Sunday, March 04, 2007

How I wish that there were more than the 24 hours in the day

Back home again, to find that Sky have removed all their channels from NTL (or Virgin Media as it now is), and that Blogger have forced me to update to the new version, which is displaying what I'm typing in a slightly larger font. I hate change. Neither of these is particularly world-destroying, though - I didn't have Sky Sports in the first place, and I'm pretty sure nobody in the universe has ever watched Sky News, so it's really just the Simpsons and Futurama on Sky One that I'm going to be missing out on. And I've seen them all a hundred times already, so I can live without them.

Anyway, Viva Las Vegas indeed! There's a place that hasn't changed much since last I was there - there are always new hotels and casinos being built, of course, and while I was there the Barbary Coast closed down and started relaunching itself as Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon, but the general character of the city is one of those constants in life. Getting there is the difficult part, though. I flew into Minneapolis-St Paul without any difficulty (even remembering that Rocky lives in Minneapolis, or possibly somewhere else with a similar name, so I picked a house that looks like hers in a place we flew over that had a 50% chance of being the right city, and gave her a wave, just in case she was watching the plane with a powerful telescope), even though the Twin Cities seem to be under ten feet of snow at the moment, but then ended up staying there for quite some time. The plane was late, and when it arrived and we'd got on, we trundled up to the runway only for the pilot to announce that there was a technical problem with some piece of equipment that he assured us was essential, so we had to go back to the gate and have someone fix it.

So when I eventually got into Las Vegas, all tired and grumpy (you don't want to be around me when I'm up past my bedtime) having been up since half past eleven the night before, local time, it was very late at night, and I went straight to bed without even squandering a bit of money in the casino first. That seemed to crack any serious jetlag problem, though - I got up at about half past five every morning, which is fine in Vegas because everywhere's always open and the major shows are all finished by nine.

The Gold Coast hotel, as I might have mentioned before, is my absolute favourite Las Vegas hangout. It's off the Strip, but walkable in fifteen minutes or so. Not that you would want to walk, because there's a free shuttle service every ten minutes or so. There are also very big and comfortable rooms, a very nice buffet restaurant and single/double-deck blackjack. I didn't actually play much blackjack this time round, because I was enticed by "Ultimate Texas Hold'em", a new innovation which is basically hold'em poker played on a blackjack kind of table against the dealer, with a fabulously complex system of bets and wins. This game being based almost entirely on luck rather than skill I didn't have much opportunity to use my amazing memory techniques, but I refrained from losing quite all the money I'll ever have on it, so I don't mind.

I also had time to check out the many things that make Las Vegas so cool - the white tigers, the Venetian canals with singing gondoliers, the dancing fountains and the hourly artificial rain storm in the Desert Passage. On Wednesday morning, though, people homesick for British weather could just stick their heads outside, because it snowed. I'm fairly certain it's not meant to snow in Las Vegas, but it did. I also saw Dirk Arthur's Xtreme Magic Show, which is basically Siegfried and Roy's old routine but not as spectacular. Still a lot of fun, though. And the Blue Man Group, which defies description, and the Cirque Du Soleil's Beatles-themed extravaganza, Love, which is just sensational.

It's an hour and a half of dancing, acrobatics, slapstick, rollerblading, trampolining and everything else you expect from the Cirque, all choreographed perfectly to Beatles music and themed around the lives and times of the Fab Four. You have to see it to believe it, really, it leaves you breathless. Next time I'll need to take another Beatles fan along with me, to join in with me singing along to all the songs before and during the performance. In the usual Cirque style, the clowns were wandering around the audience before the show and one of them stuck a little plastic star to my forehead. When I got back to my hotel room, I stuck it on the mirror, up in the top corner, and hopefully it's still there now.

The new-look Blogger template has a box where you can enter labels for your post, "e.g. scooters, vacation, fall". Scooters? Actually, I can mention scooters here - one morning on the shuttle bus I noticed that the people in front of me were talking in broad Midlands accents, so I said hello and we got talking. They were from Mansfield and Lincoln, and were in Vegas for some kind of scooter convention. I'm not sure why anyone would go to Las Vegas just to look at Lambrettas, but it seems that people do. At least it's a good excuse for a vacation there, I suppose. As long as you don't fall off.

Going back was equally frustrating - it seems that planes have a real problem leaving Minneapolis. This time there was a problem with the in-flight entertainment system that had to be fixed before we could take off, following which the plane had to be de-iced. So when I finally got into London on Saturday morning, even tireder and grumpier, I decided not to incur the annoyance of travelling across London and getting the train back up to Derby (there was a real chance of me punching somebody for looking at me in a funny way) and spent the night in a hotel. Eighty quid, but worth it to keep the world a peaceful place. I found fault extensively with the bathroom (the door to the shower was bizarrely designed such that you couldn't get into the shower after opening it unless the bathroom door was open), went to bed and got up this morning (well, midday) feeling fully refreshed and happy again.

Best conversation of the week: Talking with an old American in the lift at the hotel - he asked me what part of Britain I was from, and when I said Derby, he thought about it for a minute and said "Like Derby County? Brian Clough? He's dead!" (this last in strangely jubilant tones). I agreed that he was, and the guy added "He was a good coach." Then the lift got up to my floor before I could enquire further how the heck he'd heard of Brian Clough, let alone been so wronged by him that he was still celebrating his passing. That's like someone in Derby NOT having heard of Brian Clough. Unusual, to say the least.

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