Las Vegas - The SIN City!!!!
Glimpses of Las Vegas started few miles before the actual spot. Suddenly, we found in the midst of densely decorated buildings and dazzling lights all around. At a distance, we were able to make up that Las Vegas, the SIN City is arriving. We had a pit stop during which I got time to quickly change my T-Shirt (need to be trendy, isn't it?), quickly purchased a shade (sunglasses) and went into a trendy srini, not known to myself ;)
We missed the Fountain Show by a whisker, though we did see it from a distance. Then we drove through and parked at Rio, very famous for it's dance shows (dont let your imagination fly) ;) However, even that too was over....was bit disappointing and they said next one would be at 11 AM Monday morning. We decided to move on, and on the way saw replicas of Eiffel Tower, Egypt's Pyramids, Statue of Liberty, one overtaking another in sheer beauty and dazzling lighting!!! We had a reservation at Tropicana Hotel, which is one of the good hotels around. Las Vegas in it's entirety is just a street (also called STRIP, dont ask me why it is called so? ;) ) was just tooooooooooo good!!!!! I got the first glimpse of a casino as soon as we entered the hotel room. It was like around 1000s of machines lined up with different games (777s, Dice Games, and many many slot machines). We said, first lets fresh up, throw our luggage in the room, and then just hit the road by walk. After we hit the road, it was pretty clear, everyone had different intentions ;) places of interest. Some wanted to booze while some wanted to party. So we decided to split up and just roam around as if no tomorrow exists for us.
I was sticking with Gaurav, but soon realized I was all alone!!! I was dropping in one hotel after another (as all entrances are free) and was thrilled by each hotel's offerings (i mean, the architectural offering) :P However, one thing that I noted was that, for BIG hotel's entrance to the shows (not sure what they showed as I never made it in), we had to be formally dressed and should have our passport with us. With me, not looking any more than 23 (though was 28) :P, I had more difficult time, believe me!! So I decided to just move on the road and fortunately caught Gaurav on the way. It was good to have a friend around, else not sure where Mr. Hyde would have taken me (for those of you who didnt know Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, better read the story). We decided not to get lost again, as the city had "lots of distractions" :P We then made in, even without a passport to a pub and hit the dance floor. I danced till I felt it was "great" (there were ofcourse lots of ladies interested, but me, nayyyy, you guess what I would have done :P) and finally popped out of the pub.
Then it was time for some purchases like Vegas Dices, Vegas Shirts (lotsss of them) and plenty of memontoes, Calendars, CDs (i mean calendar CDs) :P and so on. BY the time we reached our hotel room, it was 5 AM. I was not surprised that other folks were snoring!!! Thank God for giving me good stamina to enjoy the lights of Las Vegas and almost covered much of the LV Strip.
Got up in the morning, and we decided on the way back to SFO, there would be 2 pitstops. One at Rio, to see the Dance Show (which we missed last night) and another to the most attracted place in Las Vegas, The Stratosphere. First, the Rio Dance Show. Being there at 11 Am, the crowd was relatively lesser. The speciality of Rio show was that after the end of the show, the chief dancer and others throw Golden Beads to the watching public and whoever, is able to catch up, would sure be blessed with lady luck. With almost $40 dollars lost in my earlier night's gambling exercises, I was determined to make sure I have the lady luck on my side. I took a strategic point and was surprised that the chief dancer pinpointedly picked me up, made me dance few steps (repeating whatever she danced) :P and threw a wonderfully golden laced bead. WoWWWW!!! I made it, while all my other 5 friends were still looking out for them. Santosh, amongst them was luckiest, as he not only got 1 or 2 but 3 different bead chains :)
I immediately tossed another dollar coin into the slot machine, wearing this bead chain, and lo!!! you guessed it right, I made million dollar out of it (ooops, woke up out of that dream) and found my $1 bill too has been nicely gobbled up by the slot machine. That moves up the dollar count to 41. When enquired from others, they said they lost only 2 or 3 dollars!!!! I was however, satisfied that even when I had winning moments, I chose to just enjoy the day than thinking about how much money has been lost or won, and it was such a fun experiencing this!!!!
