Las Vegas

What a day yesterday. We went with Sundance Helicopters on a flight to the Grand Canyon. It is difficult choosing a company to do this with - almost EVERY Grand Canyon flight company proudly declares themselves to be "The official" Grand Canyon flight company. We saw one place that delcared itself "The official Las Vegas Tourist Information Centre" but the woman in there made it obvious she was a hawker within 30 seconds of opening her mouth. Finally we saw the a booth that advertised Sundance, and I remembered that I had pounched on a couple in the carpark outside Champions on my way to work one day because he was wearing a "Sundance Helicopters Las Vegas" T-Shirt, and they had done tours with htme and thought they were the best.


They certainly seemed to give the best air time. They are the only (so they say - who knows?) Grand Canyon company with an office at McCarran airport, so they fly from here, rather than putting you on a bus for an hour or more to get to the airport the others use. Some of the packages we had been looking at had flight times of around 15-20 minutes. With Sundance we had an hour an a half, so we not only saw the Grand Canyon, but all of Vegas and The Strip as well.

Last night we took the bus to Downtown - the original Vegas - for the Freemont Street Experience light show. What a difference to The Strip! I mean, The Strip is great and all, but Freemont Street is more .... genuine, I guess. It seemed to have more of a Christmas Carnival atmosphere than the over-sexed Strip, and there are NO hawkers guaranteeing you a girl in 20 minutes - who are prolific on The Strip.

We discovered, too, that food prices Downtown are half, or less, of on The Strip. Those all-you-can-eat buffets on The Strip start at $29.99 - we saw one Downtown for $8.88. Hot dogs that coast $4.50 on The Stip will be $1.50 Downtown, and main meals (that the Americans call entrees) that go for $30-35 on The Strip will be around $15-20 Downtown. It's worth the $5 on the bus to go there to eat.

We have been into some of the mega-hotels for a look around. The Luxor, with it's Egyptian theme, Sunset (Mediterranean), Excalibur where we're staying is, of course, Medieval, New York New York speaks for itself. Today we're going to kick of with a full loop on the bus trip so I can video, then start at the North end of The Strip and work our way back down. We are definitely going for a boat ride on the gondolas at The Venetian - $16, but cheaper than getting to Venice and looks identical, except that the water is clean.

It's overcast again today - it was yesterday, but we were fine in T-shirts. The Americans all had on sweatshirts, jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves. Funny.

We have sucummbed to the gambling bug - Mum has lost $3, and I have lost 50c! We both put in $1 into three different machines (a funky Time Machine that had lots of bells and whistles and shook the chair), a one-armed bandit so we could pull the traditional lever, and a card machine so Mum could play blackjack and I could play poker. I won $2.50 on the Time Machine, for which you print out a voucher. I can cash it in another machine, but might keep it as a memento instead. The gamblers back home would go nuts over here - NZ poker machines are so antiquated compared to what some of the ones here do.

More photos from Las Vegas.