We
stayed a few nights in the relatively inexpensive (for a hotel on the
"Strip") Imperial
Palace Hotel. It was not a good experience, especially at first. To get into
the hotel, it was necessary to enter what looked like a narrow alley that led to a
car circulation area from which you could enter the casino. Getting to
elevators or the check-in/out desk involved a very long walk through the
smoky and VERY noisy casino. The first night they put us in a very
unpleasant smoking room, though we had booked non-smoking. After that, we
were about 100 rooms down the hall from the elevator, making for a
considerable hike to
get to our room. Finding the dining
areas was also interesting, involving hidden stairs to
move half levels, then taking an
escalator to get where we wanted to be. It's worth spending more money on
better hotels - and as we visited these, you could tell the level of quality
by the higher quality of music and the lower level of noise and smoke. The
Imperial Palace did have one very fine feature: an incredible display of 250
cars, many very rare, and almost all for sale (David particularly liked the '33 Pierce Arrow,
shown in the second to last photo). We got free passes on the hotel web site for
this.
Bob
liked Las Vegas more than David did (who found the continuous noise, visual
"clutter", and crowds upsetting). Each casino/hotel has an
annoying exterior female "voice-over" in addition to the casino noises
that extend out onto the sidewalks, combining with the street noises from
the heavy and fast traffic. One runs a gauntlet of people offering tickets
to strip shows. Food is no longer cheap on the "Strip", but some
hotels still have food courts, there is a McDonalds (if you can get in), and
the buffets are often reasonable in price. Water is not free anywhere, and
bottled water is not cheap (bring a collapsible cup). The Imperial Palace car
collection and some of the other sights - particularly the indoor streets,
squares, and canals at the Venetian Hotel (photos 1 through 4), with the
singing gondoliers (we saw these three times, and it was hard not to smile
continuously at this pleasant nonsense…); the Bellagio glass ceiling
(photos 8 and 9), garden, and water fountains; the waterfalls, volcano, and
birds at the Mirage (photos 7, 12, and 13); the pirate attack (photos 5 and
6) at Treasure Island; the Liberace museum; and some of the other
attractions were fun for both of us. We
guess that if you like the noise and distractions, and are into amazing
things (just the thought of riding the 160-foot jump into the air or the
roller-coaster rides on TOP of the Stratosphere Tower, the highest tower in
the US, gives David the willies!), Las Vegas is like no other place. And neither
of us bet more than a dollar total!
The
return trip was not as smooth as the trip in. We were both happy to
have taken this trip of more than 3000 miles - but David has now spent FAR too much time preparing this
web page (about twice the time it took to take the trip itself...).
