Bar-top dancing, pirate wenches, pyro, magic, a 300lb Elvis, glitz and glamour, sex and seediness, joy, desperation, cocktails and CSI and a whole lotta money that's ready to burn. As the sign says, welcome to Las Vegas...
Bright light city
The Bellagio is so enormous you need a map to find your way around. The guest elevator is 'just past the botanical garden conservatory (below) and the chocolate fountain.' This is somewhat hard to take in at midnight Vegas time (as the party's just starting) or six in the morning according to our body clocks, which means we've now been up for roughly 28 hours. Where the hell are we? Willy Wonka's factory? The enormous, blousy, Martian-like glass flowers blooming on the ceiling and the gigantic figure of Confuscious (both above) are messing with our heads. Still, our 'standard room' seems luxury to us, and best of all, it has a lovely big comfy bed.
Next day we discover that actually the Bellagio, overblown, nouveau riche and huge as it is, is actually really quite classy and sophisticated when compared to the vast sprawling megatropolis that is Caesar's Palace next door, the über-kitsch Paris and Venice, with their respective mini Eiffel Tower and aquamarine canals (below) or Treaure Island, which boasts its own 'siren show'. Nuff said. During the day we stagger about, getting lost amongst jingly jangly slot machines, blinded by the bling and deafened by the piped music which blasts out indiscriminately everywhere, amazed by the fact that there are escalators outdoors.
In the evening we catch a cab to Rio's to see Penn and Teller, who are amazing. I drink half a pint of wine from a plastic cup and we drop $20 on the roulette wheel and manage somehow to double it. Oh well, according to the 'gambling lesson' we stumble across on our TV, there's only 1% strategy involved anyway. Viva Las Vegas!
Love me tender
If there's one thing they know how to do in Vegas it's wedding hair. Even if, like everything else here, it costs you an arm and a leg. Still, if one is to tread in the footsteps of Jon Bon Jovi up the Graceland Chapel aisle, one has to make an effort.
We were driven to the chapel in a white stretch limo, past the glittering mega resorts and along to the seedier, CSI end of the Strip, where you can rent rooms by the hour and adult movies are advertised as an incentive to stay there, along with the pool (ew!). Still, the chapel itself is very sweet (and considerably nicer-looking than its somewhat run-down compadres we drive past, even if we do stumble across a hungover-looking couple in the entrance, who are so going to regret this in two weeks time) and the lovely staff do everything to ensure our special five minutes is just that. Yup, the ceremony is short - but sweet and surprisingly romantic, and we get to say Elvis's special vows. As Molly on the front desk predicted, we buy the DVD.
Grand Canyon
Last day in Las Vegas and what better way to spend it than be taking a helicopter ride across the Nevada desert to the Grand Canyon? Neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before and what with Ian's vertigo and my tendency to motion sickness. it could have gone badly wrong. But fortunately we're made of stronger stuff than we thought, and despite the odd nauseous wobble as the chopper tilted sideways, almost tipping us out onto the sprawling, alien, rock landscape, we are fine.
And it is simply breathtaking, soaring over vast sapphire blue lakes with marinas (!! in the desert!!) and into the Canyon itself. Which is simply awesome: jutting layers of sandstone, limestone and granite, rolling down twoards the muddy ribbon of the Colorado River below.
On the way back, we fly over the cliff Thelma and Louise drive off and the Valley of Fire, home to countless Star Trek movies, before barrelling along parallel to the Strip, taking in again the mind-boggling massiveness of the hotels here.
We have lunch in the Harley Davidson cafe (huge plates of food, sweet waitress, and I get to sit on a Harley) then take a quick trip up the Strip to New York New York (which isn't nearly as fun and cheesy as Paris).
The evening we reserve for pure Vegas kitsch: Big Elvis's show in Bill's Gambling Saloon; bar top dancing in a half empty rock pub; the total rubbishness of the celebrity non-looky-likely Dealertainers at the Imperial Palace (no Alice Cooper either - boo!); scantily clad wenches gyrating on board a pirate ship to a blaring '80s soft rock soundtrack at the Sirens of TI show and dinner in a restaurant called Kahunaville that serves 'volcanic' cocktails full of dry ice. Viva Las Vegas? Oooh yeah...
Tinsel Town
No-one would go the Rainbow Bar and Grill for the food. But, soggy oven chips and pasta'n'pasta sauce not withstanding, it's still cool to take a seat in this bastion of American rock history on Sunset. Our hotel, the super swanky London West Hollywood, is just around the corner. Our room has a sofa, kitchen, balcony (with view - see below) and a bathroom you can play baseball in, as the song goes. Tonight we almost could be rock stars...
After the Rainbow we bypass the Roxy and Whisky-a-go-go (nothing much is happening at the former, whilst the strains of some dodgy sounding thrash are emanating from the latter) in favour of Johnny's Viper Room. Disappointingly, it's not actually at all supercool or intimidating (why is that somehow disappointing?) but full of preppy looking kids drinking over-priced beer. Still, we get to see a pretty cool LA band called Astra Heights, who combine the laid back glamour of Hollywood with the retro Lahndan cool of the Kinks, so that makes a pretty good end to the evening.
Next morning we have pancakes in Mel's Diner while feeding quarters into the tabletop jukebox - proper America at last! Then we start the long trek up the Hollywood Boulevard to Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where we see the celebrated Walk of Fame and Alice and Johnny's stars... and, of course, the Hoff's...
The Hollywood Wax Museum is the worst waxworks museum ever - even worse than the one in Budapest that uses shop mannequins. A pigeon-toed John Wayne astride a pantomime dobbin like Bernie Clifton riding an ostrich (below) is just one of the truly terrible dummies we get to see there...
On the way back to the hotel we pass the Guitar Centre Rock Walk of Fame (the shop itself is a wonderful museum of beautiful axes, incidentally) where I get up close and personal with Alice's handprints.
And, well, that's it for the American leg of our four week second honeymoon. A plate of nachos in a cheesy 'Wild West' bar and it's on to the airport. It's certainly been fun, and although I'm not sure we'll ever go back to Vegas or LA, it's definitely an experience everyone should have.
Next stop Auckland...
