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Sunny California
Well, we're here - in sunny California. Although
it isn't as hot as some of the places we saw in Canada (or as hot as
the UK!), the direct sun is very, very hot. Even Sarah's searching out
the shady side of the street.
LA is so different to Canada - definitely mean streetsville - and we
seem to be destined to staying in motels, as there are very few hostels
in the US. The next couple of days are about planning our month, and
then we'll make a real effort to get an hour on an Internet machine
somewhere and provide an update.
Until then, enjoy your weather!
LA, LA, so bad they named it once.
(I know, its a bad headline, but it kind of makes
the point!).
So we're in LA. On Monday, when we were trying to book a hostel on the
phone from Canada, we found two types. Type 1 was full. Type 2 said
"Yes, we've got rooms, but this isn't the kind of district you should
bring kids to Sir". So in desperation, we went to Laterooms.com, which
sent us to Hotels.com, and we booked a 3-star hotel in Little Tokyo,
for 2 nights at £50 a night. We didn't want to end up with no accommodation,
and £50 seemed a small price to pay to end up in the right part of town!
Anyway, when we got to the airport, we jumped in a cab (surprise, surprise
- the cabby was 'resting' from show business. He was an actor/agent/soundman/literary
agent/magician, and he hated driving cabs, and didn't make any money
from it. Is it me or is this odd?)
The hotel was full of Japanese people, who'd obviously paid a lot more
money - we got some strange looks as we trooped through reception with
our rucksacks. And so ended yesterday.
 Today
we saw a bit of LA, including a weird diner decorated as a forest, and
then went to LA Public Library for email access, and for some quiet
reading time for the girls. When we got there I realised I'd seen the
library before - it was used as police headquarters in Beverley Hills
Cop! The building was as amazing inside as it was outside - murals,
galleries, painted ceilings all over the place. Its everything that
Oxford Central Library isn't.
LA isn't a welcoming place - there's plenty of homeless people wandering
the streets, and there are certainly times when we hold on to the girls
hands very firmly walking around the streets. Perhaps we've just heard
too many bad stories, or perhaps we're making ourselves unsure, but
whatever the cause, we're ultra-careful here.
When we got back to our hotel in the evening, and enjoyed our cheap
japanese take-away meal, we were astounded to watch the TV reports of
electricity shutdowns in the North East. It didn't affect us at all,
so we were able to watch complete and total chaos break out on the other
coast. It's amazing isn't it - the worlds most powerful nation completely
without power. We've got a growing question in our minds, from this
and other things - how on earth can this be the most powerful country
in the world? But more of that emergeing thought later through our trip.
Tomorrow we hire a car, and head down the coast to the beach, so we'll
keep you in touch when we can.
Which country are we in?
We've now had four days in the States, and we're
certainly wondering which country we are now in. Sure, there are lots
of signs that we're in the US - lots of very very wide roads, lots of
very very fat people, and lots of fast food joints. But then, everybody
seems to speak Spanish. It's amazing, in LA and further south, there
are spanish signs and adverts all over the place, and the staff we meet
in hotels, motels and restaurants all seem to have english as a second
language. I did expect that there would be plenty of Mexicans and ex-Mexicans
in California, but I hadn't expected their impact to be so pervasive
on the state. As we've moved south of LA, many signs and adverts are
now appearing only in Spanish, with no English translation. Let's hope
the road signs don't start going that way too!
America is some of the things we'd been expecting - but I don't think
we'd really imagined the scale of each of those things. Things like
roads which are obscenely wide. Outside of our motel is a road
which 1 mile up is a normal single-carriageway road, but outside of
the motel it is 10 lanes wide. I crossed it on foot to the Starbucks
opposite (to use the wireless Internet connection), and it felt quite
intimidating walking in front of 5 lanes of traffic all poised to surge
forward through me. This was heightened by the fact that the "WALK"
sign started to flash "DON'T WALK" after just 2 lanes of traffic - and
I had 8 more to go!
