Las Vegas, NV, USA

I’d never been particularly excited about Las Vegas. Probably a bit brash. Full of idiots wasting their money gambling and being awestruck by the bright lights. So these two idiots joined them. And it was fantastic.

We rarely stay in pricey hotels, but decided to treat ourselves to a couple of nights in the Venetian, right in the heart of the Las Vegas strip. I’d conjured up some dubious Gavin Maths where you take the location and free parking and divide it by the convenience and cost of the rooms and it turns out to be the most sensible place to stay. Best not to ask.

We arrived on the strip at sunset, and Nicola cranked up the soundtrack from The Hangover to full whack. In fact, if you have a moment, pop that on. Is it on? Lovely. Now continue.

So, welcome to fabulous Las Vegas Nevada. We’re heading north, with four lanes of traffic going in each direction. On your left, there’s the Mandalay Bay glistening gold, then the pyramid and giant Sphinx of the Luxor. Behind that you can see the baffling multi-coloured turrets of the Excalibur, then the skyline of New York, New York, with its Statue of Liberty and a rollercoaster weaving between the skyscrapers. Back on the other side of the strip is the Tropicana, its giant screens advertising magic shows, blackjack, roulette, poker – anything you could possibly want. Ahead is a sea of brake lights, traffic lights, swaying palm trees, a Lamborghini, the MGM Hotel, a golden shop selling designer bags, the Aria, massive illuminated billboards for insurers, lawyers and debt agencies, a vast Gucci store with a giant bubble wrap blue wall. It’s absolute chaos. On our left, the fountains of the Bellagio shoot jets of water hundreds of feet into the air, leaping and dancing to the music. Across the road, the giant Paris balloon and the Eiffel Tower loom over the road. Over there, next door to the Bellagio, is Caesar’s Palace, with the Trevi fountain and the Colosseum all floodlit and surrounded by thousands of tourists. Back across the other side of the road, the flashing bulbs of the Flamingo sign, and below it the girls in their peacock feathered costumes. Straight ahead is Treasure Island. On your left, the rumbling volcano of the Mirage is exploding, spewing lava, lights and smoke. And now, on your right, is where we’re staying, the Venetian, with a canal full of gondolas and gondoliers.

I warned you. Vegas is a lot.  

We got out of the car, dragged our suitcases from the boot, and into the Venetian we went. Now imagine a cartoon where the characters are lost in a maze and keep ending up back at the same corridor. That’s what happened. After about 45 mins of walking back and forth down every corridor and shopping street, trundling our big cases past the same roulette tables again and again, we eventually arrived at the front desk and checked in. We dropped our cases in our room in need of a stiff drink. 

But, don’t even think of touching the minibar. It’s full of sensors that automatically charge you if you remove anything from it. And we’re talking 20$ for a small bottle of water. So our little hack, garnered from Instagram, was to fill one of the bathroom sinks with ice from the corridor ice machine, making a very convenient ice bucket for shop-bought beers. Vegas is one of the few places in the US where public drinking is legal, so we could easily grab a few cold cans from our sink fridge before we wandered up and down the strip to explore the casinos.

We’d heard the CVS Pharmacy across the road was a good place to get a few cheap drinks. But it takes a fair amount of time to cross the street in Vegas. About half an hour later, after navigating countless footbridges and escalators, we got to the CVS and bought a few cans of beer, stepping deftly past the security guard who was midway through threatening a shoplifter with his gun drawn.

Chaos of the Strip and hotels aside, the casinos themselves are very strange places. Always open, and always the same time of the day inside. People gamble vast fortunes of money, high-rollers hide away in low-key side rooms and hundreds of people amble around thousands of carpeted acres of roulette, poker, craps and card tables. We found a little corner of 5¢ slot machines from the 1980s and set about making our limited budget last as long as possible. We nursed our pockets of nickels, spending very little, but tipping the waiter a dollar a drink, which kept the bottles of beer coming throughout the night. 

One gambling low point was when Nicola declared that she’d found a technique on YouTube for winning  at roulette and started feeding $10 bills into the roulette machine. This technique apparently involved something about always betting on the same colour but doubling the stake. It didn’t sound like a good idea, and sure enough, ten minutes later she was pleading with me for some of my ‘spare’ dollars because her supply had run out. 

The history of Las Vegas makes for a fascinating read. It’s quickly grown from a dusty little railroad town to a booming city ablaze in neon, and has seen everyone from Elvis and Sinatra to Celine and Adele pass through over the years. Two attractions we really loved were the Pinball Hall of Fame and the Neon Museum Both are run by organisations with a soft spot for old Vegas, with its mechanical machines and glowing lights. 

We spent a few happy hours feeding dimes into the lovingly-restored pinball machines at the Hall of Fame, where 60-year-old machines are still springing, popping and bouncing away. We had a particular fondness for the backlit artwork on the back panels of the pinball machines from the 60s and 70s, with the colours, typefaces, illustrations really do transport you back to a Vegas from days gone by.

The neon boneyard at the Neon Museum was equally superb. Vast steel signs and their twinkling incandescent bulbs have been salvaged from the great casinos of the 70s, and have been reassembled in an old parking lot on the edge of the city. A little folded pamphlet lets you in on their history, along with grainy photos of how they looked back in their prime. It’s a real shame they’ve all been taken down, but I suppose you can’t really advertise the latest celebrity poker tournament or Adele show unless you modernise the signs. Imagine trying to make Adele’s face out of a load of tube lights.

And I think this is the heart of what I loved about Vegas. The city is always refreshing, changing and reinventing itself. By the time you read this, half of the hotels I’ve mentioned will have changed names or been imploded. Shows will have come and gone. Stadiums and concert venues will have sprung up on the edge of the desert, and thousands of people will be piling in for the weekend. It’s an ever-changing place, ducking, diving and adapting to whatever people want, and giving them whatever they ask for. It’s a brash, materialistic, unhealthy hotbed of temptation and excess. But it sure makes for a fantastic weekend.