Viva Las Vegas

Spent a few days in Sin City this past week. Interesting time. It's my third trip to Vegas, and the first that I stayed there more than 2 hours (don't ask). As cheesy and cliche as it may be, Vegas is actually a lot of fun.

Naturally there are the infamous buffets, though at the newer places they are more than 4 bucks (and the food is proportionately much better as well). The Flamingo, for example, has Alaskan King Crab and snow crab on their buffet every day, which my wife enjoyed tremendously! Not being much into seafood, I enjoyed a wide variety of other things. I have to say that I consider the buffet to be just about the perfect dining experience. I'm not into large servings of one thing, I want little bits of a bunch of different things. That makes me very happy indeed. My taste buds have a short attention span, what can I say. However, I also have a low tolerance for low quality food, and I was pleasantly surprised that the nicer hotels had food that was at least on par with Olive Garden in terms of quality. We slept during the day and made the rounds at night (when the temps dropped to a chilly 97 F!!!) and the crowds were not too bad, though our next trip will have to be in fall or winter, summer in Vegas is just too draining. We went to most of the places on the strip, to comparison shop for the next trip.

Stratosphere. Not bad, but awful location (it's at the FAR end of the strip). The slots are reasonably loose, video poker is good, and the rides on top are VERY HIGH UP. The roller coaster is apparently the highest one in the world, but it's fairly weak. It only goes around the top of the tower twice, and it only hits about 35mph. There is a bit of a thrill just being up that high, but as a coaster it leaves a lot to be desired. If you are not into heights, avoid the Big Shot. This is one of those rides that they strap you and three other people in a row and shoot you up in the air, you bounce a few times, then come down. Not a big deal normally, but when your launching point is 110 stories up it becomes a different story. Not for the faint of heart. Food was indifferent, but Roxy's (retro 50's diner was decent).

Circus Circus . White trash heaven. Nuff said.

Treasure Island . Great show, pretty run of the mill in all else. I wouldn't stay there simply because it really didn't have anything to distinguish itself, and fantasy-themed hotels really don't do much for me anyway.

Caesar's . You can't go wrong with Caesar's. Great ambience, good slots, a better variety of poker than Strat (Strat only had 5 card stud and only one table ...

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