You always read about Americans being obese, but again, they
do that bigger than anywhere else in the world. We've seen some obscene
examples already of people being overweight, and especially of families
where every single member from the smallest child is huge. For some
reason they all seem to be staying in motels! I read in the paper yesterday
that over half of all residents of New York are clinically obese, and
California can't be that far behind. It seems that CA is a state of
extremes - 1/3 seem obese, 1/3 seem 'normal', and 1/3 seem anorexic.
America is also the capital of capitalism, which means that people
can buy what they want. It also means that unless people pay for it,
it isn't available. Internet connections are a good example - in Canada
there were cheap Internet cafes all over the place, charging around
£1 an hour to use a PC. Here, there are very few, but there are more
wireless networks available, to connect your own PC. In Canada, we were
paying around £2.50 for an hour's wireless Internet access from our
Tablet. In the US, it's £4 an hour, or £25 a month (every single StarBucks
in California offers wireless Internet). So we can get online easily
because we've got our own Tablet PC, but it wouldn't be anywhere near
as easy if we weren't carrying our own PC. I'm writing this in our motel,
which has just set up a wireless network (sadly, they've not got it
quite right - the signal is very bad in the rooms and in the lobby -
but it's great at the extreme ends of the corridors. I'm currently squatting
on the floor at the end of the third floor corridor!).
So overall our impressions of America are mixed - initially poor - and
we were wondering if we should leave for Fiji earlier. Then we started
to find some of the good things, like the good motels, and we became
more balanced in our views.
LA to Carlsbad to Escondido
We left LA on Friday, and headed down the coast
to find somewhere to have a bit of a break and catch our breath for
a few days, and especially to allow the girls time to swim and play.
Unfortunately the whole of LA had the same idea, and although we had
a few hours head start, the drive down on Interstate 5 was slow going
at times. And then, of course, we couldn't get into any of the motels.
We specifically wanted to find one with a pool, but their weekend rates
shot up from $50-70 to $100-150 - and most were full. Eventually we
found a Motel 6 in Carlsbad, which had a pool, and was $70.
Unfortunately it was beside the InterState rather than beside the beach,
but it was fine for the night, and the girls loved swimming. They didn't
have space on Saturday, so we had to move inland, and ended up in the
town of Escondido (see, they even name the towns in Spanish!).
On the way there we drove through the town of Rancho El Paso, which
looked lovely. Sarah stepped out of the car to ask for directions, and
spotted an estate agency. She came back with a smile on her face - the
cheapest house for $1.4M, and the most expensive was $11.6M. Nice town.
 Anyway, at Escondido we checked into the Comfort Inn, which has
a nice pool, so the girls were very happy. It was expensive, at $100,
because it was Saturday night, but then drops to $60 from Sunday. We're
likely to stay for a few days, as its handy for San Diego Zoo, it's
relaxing, and we don't want to keep moving every two days at the moment.
So we're now bedded down in an edge-of-town motel, with a huge room
and TV etc, and a pool outside the window. Somehow this seems more like
a holiday than anything else - but then I guess that would be inevitable
because of the girls. I don't know how we'd have done America without
the girls - there are very few hostels, and they are in the main cities,
so it would have been expensive to do it as independent backpackers,
without spending all of your money on motel rooms. And we'd never have
been able to do it without a car.
As a holiday destination, the combination of cheap motels, cheap car
hire and cheap fuel make it ideal, although there are long distances
to cover between each of the 'sights', which would mean long driving
days. I think we'll have days when the girls are trapped in the car
for the day, but at least we'll be able to stop for a few days at a
time in places, rather than having to move on every day.
Having realised that accommodation is scarce and expensive at weekends,
and knowing that we've got the Labour Day holiday weekend coming up
on 1st September, we've used the Internet do look ahead for some places
to stay. Within an hour, we'd booked a motel for $90 a night for the
holiday weekend, at Mammoth Lakes - near a National Park, and with a
pool. We've also booked tent at Yosemite for 4 nights following that
- something the girls are really looking forward to!