Stratosphere, the MUST visit in Las Vegas is a 115 storeyed (approx) building. You guessed it wrong (if at all you are a person who guesses what would be the next sentence) :) The lift starts at floor 1, and takes you straight to 112. There's no pit stops in between. We were told by the lift attendee that it travels 3 floors per second, and travels the entire stop in less than 35 seconds. The stop is in 112th floor. When you get out of that lift, you would see the entire Las Vegas, it's hillock boundaries and such a beautiful sight to behold, you believe me.
Now comes the fun part. At that height (112th floor), you have 3 rides. You should have bought tickets right at the ground floor, before you boarded the lift. I chose to play 2 of them as each ride was little costlier. The three rides included, taking you from 112th floor to 115th height level and showing you what gravity drop is :) Nerve racking. Second one was to have you sit on a slanted train like and taking you to the tip of the building and as if it asks, "if I drop you from here, what would happen"? Lungs in our mouth and only could be experienced!!! Last one was a horizontal merrigoround (like sitting on a horse which rotates fast in a circular fashion), except that the entire structure is in free air, means when you see down from whichever angle, you are seeing 112 floors down straight with naked eye. Just imagine, how we would have felt when sitting in those rides. It is such a thrilling experience that if you have to visit Las Vegas, dont go for just the SIN part of it, but go for the SPECIAL STRATOSPHERE effect!!!
Once made sure our entire visit was simply superb, we hit the road and targetted to reach SFO by early morning Tuesday to make ourselves available in the morning. Now, how can I forget the experience while almost we were approaching SFO. In true hollywood style, we saw a police cab vrooom by, and then there was second, and then third, oh my god!!! are we doing something wrong here? Did we miss some traffic rule? To top it, there was a police helicopter right above our vehicle, and we heaved a sigh of relief only when noticing one guy was arrested and was pulled over. The entire freeway (which does not have any traffic signal concept) was stalled for 10 mts in full. Only when we were allowed, did we realize this time, the US experience is simply SUPERB.
All my Las Vegas Photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/SinCityLV
We missed the Fountain Show by a whisker, though we did see it from a distance. Then we drove through and parked at Rio, very famous for it's dance shows (dont let your imagination fly) ;) However, even that too was over....was bit disappointing and they said next one would be at 11 AM Monday morning. We decided to move on, and on the way saw replicas of Eiffel Tower, Egypt's Pyramids, Statue of Liberty, one overtaking another in sheer beauty and dazzling lighting!!! We had a reservation at Tropicana Hotel, which is one of the good hotels around. Las Vegas in it's entirety is just a street (also called STRIP, dont ask me why it is called so? ;) ) was just tooooooooooo good!!!!! I got the first glimpse of a casino as soon as we entered the hotel room. It was like around 1000s of machines lined up with different games (777s, Dice Games, and many many slot machines). We said, first lets fresh up, throw our luggage in the room, and then just hit the road by walk. After we hit the road, it was pretty clear, everyone had different intentions ;) places of interest. Some wanted to booze while some wanted to party. So we decided to split up and just roam around as if no tomorrow exists for us.
I was sticking with Gaurav, but soon realized I was all alone!!! I was dropping in one hotel after another (as all entrances are free) and was thrilled by each hotel's offerings (i mean, the architectural offering) :P However, one thing that I noted was that, for BIG hotel's entrance to the shows (not sure what they showed as I never made it in), we had to be formally dressed and should have our passport with us. With me, not looking any more than 23 (though was 28) :P, I had more difficult time, believe me!! So I decided to just move on the road and fortunately caught Gaurav on the way. It was good to have a friend around, else not sure where Mr. Hyde would have taken me (for those of you who didnt know Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, better read the story). We decided not to get lost again, as the city had "lots of distractions" :P We then made in, even without a passport to a pub and hit the dance floor. I danced till I felt it was "great" (there were ofcourse lots of ladies interested, but me, nayyyy, you guess what I would have done :P) and finally popped out of the pub.
