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I swear, I hadn't been back in DC for ten minutes before I got my first mosquito bite. A nice welcome home from this fucking swamp.
Vegas was a lot of fun. My sister, DustBunny, and her husband, RoadRunner, were very gracious and took me all over the Strip. They live about four miles away from the main action, so distance-wise, it wasn't that far of a trek. Traffic-wise, however, is an entirely different story. I ended up losing a grand total of $2 at the casinos. Guess how much I bet? Hey, $2 can stretch a long ways on the penny slots. Instead of betting, we spent most of our time trolling various restaurants and bars of the casinos.
If I ever inherit millions of dollars, I will go spend them at the Four Seasons Mandalay Bay. Holy crap, was that place gorgeous. Their restaurant, aureole (hee), has a four-story wine rack. When you order a bottle of wine, they send what they call a "wine angel" - a woman in a catsuit - zooming up on pulleys and wires to select the correct bottle. Their meals were outside our price range, so we slummed it at the bar with glasses of wine and free bowls of popcorn (which our server very graciously refilled without comment).
We heard rumors of the Mandalay Bay's wave pools and water slides, but since it cost $150 for a one-day pass to their pools, we had to let them go uninvestigated. Instead, we went to the Hilton for their Sunday beach party. You'd think that wearing a bathing suit would dissuade you from hitting the free nacho bar. You'd be wrong. They had a bikini contest where they were offering a first place award worth nearly $1000 (half cash, half prizes), and let me tell you, the girls competing in it were CUT-THROAT. Every time I went into the bathroom, there was at least one woman on the phone in there, plotting and conniving about which thong to wear, how much skin to show off, which judge to be friendly to, etc etc. They take their bikini contests seriously in Vegas.
Overall, having spent a grand total of four days there, I feel well-placed to judge the whole city. But I can't decide how I feel about it. Listing pros and cons might help me out:
1. Pro: Buffets as far as the eye can see.
Con: An unusually large percentage of the visiting population is so huge that they can only move thanks to Rascals rented from the casinos.
2. Pro: Slot machines everywhere. Cha-ching cha-ching!
Con: Slot machines everywhere. Even at the grocery store, which is kind of sad.
3. Pro: Lots of job opportunities.
Con:...If you're a female under 30, a size zero, and have fake breasts.
4. Pro: Fastest-growing city in the nation!
Con: True, there are new condo developments strewn about the city's landscape. However, DustBunny informs me that every loving last one of them is sold out even before the construction has been completed. "Starting in the low-100s"? Not likely, or at least, not for long.
5. Pro: Dry, arid desert environment precludes mosquitoes from making your life a living hell.
Con: Same environment allows flies (and their maggots) to multiple like crazy.
6. Pro: Omnipresent sunshine.
Con: My god, the leathery skin on some of the locals.
So it's a toss-up about the city itself. However, no question about the trip in general: spending time with my sister and brother-in-law was an absolute blast. Now, I'd better get some work done before I collapse from the red-eye.
Vegas was a lot of fun. My sister, DustBunny, and her husband, RoadRunner, were very gracious and took me all over the Strip. They live about four miles away from the main action, so distance-wise, it wasn't that far of a trek. Traffic-wise, however, is an entirely different story. I ended up losing a grand total of $2 at the casinos. Guess how much I bet? Hey, $2 can stretch a long ways on the penny slots. Instead of betting, we spent most of our time trolling various restaurants and bars of the casinos.
If I ever inherit millions of dollars, I will go spend them at the Four Seasons Mandalay Bay. Holy crap, was that place gorgeous. Their restaurant, aureole (hee), has a four-story wine rack. When you order a bottle of wine, they send what they call a "wine angel" - a woman in a catsuit - zooming up on pulleys and wires to select the correct bottle. Their meals were outside our price range, so we slummed it at the bar with glasses of wine and free bowls of popcorn (which our server very graciously refilled without comment).
We heard rumors of the Mandalay Bay's wave pools and water slides, but since it cost $150 for a one-day pass to their pools, we had to let them go uninvestigated. Instead, we went to the Hilton for their Sunday beach party. You'd think that wearing a bathing suit would dissuade you from hitting the free nacho bar. You'd be wrong. They had a bikini contest where they were offering a first place award worth nearly $1000 (half cash, half prizes), and let me tell you, the girls competing in it were CUT-THROAT. Every time I went into the bathroom, there was at least one woman on the phone in there, plotting and conniving about which thong to wear, how much skin to show off, which judge to be friendly to, etc etc. They take their bikini contests seriously in Vegas.
Overall, having spent a grand total of four days there, I feel well-placed to judge the whole city. But I can't decide how I feel about it. Listing pros and cons might help me out:
1. Pro: Buffets as far as the eye can see.
Con: An unusually large percentage of the visiting population is so huge that they can only move thanks to Rascals rented from the casinos.
2. Pro: Slot machines everywhere. Cha-ching cha-ching!
Con: Slot machines everywhere. Even at the grocery store, which is kind of sad.
3. Pro: Lots of job opportunities.
Con:...If you're a female under 30, a size zero, and have fake breasts.
4. Pro: Fastest-growing city in the nation!
Con: True, there are new condo developments strewn about the city's landscape. However, DustBunny informs me that every loving last one of them is sold out even before the construction has been completed. "Starting in the low-100s"? Not likely, or at least, not for long.
5. Pro: Dry, arid desert environment precludes mosquitoes from making your life a living hell.
Con: Same environment allows flies (and their maggots) to multiple like crazy.
6. Pro: Omnipresent sunshine.
Con: My god, the leathery skin on some of the locals.
So it's a toss-up about the city itself. However, no question about the trip in general: spending time with my sister and brother-in-law was an absolute blast. Now, I'd better get some work done before I collapse from the red-eye.
posted by Her Ladyship @ 11:12 AM
2 Comments:
At 12:42 PM,
Stuart Ressler, M.D. said…
Hey, I used to live there! Just my senior year in high school though, and that was in the late 80's. I guess by today's standards it was a quiet little village back then..but a strange, strange place anyway.
Josh
At 12:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
You can spend some major dough with little or no gambling involved! I recently spent $4K in 4 days just going to shows, spas and eating at shi shi joints. I usually spend less than half the $$ in the French Riviera for 2 weeks.
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