San Diego Zoo
 Today we had a great day. We went to the 'world famous
San Diego Zoo'. Okay, it was a bit of a surprise to start with that
it was going to cost us $100 for the family ticket (£65), but once we'd
bitten the bullet (London Zoo was £25 for the family last time we went)
it was good inside. The zoo is HUGE, or at least it is to 2 small children!
We took a guided tour bus around the zoo to get oriented, and then set
off to see what the girls had decided in advance.
 Number One was the petting zoo, to see the exotic
animals like goats and sheep! Then we saw the Seal Show - which was
a huge delight for the girls. We sat in an amphitheatre that would probably
seat 1,000 people - which gives you an idea of how many people they
can squeeze into the zoo on a weekend. Thank goodness we went on a Monday,
rather than at the weekend. Somehow during the rest of the day we saw
bears, tigers, gorillas, polar bears, elks, bison, tapirs, giraffes
etc etc. And another animal show. We arrived at 10am, and by 3pm the
girls were flaking a bit, so we left the zoo (after getting our re-entry
hand stamps) and headed into San Diego for a McDonalds (okay, I know
I harangued them earlier, but it seems a guaranteed way to re-inject
the girls with energy), and then we went for a drive along the beach
isthmus. By the time we reached the end of the beach, we were within
10 miles of the Mexico border. Hmm, maybe that's something for later
in the week - a bonus Country!
Anyway, we turned left instead of right, and went back to the zoo at
6. Then we went to see the orang-utans. We couldn't get the girls away.
They (the orang-utan) were having playtime before bedtime, so they were
chasing and teasing each other, and Charlotte especially loved watching
their playfullness. Like almost every part of San Diego Zoo, the landscaping
was green and lush, for the visitors as well as the animals. We hope
to see orang-utan in the wild in Indonesia, but with the security situation
in Indonesia at the moment, it's unlikely that we'll be able to get
there. If we don't, at least the girls have seen their Number One animal.
 Then
we saw the panda - only one was out. One of the others was pregnant
with twins and under "24 hour birthwatch" indoors. The third panda was
having a phantom pregnancy, and was nesting inside too.
And then we ended up with the late night show, at 8:30, which featured
human acrobatics in an incredible display. It really rounded off the
day for the girls, who stayed awake right through until we got into
the car at 9:45pm. And then they slumped straight into sleep.
It was a packed day, which we all really loved, and it was definitely
worth (a) the money and (b) coming back in the evening. Our top moment
in the US so far.
3 micro-climates in one day
Today, after a late wake up, a leisurely breakfast
and a swim, we checked out of our lovely Comfort Inn in Escondido
and headed inland. Our plan, evolving as we go, is to head towards Joshua
Tree National Park - to find somewhere to stay for the night nearby,
head into the park tomorrow morning, and then head inland further towards
the Grand Canyon.
As we drove inland from Escondido it became cooler, as we went up into
lush, green hills. We passed through a couple of fascinating towns as
we went, including Ramona where the shops were still in the style of
an old Western movie (well, a modern version anyway), and Julian, which
was full of cutsey curio and pie shops. We stopped for lunch (had our
first taste of a 'corndog' - yeuch!) and then carried on. Soon we were
in the desert, passing signs for 'Hellhole Palms' and 'Desert Lodge'
- amid scenes out of Mad Max. There were groups of RV's and old buses
circled around, with jeeps and pickups clustered outside. We passed
through Ocotillo Wells, which at 112-degrees F was the hottest place
in America today. Fortunately the air-con on our Nissan ShoeBox works
fine.
