Vegas

Well, we went to Las Vegas last night. It was roughly as I expected, but here are the not-so-surprising surprises of the night.

The Strip is long. I knew it was long, but I guess I didn't fully respect the amount of walking that I would be doing.

Once you're inside, there's nothing to see. The whole point of the exterior of the casino is to get you inside because you think it will be cool. The whole point of the inside of a casino is to get your money, which means gambling, restaurants and drinking.

It's hot in Vegas, even at 10pm.

There's not actually as much morally poisonous stuff thrust in your face as I thought. Oh, of course it's there, but I figured it would be completely unavoidable. Of course there's the "Vegas Dancer" sort of stuff, but the truly Bad stuff is fairly avoidable. Don't take anything that anyone is handing out on the street, and don't look at what's been dropped on the ground, you'll do ok. Oh, and don't look in the newpaper racks on the street either. But those are all above eye level (the people who hand out the business card size ads are all . . . short) so keep your head up, look at the lights and you can survive the Vegas adventure without completely wallowing in the mud.

The fountains at the Bellagio are the single best thing to see in Vegas. We got to see them do "Viva Las Vegas," "Hey Big Spender" and one other song which I now forget. Two were good, but "Big Spender" was particularly excellent. The directional fountains really seemed to capture the feeling of the song.