God, Las Vegas is strange. We were only gone about 52 hours, but there were so many blinky lights and bleeps and bloops and crowds of people to muscle through that those two days felt like a week. My family are all big Vegas people, but I guess I missed that gene. I find it extremely obnoxious that there is absolutely nothing on the Strip that is not designed for the sole purpose of getting you to zone out and spend lots and lots of money.
Hi, kids! I've seen better days!
Hi, kids! I will haunt your soul and EAT YOUR DREAMS.
But you get no points for being cynical in Las Vegas, so if you are like me and you go, you have to go ahead and embrace the whole mess, or else you will be crabby and miserable your entire vacation, and that is no fun at all.
Actually, it seemed like even a lot of people who were wholeheartedly into it were crabby and miserable. Almost every time we ventured outside I saw people who were doing things like crying because they lost all their money at craps or screaming "Fuck you!" "No! Fuck YOU!" at each other in the middle of the sidewalk. I guess you can't have a playground for adults and not expect people to get overstimulated and throw tantrums every now and again, especially if you don't give them anywhere to sit and make it difficult to find a drink of water.
Darned decent view
Fountains fountaining out
But anyway, I did embrace it, mostly, and ended up having a really good time. We stayed at the tacky but not-tacky-enough Flamingo and got an upgrade to a 27th-floor room from which we could watch the Bellagio fountains do their thing every half hour. I won $250 at video poker (four aces, baby!) 10 minutes before catching a cab to the airport, which means I came out just ahead, gambling-wise. I ate so much bacon at the all-you-can-eat champagne brunch buffet this morning that I hurt myself and was seriously considering purging to make it through the rest of the afternoon. I know, gross.
My bearded superstar
There was so much walking coupled with so much eating and drinking this weekend that my body got kind of weird, and most of today I experienced the unpleasant sensation of trying to push a bloated pregnant-spider-looking abdomen around on two sore, sinewy toothpick legs. Whew.
My pictures of the reception were not so great, but I'm pretty sure there was plenty of documentation. Anyway, don't they look terrific?
And of course there was the wedding, which was the reason for the trip. The wedding was beautiful, and dinner was good, and drinks were plentiful, and the bride and groom looked so good and so happy, and I don't know, it was just very fun and nice. I liked it a lot.
I'm calling the weekend a success, and now I'm glad to be home, where it's quiet and humid and I have managed to keep the exact same amount of money in my wallet since we paid for parking at the airport two hours ago. It's a pleasant feeling.