And about 10 miles afterwards the heavens opened, and we were reduced
to driving at 30mph to see the road. Then another hour and a half of
dusty, dry driving to Indio. As we approached we were swamped by sand
storms, with dust blown off the fields of date palms nearby, and then
suddenly the heavens opened again. It rained and rained, and huge flashes
of lightning and rumbles of thunder broke nearby. They obviously don't
expect too much rain in the deserts - most of the roads simply flooded,
and when we drove into our motel parking lot we found it covered in
6 inches of water! Turns out they've got freak weather conditions, and
Las Vegas had 2 inches of rain in 20 minutes. I hope it gets better
before we get there - I don't really want to stay in a flooded motel!
Joshua National Park - and driving
 This morning we packed up after our overnight in Indio (sad to
leave the Best Western in Indio - it had free movies on DVD, which meant
that we were up till midnight watching them!) and headed to Joshua National
Park. It was a nice drive, but after a while desert gets a bit monotonous.
Anyway, this desert was broken up by lots of Joshua trees, like the
one on the left, and a few glimpses of wildlife. We saw birds, butterflies,
about a million dead bees, lizards and a coyote. Oh, and quite a few
Joshua trees and other cactii. From the viewpoint in the park, we could
just make out the San Andreas fault through the haze. Although Charlotte
didn't really get gripped, I was excited because I've got an O-level
in Geology, so I know about these things ;-)
Anyway, after that we headed through flash-flood city (Yucca Valley,
population 3 1/2) as they were pushing all of the mud off the Interstate,
and across the desert to the lovely town of Barstow (not!). The drive
was very monotonous, broken up by comedy moments like the picture above.
Fasten to a post in the middle of nowheresville, desert, was this sign
saying "We are a Neighborhood Watch Area". Sure, there was a dirt path
next to it that probably led somewhere, but when you're 100 miles from
civilisation, is it really going to make a difference to put up a sign?
 We
also passed lots of these by the road - postboxes for mail deliveries.
Although they are all over the place, we thought we ought to photograph
them, as they make part of the trip.
 And
this is the picture that probably represents our drives across America
(and Canada) best. It's the "Roadtrip Soundtrack", as performed by Charlotte
and Emily every 20 minutes. There are 2 lyrics, one goes "Are we there
yet", with a chorus of "When are we there", and the other track goes
"I need the toilet", with a chorus of "Oh no I don't" when the car has
stopped.
The girls are amazing - they are getting used to being locked in the
car for hours, and today the highpoint was the following conversation
after 6 hours in the car:
Charlotte: "When are we there?"
Dad: "About an hour"
Charlotte: "Is that all? Great"
Wow!
Aiming somewhere or drifting?
 The day started with a swim for the girls, and a quick visit
to Starbucks for me to upload to our website and pickup email (and,
importantly, the latest virus updates for Sophos – viruses are big news
here at the moment). Then it was off to Calico, an old mining village
that is now a real, original Ghost Town. Well, we were pretty disappointed.
It had been restored to the point of a theme park. All of the original
buildings had been rebuilt in new wood and it had all been made to look
brand new, rather than looking a few hundred years old. And every single
building was now a shop or a café. So we’d paid $15 to visit a shopping
arcade. Most of the things we saw were pretty tacky, but we all enjoyed
the cowboy gunfight, and the gold panning. But half an hour there was
enough.
On the way out we called into the cemetery, which was outside the theme
park areas, in which were buried original inhabitants of the town from
the 1800’s. There were simple wooden headstones, still standing and
legible 150 years on. This was probably one of the most interesting
parts (although it wasn’t mentioned in the literature or guide – we’d
read about it in a newspaper!).
Then it was on the road again, heading to and through Las Vegas. Our
aim was to reach southern Utah, within a 100 miles of the North rim
of the Grand Canyon. We did have worries about finding reasonably priced
accommodation, because Kanab (where we were heading) has a weekend long
cowboy festival, which means all the motels are full. But we knew that
rooms are really expensive in Las Vegas at weekends, and the town is
pretty busy. We wanted to be there when it was quieter (relatively!).
