Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire . . . never has a song lyric been so true about a city.
Las Vegas
As you drive in, the signpost says it all: ‘Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas’.
The words wow, surreal and amazing sum up Vegas quite well, but I want to run through some of the things to see and do while in Sin City.
Casinos and hotels dominate the Strip and they are very big, very exotic and very exciting.
Luxor is a huge pyramid with a Sphinx out front, Paris has its own Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, Excalibur is a fantasy castle, Treasure Island has a huge pirate ship, The Venetian has gondolas floating around the place while New York, New York is . . .well, like New York. And one must see is the fountain display at the Bellagio – simply breathtaking.
Gambling is everywhere. There are slot machines as soon as you step off the plane while along the strip and in Fremont Street you have table games such as Blackjack, Poker, Craps and Pai Gow.
There is no real pressure to play but it’s always worth a little flutter and I made a few dollars on the spin of the roulette wheel so it all worked out well in the end.
A lot of the hotels host international exhibitions and at Luxor we visited two.
BODIES . . .The Exhibition is a collection of 13 whole-body specimens and more than 260 organs and partial body parts.
It is very eerie walking around and seeing real human bodies that have been meticulously dissected and preserved, but it is also fascinating and educational.
Smokers will also learn a lot when they see a healthy lung next to a black lung ravaged by smoking in a vivid comparison more powerful than any textbook image.
On reflection, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition was probably a bit of a silly thing to see especially as I was going to spend the next week on a cruise ship.
That said it was amazing to see numerous items from the vessel including luggage, the ship’s whistles, floor tiles from the first-class smoking room, a window frame from the Verandah Café and an unopened bottle of champagne with a 1900 vintage. Just as impressive is an actual piece of the ship’s hull that was painstakingly recovered from two and one half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic.
You cannot go to Las Vegas and not see a show. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr, Tom Jones, Siegfried & Roy, the Blue Man Group and even Celine Dion have had their name in lights along the strip, but now the theatre attracts the crowds.
Cirque Du Soleil dominates the hotel theatres these days and with very good reason.
Mystere is a classic Las Vegas show and one that I’ve wanted to see ever since the film ‘Knocked Up’ came out.
The athleticism and strength of the performers is unbelievable and really has to be seen to be believed. After the classic comes the modern. Viva Elvis is a harmonious fusion of dance, acrobatics and live music which is a fitting tribute to the life and music of Elvis Presley with every improbability you would expect from Cirque Du Soleil.
The costumes and set design of the production are stunning and include a gigantic Blue Suede Shoe which is 29 feet long and weighs 7,000 lbs, a tubular aluminium guitar structure measuring 45 feet by 18 feet that supports two acrobats who represent Elvis and his twin brother, who died at birth, a wedding cake stage which is a scale replica of Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding cake and a huge American flag used in the Return to Sender scene which is made of genuine long underwear and boxer shorts, and has only 48 stars because Presley entered the service in 1958, the year before Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union.
Okay, so strictly speaking this isn’t in Las Vegas, but the Grand Canyon is a marvel that has to be seen.
We travelled with Pink Jeep Tours (
www.pinkjeep.com) on their West Rim Classic Deluxe tour.
Leaving our hotel in a ten-seater Jeep we headed out of Las Vegas, past Lake Meade, over the Hoover Dam into Arizona beyond the Joshua tree forest, zooming by the pink church that gets blown up in the Mars Attacks film and into the home of the Hualapai Nation who oversee the canyon.
Our guide was correct when he guessed what our first words would be . . . ‘Oh my God’. The view seems to stretch forever and the colours of the rocks change every hour in the sunshine.
There’s not much that you can say, but standing at the top of the steep-sided gorge is a memory that I won’t ever forget.
- For more information about Las Vegas visit www.visitlasvegas.co.uk, for information about Cirque Du Soleil visit www.cirque dusoleil.com and for more information about Bodies and Titanic go to www.luxor.com and click on attractions.