Las Vegas

We had the morning in Visalia before our flight. Claire had spotted a store called Beverly’s Fabrics and wanted to investigate. She hit the jackpot, fabric she wanted and the prices were so cheap in comparison to Australia. We now have a weight problem with our luggage for the trip back home even though we brought some carry-on luggage as well.

The only airline operating out of Visalia was Great Lakes Airlines. Of all the people we encountered in our travels nobody had heard of them, which was a little worrying (though Claire reckoned they would have heard of them if they had crashed). The plane was a very small old twin engine propeller job. That’s the pilots instrument panel you can see at the end of the corridor.

The flight over the mountains to Las Vegas was not smooth but interesting. Claire’s colour at the end of the flight did contain a hint of green. On the eastern side of the mountains we encountered a barren desert landscape but every now and then these strange circles of some crop. Somehow they had found water to irrigate these circles of something.

We landed in Vegas, made our way to the hotel and went in search of the Grand Canyon tour we wanted to do. I turned out if we wanted to do the tour the next day we would have to get moving at 4.00am. So we booked for a reasonable time the following day, giving us the rest of the evening and one full day to explore Vegas.

What a town, full of all sorts of people, some weird and the super weird. Enormous casinos themed in all sorts of ways. The first night we didn’t stray too far but made up for it by staying out all of the next day. It was incredibly hot so that we found ourselves exploring a number of casinos from the inside working our way along the strip only ducking out into the sun for short periods. The following pictures are a small selection of what we found.

Inside the Venetian.

The Palazzo.

Inside Caesars Palace.

The Fountains at the Bellagio.

Excalibur

We did gamble, well Peter mainly. He won a little on the first night and then while we were visiting some of the venues the next day tried his luck on a few of the craps tables for $20-40  each. On one occasion turning $20 into $300. Over the next few days giving it back slowly. We ended up under a hundred dollars down for the full visit. Not bad.

Certainly an interesting place, but not one we feel the need to visit again.