When we stopped at the first tourist office inside Nevada (at Primm,
which is a vast casino built 10 yards over the state line!) we found
out that a huge conference was due into LV on Monday, taking 90,000
hotel rooms (yes, NINETY THOUSAND) and we’d have no chance later in
the week. So we changed our plans, and decided to do LV first, then
the Grand Canyon etc. (This has to be a good plan, because we can then
go to Kanab when the cowboys have all gone home!).
We arrived in Las Vegas around 4pm. Boy, is it an odd city. After driving
3 hours across the desert, with no trees, buildings or roads apart from
the Interstate 15, you suddenly see this big city right in the middle
of the desert, surrounded by more desert. And slap bang in the middle
of the city is a pyramid, a bundle of famous New York buildings, including
the Statue of Liberty, plus an medieval castle and a spire with a roller
coaster round the outside of it. Oh, and the Eiffel Tower and the Arc
de Triomphe. You suddenly wonder if you’re seeing things. We checked
out a few hotels – the big ones were $100 up (Friday night!), and the
motels were from around $60, but seemed a bit tacky. And then we found
St Tropez Suites. We had a voucher for $49.99 a night rooms, but this
excluded weekends. Somehow Sarah’s negotiating worked wonders – the
front desk guy came down from $89.99 to $49.99, even though he was charging
everybody else $90 and up. So we got a great room, looking out over
a great pool, including breakfast, for £35. And it is very modern and
spacious. As soon as we’d checked in we hit the pool, to wash away the
98-degree heat and dust of the day.This is definitely NOT a £35 a night
hotel – you’d pay a fortune for this elsewhere. Oh the joys of Vegas!
We did discover a small flaw – that its right under the flightpath for
the airport, but as the airport is only ½ mile out of town, then I guess
every hotel is. In fact, it was quite exciting watching the private
jets flying in for Friday night gambling. There was even a Tomcat (yes,
a fighter plane) which landed – I’d heard that really, really rich people
(like those who work for Microsoft) own fighter jets, but to actually
see one landing at the airport made the story a bit more real!
 Later we went to the strip – we walked the three blocks (we shouldn’t
have done that in the early evening, in that heat, with hungry girls)
and went to the Aladdin Hotel. It was great, a shopping arcade inside
the hotel resembling an Arabian souk. We’ve been inside a few real souks
in Egypt and Morocco, and this was a convincing copy (except that it
didn’t have the smells, all the shops were American, and I’m not sure
if the rickshaw rides were really in keeping!). The other impressive
bit was the indoor monsoon, every half-hour. We sat eating dinner, watching
the rain falling inside a shopping arcade – with lightning and the sky
turning dark.
 Then
outside, to join the throbbing throng on the pavements, moving across
the roads in a wave (it was like Oxford Street at Christmas). We saw
the fountain display outside the Bellagio, and wow’d at the Eiffel Tower
and Arc de Triomphe outside Paris. We made the mistake of thinking it
was realistic, so we went to look at the hotel inside. Big mistake –
it was jammed full of slot machines and casino equipment. What a let
down. But still, the outside was great to look at. And very convenient,
because they’ve rebuilt all the big sights of the world within a few
hundred yards of each other. Today, Arabia and Paris. Tomorrow we’re
thinking of going to Venice and the Pyramids!
Las Vegas – well, it kind of grows on you.
Anybody who knows us (and especially Sarah) would
know that Las Vegas isn’t our kind of thing. Tacky, crowded, booze and
gambling-tastic, and a pale imitation of the real world. But somehow,
when Vegas has got you in its grip, its becomes a little more charming.
And I don’t mean ‘gambling grip’.
We arrived Friday, and saw a few of the casinos, and today (Saturday)
we devoted to seeing a few more.
