there, but all they did is make you wish you actually were.  New York New York was an annoying compilation of some make believe skyline that they thought represented my home town.  It just wasn’t enough.  The statue of liberty was white for crying out loud, she’s supposed to be green.  Paris Las Vegas was just that, Las Vegas.  It didn’t have the Euroness that only Europe can have so I spent the time looking at the replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triumph wishing I could see the real thing.  Cesar’s Palace was one of my top favorites.  It was beautiful and the statues were magnificent.  The lobby was spectacular and I enjoyed the art throughout.  The mall had an amazing ceiling painted like the sky and it was sorta like walking through Rome, Sorta.  Again, it made you wish you could be in the real thing.  Then the Hollywoodness of the whole thing starts to set in.  It’s like a lot of the casinos in that it’s over-done.  And Fake.  The were huge magnificent marble columns and you’re thinking “My gosh those things must have been expensive.” Then you walk up to it and give it a tap, and you realize it’s hollow, faux painted plaster.  Everything is.  You walk from casino to casino and you’re walking from one Hollywood set to another.  It takes the charm out of it.  Even my most favoritest, The Venetian, had a Hollywood-esquness to it.  Like this one little area where the outside gondola river branches off between an area of the building.

It’s a poster.  They could have probably done without it, so why put that in there?  And yet again, it made me wish I was in Italy more-so then enjoying it in Las Vegas.

Oh, and another thing.  They can’t seem to keep escalators running in this city.  Everywhere you go there are escalators out.  MY shitbag hotel had 5 out, including the monorail stop.

There were a lot of Casino’s and things that I wanted to see that I didn’t get to because I wasted all of Sunday in the Stratosphere (of my own volition).  I was going to stay an extra day but I’m not going to spend another $65 on this dump and lose time in Canada.  If I come back I can see those places I wanted, and also some of these new ones under construction.   Hopefully I’ll have someone in my life that has the same interests as me and would like to come along so I don’t have to do everything solo, but even if not that’s OK.

Also, I was very surprised with how DIRTY Vegas is.  There is trash everywhere.  I was surprised there weren’t cleaning crews all over the place considering how into being showy Vegas is.  They had an entire section of sidewalk that was tunneled for construction and it was so full of trash you couldn’t help but trip. I saw a lady fall into a trash bag.

Vegas is a take it or leave it City for me.  If I come back, cool.  If I never do, whatever.  Next group trip we take I am going to recommend a cruise, that seams like more fun.  There are more things to do besides gamble and drink, and when you see an exotic local, it’s cause you’re actually there!

On to the NEXT adventure….  I am Northbound!

READ CHAPTER 3 BY CLICKING HERE

Or, GO BACK TO CHAPTER 1 BY CLICKING HERE

Or, CLICK HERE FOR THE TABLE OF CONTENTS