So..I was saying..: Viva Las Vegas !!

If Niagara Falls and Grand Canyon are must see natural beauties in the US, I have been hearing from people that Las Vegas could be termed a man-made beauty. In fact a colleague of mine tried very hard to dissuade me from making a trip to Grand Canyon and asked me to visit Vegas instead. So when I was told that the CES conference was to be held in Las Vegas on Jan 9th, I jumped at the chance. Only a month back, I had driven to LA and had been to Universal Studios (awesome place !!). Las Vegas was about 6 hours away by car and my mother was getting bored taking turns looking at my face and the book. So I decided to drive down and save my company some big bucks too!! The biggest expense in Las Vegas is only the accomodation and that issue was resolved when a friend offered to host us at her place. The added bonus was my friend’s cute little kid (who, by the way, was way more entertaining than any of the casinos there !!).

On Jan 8th, we set out from Phoenix AZ, at about 10 am in the morning. The drive was not a tough one. The only trouble is that it can get monotonous after some time and without company, it would have driven me crazy. The route was filled with miles and miles of dry land, interspersed here and there with every variety of cactus that you have heard of and not heard of !!

Since the trip was technically an official one, my conscience did not permit me to go out on day 1. Added to the misery of conscience was a ‘casual’ dinner meeting with people from different companies. Honestly the idea of sitting in an expensive restaurant, with a group of strangers, grinning stupidly is as appetizing as the idea of grazing in a vast pasture (I know the comparison is weird, but that is probably because of the kind of ‘food’ I had in the restaurant - a plateful of different boiled vegetables, with no salt or pepper). The only attractive part of the dinner plate was the medley of colours on it - green spinach (uncut and boiled), red tomatoes, white and pale green something, yellow corn, green asparagus, some more of green and white something. The only thing tougher than eating such food is to respond to comments such as ‘That looks good !!’, ‘Do you like your food’ etc, with a perfectly straight face !! After that comes clinking your glassful of water with other glasses of wine and toasting to God knows what (again pretending that the whole thing was normal !!)

Anyway, the bad part was over after a painful 2 hours. I had no strength to do anything else that night and simply crashed at my friend’s house. The one sensible thing (I think) I did was to ask my mother to explore one or two casinos with my friend while I was out having that fabulous dinner. As a result, she, my friend and the little princess - Nadhi were roaming around in MGM Grand - a very popular casino. An interesting story about this casino- The casino has a huge statue of a lion that is seen roaring in the MGM emblem. Apparently this lion is in memory of one that lived in the casino till a few months back. Its death happened like this. One day, my friend, her husband and Nadhi were out roaming around in the MGM Grand casino. Nadhi being only a year old, saw the lion and called it bow-bow (to her any four legged animal is bow-bow) and the lion apparently dropped down dead, incapable of bearing the insult of being called a dog !! There are sentries posted at MGM Grand who keep an eye on Nadhi these days and they have put off the plan to get another live lion till Nadhi grows up or at least learns to differentiate between a lion and a dog!!

The whole of 9th was spent in the conference and it was only after about 8:30 pm that night that we decided to step out. All the big casinos are on a street called Las Vegas Boulevard and every casino there is a work of art. Life begins after 9 pm on this road (called the strip). Since there was no way that we could cover all the casinos on a single night, we decided to visit 3 of them - The Venetian, Paris and Bellagio (remember Oceans 11?).

Even before we could get off the car, we noticed that the famous fountains outside ‘The Bellagio’ had been turned on. This time they were dancing to the famous song by Elvis Presley called ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (Long live Las Vegas !) I have heard about the famous fountains in Brindavan Gardens in Mysore, but have never seen them. This fountain show was brilliant. There is a bridge on the road which provides a beautiful view of the fountains. Lovers of Oceans 11 will remember them from the final scene of the movie. (I have a beautiful video of the entire show but cannot upload it because of the size !) This show is supposed to repeat every 15 minutes and we decided to watch the next one too before proceeding to the casinos.

Each casino has a theme and is usually named after the theme. For example, the Venetian is built with the theme of Venice. As a result the entire decor inside is that of Venice. We had decided to simply look around and not gamble under any circumstance. After going around the casino floor, my friend took us upstairs where there is a shopping mall. And surprise ! All of a sudden, we had gone back in time !! No, I am not talking about traveling back a few centuries !! We had traveled back a couple of hours ! The ceiling upstairs is designed to resemble the evening sky and everything, including the dim lighting, convinced those inside that the time was about 4-5 pm !! The next surprise was that similar to the real Venice, there are small rivers in the center with gondolas floating in them. The boatmen go around singing songs in Italian. Our little lady was waving to all of them like they were old friends.

Our next trip was to Paris (the casino). As you would have already guessed, the theme of this casino was, what else - Paris ! Outside is a replica of the Eiffel Tower. The casino hall here has a decor similar to that of the top floor in Venetian, i.e., a false ceiling designed to look like the evening sky. The entire casino hall is designed like a street in Paris, complete with artificial trees reaching the sky (ceiling !). The buildings around appear like French houses (this comparison is purely based on speculation and also on some French movies I have seen !). Roads are paved. Overall an interesting experience. A not so pleasant experience was the sight of numerous middlemen holding out photographs of women to all those passing by. I am not sure if it was illegal, but it certainly did not appear to be so !

We then left to Bellagio. It was already about 12 midnight and we simply looked at the decorations inside the casino. Due to the approaching (or already past) Chinese new year, the decorations were oriental. The Bellagio looks as beautiful from the inside, as from the outside. One interesting thing about all the casinos is the chandeliers in them. There are literally 100s of them and each one is better than the other. My friend told me that she would frequently count the number of chandeliers in each casino and wonder at the money spent on them. Coming to think of it, I think the money spent in decorating each casino for a month, would probably feed the hungry of a third-world country. But then, who said life was fair?

Spending too much time on the casino floors is a sure-shot way to get lung cancer, even if you are not a smoker ! Liquor is free on the floor. I also marveled the talent of the waitresses or their dress makers to stretch a tiny piece of cloth to its limits and call it a dress !

The next day was packing time. We set off back to AZ and were greeted by the familiar sight of cacti and dry barren lands. The contrast between Vegas and these lands almost hurt my eyes ! To sum up the experience, I thought Las Vegas or more specifically the strip in Las Vegas was one of the most beautiful sights in the US. It is better not to think too much about the reasons for the beauty and the fairness or unfairness behind them and simply indulge onself.

Given below are some of the pictures I took during the trip. This time, I know the make of the camera. It is Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8. (The pictures are not in sequence because our site has some weird way of sequencing files as they are uploaded!)

Happy Chinese New Year ! (Inside the Bellagio)