 We
started with the free continental breakfast at the hotel – examining
this gave us an insight into why Americans are fatter than your average
world citizen. On the buffet there was Cereal, French Toast with Syrup,
Choc Chip muffins, Raising Danish, Cinnamon Danish, Apricot Danish,
and doughnuts (sugar, cinnamon, lemon-iced, chocolate, hundreds-and-thousands
with icing). Oh, and a bowl of fresh fruit that was so ignored it had
been relegated to a completely different buffet table! Of course, the
girls loved it, and so did I, stoking up on as much sugar in a morning
as we normally manage in a couple of days. I’m sure that rather than
losing weight backpacking, I’m putting it on!
Then a swim by the hotel pool, before getting in the car and heading
to the casino hotels. We chose ones that had a free show that the girls
would like, or something else that the girls would be interested in
(after all, when you’ve seen one casino gambling areas you’ve seen –
and heard - them all).
Today was the turn of Circus Circus, which promised a lot on paper,
but delivered very little in reality. We went there for the buffet lunch
(as though any was needed after breakfast). It was quite good, and a
bargain at $7, but it was difficult to eat in the presence of so many
overweight people. There were family groups where you could see the
family similarity running through everybody. I know it’s rude, but I
just had to take a picture to share with you. And this chap wasn’t exceptional,
he just happened to be sitting nearby! Then we went to the “clown show”
in the “big top”, which turned out to be two guys who been dragged off
the street, on a small stage inside the amusement park. So what do I
think of Circus Circus? Well, it’s got a cheap buffet and lots of parking
 Then
we decided to go to the Venetian, one of the newer casino hotels. We
claimed our car from the huge free car park alongside Circus Circus,
and drove the ½ mile to the Venetian car park. This is the amazing thing
about the States – everybody drives everywhere, no matter how short
the distance. However, in 100-degree heat its madness to walk around
in the middle of the day – the sun is absolutely blasting on the pavements.
The Venetian is amazing outside, with a canal of gondolas, and a replica
of various Venice buildings and bridges (I managed to completely omit
the Bridge of Sighs from this photo).
 And the scene inside is even more amazing. Like the Alladin,
they’ve recreated a street scene inside. After you’ve been inside for
a while its easy to forget that you are inside a building, 2 stories
in the air. (‘Yeah, yeah’ you say, but could you have told which photo
was inside if I hadn’t told you?). Anyway, the replica St Marks Square
was just like the real thing too – expensive restaurants around the
outside, and lots of tourists milling in the middle!
 The other thing at the Venetian was the gondoliers.
They steer their gondolas around the (second floor) canals, singing
to their passengers, who all look suitably embarrassed. Some couples
were getting married on the Wedding Bridge, just off St Marks Square,
which was a joy to behold. Because it was a busy Saturday, the couples
waited outside the Gucci shop while the couple in front got married,
and then they had their turn, and the group outside Prada got to move
to the outside-Gucci stop. I completely failed to get the photo of two
brides queuing up to get their gondola trip tickets (wedding gondola
extra $50). And this being America, there was an obvious paranoia about
security. Look at the photo on the left and you’ll see what I mean –
the bride and groom had to wear their seatbelts for the whole trip.
And the special wedding gondola didn’t have white silk seat belts! (Handy
for the fourth wedding we saw, where the wide wore black. And the fifth,
where the bride for a Stetson and cowboy boots!).
By the time we left the Venetian it was 7pm, so it was straight back
to the hotel for a quick snack and bed. Not a typical backpacking day
for sure!
America – How weird is that?
So, here we are in the States, and we’re world
travellers, and we’ve been there, seen that, done it, got the T-shirt
in too many places to mention. (Okay, since you asked, Australia, Austria,
Barbados, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan,
Kenya, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Morocco, New
Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia,
Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, The Netherlands, and Trinidad and Tobago).
And in all that time, I’m not sure if we’ve come to anywhere as disorienting
as the USA. At times its easy to imagine its completely normal – in
fact, times when you think “Wow, it would be great to live here”. Things
like good, cheap hotels and food. And then there are other times, when
it just seems plain screwy.
