Vegas, baby!

Small, understated fountain

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Finally.  The denouement to our Independence Day hustle through the National Parks - a weekend in Vegas!   After a week of having been on the road, hiking our way through Moab, Zion, the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon, we were both looking somewhat...um... rustic, so it was going to be a pleasant change to get all spangled up, ready for a night out on the town!

I'd booked us in for a couple of nights at the Westin and - fortunately - hadn't effed it up this time (yey for Starwoods points!).   It had taken us about 4 hours to drive to Vegas from the Grand Canyon, so it was high time for a quick nap before our first foray out into the Casino Craziness (the Westin Heavenly beds are just soooooo comfy - there's just no point trying to resist).

The main entrance foyer in the Venetian

Duly napped and rested and room serviced, we decided we'd take it relatively easy for our first night out in Vegas.  We were originally going to go to the Stratosphere to take some piccies of the Strip from the top of their tower and maybe have a ride in one of their roller coasters, but it was stupidly expensive and all of the rides looked too scary for our liking, so we junked that idea in favor of some free people-watching at the Venetian.  The Venetian is a stunning hotel, as you can see from the pictures below, and it also symbolizes the craziness of excess that is Vegas.  Modeled as it is, obviously, after Venice, they recreated the canals, so that you can go for a gondola ride, complete with chappy in stripey sweater, straw boater hat and cheesy Cornetto music.  However, this being Vegas, building a canal on the ground floor would be far too pedestrian and sensible.  Oh no - they went ahead and built in on the THIRD floor!  How crazy is that?  But, as you tell from the pics, this isn't a hotel that does anything in half measure - its really very impressive in a mildly-tacky-but-I'll-overlook-it-this-time kind of a way.  I am quite fond of the fake sky on the ceiling of the Canal floor, where the clouds scud across the sky and the light changes to match the fake time of day.

The main drag of the Canal Shoppes

Almost as impressive were the packs and packs of Hen nights and Stag do's that were out roaming the hotel floors, looking for mischief and generally getting up to no good.  Their fashion choices had made me feel 100% better about my own currently slightly chubby sense of style, as compared to some of the women tottering around, I was impeccably dressed.  We watched the parade of trashiness on show with  mounting incredulity (I think we probably need to get out more) until we spotted one girl who was just so brazen, it took Vegas Slutty to a whole new level!  I actually ran after her to get a picture as it was just so spectacular (its probably a good thing it turned out blurry).  It wasn't that she was a size 20 girl squeezing into a size 10 frock that didn't quite cover her arse cheeks.  It was that we were able to get a full, unfettered view of said arse-cheeks as she wasn't wearing any underwear.  At all.  Who knows if that's how she'd started the evening out (maybe her arse had actually eaten her knickers) but - if she was aware of her nether garment shortfall - it certainly wasn't slowing her down one iota.

Understated lighting for sale

Nuff (muff) said.

Its a pain in the arse trying to get a Cornetto here.  Blokes
on boats keep nicking them.

Just like the real thing.

Mumsie - for some reason, I saw these
and thought of you....

Umm...why?

Following such a traumatic experience, the only way to recover was to head for the nearest champagne bar, stat, and get our Moet on.  After several false starts (honestly, how hard can it be to find a bar the directions to which are "take a left after the giant purple stiletto"?), we finally found it and settled in for some more civilized people-watching, as well as a little light gaming.

Champagne?  Check!
Sufficient ambient light to see?  Not so much....

My budget for the evening - a whopping FIVE DOLLARS!  Oh yes.  I know how to roll in this town.  Now, can someone please explain to me how the hell this game works?  Or, actually, any of them, in fact?  How on earth are you supposed to know which buttons to press and in which order or when not to press them?  How on earth are you supposed to know how much to bet, how much you could win and what it costs each time you spin the wheel?  No wonder the house always wins as these games are completely unfathomable!!  I had absolutely no idea what i was doing, so after a few minutes of pushing buttons randomly (I generally chose the one that was blinking at me the loudest), I was pleasantly surprised when I "cashed out" to find that I'd increased my original stake from $5 to $17!!!  WHOO-HOO!!!  A profit of 240% in 10 mins!  That's 1900% an hour!!  Roughly.  Extrapolating out, as you do after a glass or two of champagne, if I continued to reinvest and make money at the same pace and profit margin, by my reckoning, I should be able to retire by 11.53pm that very evening.

Going All In with a fiver...

Whoo-hoo!!!  After 20 mins of randomly pushing
flashing buttons, I win!!  YEAH!!!  $17!!! 

Or not.

Alas, I think there must have been a flaw in my calculations somewhere as my path to easy riches was brought to an abrupt halt as Lady Luck abandoned me to the fishes, and I promptly lost it all.  Ah well, tomorrow is another day... 

And with that crushing loss, we decided to call it a night and retire relatively early at just gone midnight.  So long, Venetian, and thanks for all the fish.  Not.

Randoms.

For some guys in Vegas, we suspected this particular game
 represented their most meaningful relationship with a woman

Feeling the force....

Gambling our ill-gotten gains.... and losing.  

Any idea at all how this thing works?

Squandering my last dollar.   No fish gold for me.