When we arrived in LV at 10 AM, we decided to see what it would cost to rent a car although we had been thinking to just use the LV bus and monorail system. But since Hertz offered a compact car rental for $300 for five days including the collision insurance, we decided to go with that. And since we were then able to eat and play blackjack away from the strip, these savings probably cut the cost in half. Notably the airport is still relatively new and all the car rentals are one large complex about one mile or so south of the airport. One humorous observation was that in the “old days” when one is trying to connect with arriving visitors, you held up a sign with their name on it. Now people just hold up their i-pad with the name displayed.
We stayed at the Paris Hotel, which is very nice although not as plush as the Bellagio or Venetian. By avoiding Friday and Saturday, the average rate was $100/night for Sunday through Thursday night. (Note that there are about 150,000 hotel rooms in LV and about 3,500 conferences per year.) Avoiding Friday and Saturday probably gave us a cheaper car rental as well. LV looked more busy and prosperous than our last visit of seven or eight years ago which was in July or August. Walking up the Strip was like swimming upstream against a relentless current of people. There did seem to be more beggars and more people, mostly Hispanic, selling cold bottles of water on the strip. There were also a couple of new casino/hotels that were very opulent with beautiful architecture. And there are so many upscale shops, but regrettably the old bargain buffets are almost extinct unless you go off the strip, but then the quality goes down. Breakfast buffets were typically about $20/person, and lunch/dinner $30-$50 on the strip although we did finally find a breakfast buffet in Bally’s for about $12 but the quality was mediocre with dried out leathery pancakes.
There were a lot of Chinese and Spanish speaking tourists which probably reflects the growing wealth of these regions. The TV channels in our hotel room echoed this with about 25% of the channels in Chinese, 25% Spanish and 50% English. Of course most of the low wage staff jobs are Hispanic. Penn & Teller was the highlight of the trip, but we did see a couple of other magician/comedians including Mac King at Harrah's and Murray at the Tropicana. Tickets for P&T were about $105 apiece but Mac King and Murray were about $20/ticket. You have most likely seen King and Murray on cable. P&T describe themselves as ardent libertarians and don't even like having to be searched by airport security. In fact they sell a copy of the Bill of Rights printed on a steel card the size of a credit card. Thus when you walk through the metal detector and Homeland Security takes your steel card away, you can tell them that they are taking away your Bill of Rights, especially amendment IV.
Another highlight for me was stopping by Baumann Books which is an antiquarian book store in the Venetian/Palazzo. They allowed me to hold a first edition of " Alice in Wonderland" which has an asking price of $16,000 - we didn't buy it. We did play some blackjack in Vegas and did find a casino off the strip, the Longhorn Casino that only had a $2 minimum. Altogether, we lost less than $100 gambling but had fun doing it over a total of about 7 hrs each. Blackjack is fun because of the social aspect of talking with other players and dealers from around the world. One dealer was from Cuba , who left Cuba 50 years ago and has no desire to visit, and another was a 4th grade teacher that works as a dealer during the summer. It is always fun to talk with the other players and observe people betting $25 or more per hand when they don’t know the basic playing strategy. Interestingly, there were many more women Blackjack dealers than our last visit and some casinos seem to put very good looking women dealers at the tables near the entrances. It is difficult though to find Blackjack tables on the strip that have table minimums of $5, and those that do, paid 6:5 on Blackjacks rather than the standard 3:2 plus they had other rules favoring the house such as the dealer hits on a soft 17. Thus we felt fortunate to still find a $2 table. One casino advisor discourages casinos from changing the rules fearing that long term it will turn off customers. But one understands the big casinos’ desire to keep a minimum cash flow per hour at the tables which means increasing the house odds for cheaper tables. It also did seem that there were fewer table games and more slots. And also regrettably, the casinos seemed to all look the same more so than the last visit with most of them being darkly lit with dark colored carpets. The Tropicana was an exception that had a bright interior and tan carpets.
The food was great but we didn't splurge on every meal. We did eat at Wolfgang Puck's Spago and had a really good pizza and a pasta dish. Also ate at a tapas bar just off the strip. And we had to stop at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop of "Pawn Stars" fame. Of course none of the stars were there. I did buy a few coins. If you don't get there early though, there is a very long line to just get into the store since it's not all that big. Janis's Vegas souvenir was buying a pair of small dragonfly earrings with ocean (blue) opals and amethyst at a shop specializing in Native American jewelry and pottery. It was a third generation owner whose grandfather lived on an Apache tribe reservation and started out in leather work, such as belts and saddles.
Overall, we enjoyed our Vegas trip especially just walking around which we did a lot of, 7-11 mi/day.
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