Like today, when I heard somebody on a radio talk show saying “How
can anybody not accuse America of being uninterested in world affairs.
We’ve got troops fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia. Hell, we’re
deeply involved in world affairs”.
And how about American laws. We’re in a country where it’s legal
to own a sub-machine gun, and where rich guys buy F15 fighter jets to
get to Vegas for the weekend. But where it’s illegal to own or
install a toilet that flushes more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush.
And how about this for a great example of American freedom – I read
it in the LA Times last week. A guy, who’s a suspect for the anthrax
cases last year, has been followed and video’d by the FBI for 9 months,
in their blacked-out-window vans. So he decided he was going to put
his camera to the black glass and take a picture of the guys inside.
And as he stepped into the gutter to do this, the FBI guy panicked and
drove off – right over the suspects foot, breaking it. And what happened?
Well, of course the suspect was charged with jaywalking and fined. The
FBI didn’t have to do anything, after all their the FBI. Are they
really going to catch this guy doing anything illegal – he’s known that
he’s being watched, and has done ever since CNN named him as a suspect,
and said that he was being tailed by the FBI to try and pin something
on him Mind you, it worked, they might never have got him for jaywalking
if they hadn’t been following him!
New York, New York, so good they built it twice
 No trip to Nevada is complete without a trip to New York. It
kind of rounded off our round-the-world-in-three-days trip. And again,
although it was movie-set-fake, it was pretty convincing. Outside, if
you isolated small parts of the scenery, it made sense. But when you
put the whole thing together it became confusing. If you click here you’ll see what I mean.
When inside, you find lots of slot machines, and away from this a restaurant
and café area in the style of Brooklyn and Greenwich Village. Underneath
your feet is concrete, and fire escapes adorn the ‘fronts’ of the ‘buildings’.
After I’d been in it a while my subconscious was being fooled – when
I saw somebody rolling their suitcase down the ‘street’, holding their
suit carrier, I wondered why they were outside. And then it clicked
that of course they were inside, and they’d just stepped out of a lift
from the hotel room tower. I can imagine that if you stay in one casino
all weekend, and don’t step outside, how you can lose track of time
and place. (Although when they created dusk at the Venetian yesterday,
by switching off the lights at 6pm exactly, it was kind of obvious!)
Presumably the disorientation is exactly what the casinos are trying
to do – when I went into the Hard Rock Hotel/Casino yesterday morning
to find the Starbucks, there were plenty of people at the tables and
slot machines at 9.15 in the morning (and propping up the bar).
 Anyway,
after New York New York, we also saw Excalibur - a medieval ‘English’
castle which appeared to be modelled on an England I’ve never seen.
Perhaps they did their research by going to Disneyland and reading ‘1066
and all that’. We also went to Tropicana, for a free 15 minute acrobatic
display, which in true Vegas style was performed on top of the slot
machines in the main casino, and we also ‘won’ a free deck of cards.
This was also our big gamble, when we put our $1 each into the Wheel
of Fortune. Sadly we lost our $ quickly, with no exciting lights
or clattering coin sounds.
In the evening we’d planned to go to the Stardust casino for the $11
Steak and Lobster meal (okay, it wouldn’t be quality, but it would be
steak and lobster for £6.80, and probably better than you’d get in England
for three times the price). But instead, we found tickets for the Michael
Flatteley dance show at half-price (about $40 each), which Charlotte
and Sarah really wanted to see, so I dropped them there for the 8 o’clock
show, and took a complaining Emily back to the hotel, via ‘Long John
Silver’s Shrimp Shoppe’ Drive Thru (21 crispy shrimps, Coke and fries
for $3 – how could a guy and gal resist).
Yep, Vegas sure is weird, but somehow it’s got a kind of charm ;-)
Read the next section
Canyons to Yosemite
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