From the Hoover Dam we drove down to the city of Henderson where we spent the night.
The female Marionette at the start of The Strip
Henderson was about 20kms from Las Vegas (LV) Airport where Trevor and I had to be the following morning at 09:00 for our flight to San Francisco (SF). We booked into our hotel which was excellent and a great advantage was that there was a self-service laundry facility almost directly across from our room. This meant that we could go to SF with no dirty laundry.
Once we were settled in and the laundry done we drove in to LV for the evening. So many people expressed their jealousy that we would be visiting this famous (or should it be infamous) city. Well, we are not gamblers so we didn’t go for that purpose but we felt that as we had come this far it would be worth a stopover. I was not impressed.
At the start of The Strip
We walked quite a distance from the carpark to the Old Strip to see the lights and activities. First we found a restaurant where we had a great buffet dinner and then went back out to walk ‘The Strip’. One of the restaurants we passed had a big sign saying that anyone over 325lbs could eat free!
There was a whole section which had what appeared to be a roof over the street lit up with every colour of the rainbow and every now and then an advert appeared within the lights. There was also a zipline for any one brave enough to fly over the huge crowds.
The brightly lit street cover
There are 2 on the zipline just past the ‘tree’
Besides the lights from the street and the casinos, of which there were many, there were dozens of buskers of every sort. There were the regular musicians and mimes but, what I battled with, was the number of almost naked males and females of every age, size and hue. Added to this were the many small children out with their parents who seemed to be quite OK with their children seeing this.
These 2 ladies were rather overdressed for busking
One of the casinos on The Strip
The crowds were big and we noticed them congregating at a particular intersection where we saw that a stage had been set up and bands had started to play. There were dozena of security personnel and it was well-controlled. If you wanted to become deaf overnight then I guess standing in that intersection was one of the best places to give it a try.
The crowd at the concert
After a couple of hours we returned to the car and drove down the New Strip which is where all the big, new hotels and casinos are to be found. Here there were relatively few pedestrians but there were plenty of vehicles, expensive vehicles, though so moving through was a fairly slow business. This did give the opportunity for taking some photos but even then it was not easy being at night and in the car.
The Luzor Hotel with Sphinx
The Mandalay Hotel
Caesar’s Palace with its Romanesque statues
Between the 2 Strips is a very tall tower known as the Stratosphere. It houses an hotel, casino and restaurants but it is best known as a viewing tower. It stands 1149ft tall and is the highest building west of the Mississippi. When it was opened in 1996 it was the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere but there have been a number of other tall buildings raised since then.
The Stratosphere
Well, that was our visit to LV and all I can say is “been there, done that, don’t want a T-shirt”.
