Viva Las Vegas
30/11/2008
We’re back from Vegas. We stayed in a Vegas version of a motel (AKA Circus Circus), and I guess there are some things you just can’t be stingey with. A Vegas hotel is one of them.
I guess we made two fatal errors: (1) driving 500 miles for Thanksgiving (2) staying somewhere cheap once we got there.
Our first roadtrip in years started with me desperately trying to find ways for my plants to feed themselves for 3 days. I am pleased to say that the plants did quite well. A few had to be moved outdoors, and I think the weather was in my favour because it was rainy for the first two days. The indoor plants were either potted and moved into little troughs filled with water (that way they feed themselves via osmosis), and seedlings were transferred to a plastic box with water. When I got back the bulbs I planted sprouted, my teacup violet grew out a few more leaves, and my little tomato sprouts grew out their real leaves. I should’ve done this ages ago.
Anyway, next part of the journey involved driving to get gas at Costco for our trip. The lines at Costco should’ve been indication of things to come, and I spent 20 minutes waiting in line for cheap gas (aka petrol for you lot at home). It was worth it, because it was cheaper than any other gas station we found on the way, even through middle-of-nowhere-California.
I picked KF from work, and then started on our trip. The 101 we took for the first leg was traffic-logged with folks with the same idea as us. We were stuck in traffic for about 1/3 of the way. The other 1/3, we were stuck behind big-rigs on 1 lane country “highways”. The trip was to have taken 9 hours from San Francisco, but we took a 10 hours – from San Jose.
Once I got to the hotel lobby, I regretted my decision to go cheap on the hotel. The lobby was dark and rank, and there was a line checking in at 2am. The elevator (lift) from the hotel garage (covered multi-story carpark) smelled of puke. The room was a little more than a motel room. Carpet that looked like it needed a good shampoo, bad finishing, dusty bed cover, a creaky bathtub, an super old showerhead. Around the hotel it was really crowded and smokey, and we could smell the smoke in the room. In fact, thanksgiving was probably a bad time to be there, it was crowded everywhere, and there were kids yelling and knocking things about the rooms next door. Not exactly a relaxing holiday spot.
We did have a good time walking around The Strip. We’d park in one of the hotels and walk down the strip, checking out the opulence and sheer size that pretty much defines Las Vegas. At each hotel I’d say to KF – next time we’ll stay here – knowing full well one night there costs as much as the whole 3 nights it cost us to stay at Circus Circus.
We started back for home bright and early on Saturday in a bid to get ahead of the holiday crush back on Sunday. There was a fair amount of traffic as well, but for the most part it moved. The only real congestion happened just a little outside Las Vegas, around the desert. We were wondering if there was an accident when KF started going – woah, bird! Traffic stopped, apparently, because there was a wild emu running around the freeway. It eventually ran off to the shoulder where the desert was.
And that was our trip to Vegas. I’m not sure I’d wanna drive there again. But I so wanna stay in the pyramid hotel the next time around.