Then it was time for some purchases like Vegas Dices, Vegas Shirts (lotsss of them) and plenty of memontoes, Calendars, CDs (i mean calendar CDs) :P and so on. BY the time we reached our hotel room, it was 5 AM. I was not surprised that other folks were snoring!!! Thank God for giving me good stamina to enjoy the lights of Las Vegas and almost covered much of the LV Strip.
Got up in the morning, and we decided on the way back to SFO, there would be 2 pitstops. One at Rio, to see the Dance Show (which we missed last night) and another to the most attracted place in Las Vegas, The Stratosphere. First, the Rio Dance Show. Being there at 11 Am, the crowd was relatively lesser. The speciality of Rio show was that after the end of the show, the chief dancer and others throw Golden Beads to the watching public and whoever, is able to catch up, would sure be blessed with lady luck. With almost $40 dollars lost in my earlier night's gambling exercises, I was determined to make sure I have the lady luck on my side. I took a strategic point and was surprised that the chief dancer pinpointedly picked me up, made me dance few steps (repeating whatever she danced) :P and threw a wonderfully golden laced bead. WoWWWW!!! I made it, while all my other 5 friends were still looking out for them. Santosh, amongst them was luckiest, as he not only got 1 or 2 but 3 different bead chains :)
I immediately tossed another dollar coin into the slot machine, wearing this bead chain, and lo!!! you guessed it right, I made million dollar out of it (ooops, woke up out of that dream) and found my $1 bill too has been nicely gobbled up by the slot machine. That moves up the dollar count to 41. When enquired from others, they said they lost only 2 or 3 dollars!!!! I was however, satisfied that even when I had winning moments, I chose to just enjoy the day than thinking about how much money has been lost or won, and it was such a fun experiencing this!!!!
Stratosphere, the MUST visit in Las Vegas is a 115 storeyed (approx) building. You guessed it wrong (if at all you are a person who guesses what would be the next sentence) :) The lift starts at floor 1, and takes you straight to 112. There's no pit stops in between. We were told by the lift attendee that it travels 3 floors per second, and travels the entire stop in less than 35 seconds. The stop is in 112th floor. When you get out of that lift, you would see the entire Las Vegas, it's hillock boundaries and such a beautiful sight to behold, you believe me.
Now comes the fun part. At that height (112th floor), you have 3 rides. You should have bought tickets right at the ground floor, before you boarded the lift. I chose to play 2 of them as each ride was little costlier. The three rides included, taking you from 112th floor to 115th height level and showing you what gravity drop is :) Nerve racking. Second one was to have you sit on a slanted train like and taking you to the tip of the building and as if it asks, "if I drop you from here, what would happen"? Lungs in our mouth and only could be experienced!!! Last one was a horizontal merrigoround (like sitting on a horse which rotates fast in a circular fashion), except that the entire structure is in free air, means when you see down from whichever angle, you are seeing 112 floors down straight with naked eye. Just imagine, how we would have felt when sitting in those rides. It is such a thrilling experience that if you have to visit Las Vegas, dont go for just the SIN part of it, but go for the SPECIAL STRATOSPHERE effect!!!
Once made sure our entire visit was simply superb, we hit the road and targetted to reach SFO by early morning Tuesday to make ourselves available in the morning. Now, how can I forget the experience while almost we were approaching SFO. In true hollywood style, we saw a police cab vrooom by, and then there was second, and then third, oh my god!!! are we doing something wrong here? Did we miss some traffic rule? To top it, there was a police helicopter right above our vehicle, and we heaved a sigh of relief only when noticing one guy was arrested and was pulled over. The entire freeway (which does not have any traffic signal concept) was stalled for 10 mts in full. Only when we were allowed, did we realize this time, the US experience is simply SUPERB.
All my Las Vegas Photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/SinCityLV
posted by Srini @ 12:39 PM
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