On Walkabout In: Las Vegas, Nevada

I have been meaning to post these pictures for quite some time of the trip my wife and I made back to the United States this past Christmas where we linked up with one of my good Australian friends and his wife in Las Vegas.  They had never been to the US other then a trip to Hawaii and were greatly looking forward to having their first snow fall experience and white Christmas ever because they had booked a week long ski vacation in Colorado after their visit to Las Vegas.

My Australian friends really wanted to have a stereotypical Las Vegas experience so thus I recommended we stay at the Imperial Palace hotel which is as stereotypical Vegas as it gets with its cheap rooms, even cheaper buffet options, elderly & people with 10 gallon hats gambling away their retirements, and celebrity impersonators to include Elvis dealing cards happily taking away the money from the elderly & people with 10 gallon hats.

The rooms cost us $35 a night which even in today’s economic climate is still a bargain for Las Vegas.  The rooms were pretty barebone without even a refrigerator, but we still had a great view looking out towards the Flamingo casino:

My Australian friends absolutely loved this run down, cheesy, stereotypical Las Vegas hotel.  What my Australian friends loved the most about the Imperial Palace though ended up not being the stereotypical Vegas atmosphere but the classic car museum.  Inside the casino the owner of Harrah’s that also owns the Imperial Palace has an absolutely huge classic car museum.

As the above sign shows The Auto Collections is supposed to be the world’s largest showroom of classic and collector automobiles:

After spending about two hours walking through this museum I concur that it probably is because this place is enormous.  Here is my favorite car in the museum, this 1977 Ferrari 308 GTB:

I liked this car because it looks similar to the one that the once king of cool Tom Selleck used to drive around in on Magnum PI. This car has a V-8 engine that can go in excess of 150 miles per hour.  The car also has only 10,000 kilometers on it and is for sale for only $100,000.  My friends are huge car and racing fans and they loved this car too and the museum as well.

Despite the love for the Imperial Palace this didn’t mean we were not going to go out and see more of Las Vegas.  The first casino we checked out was Harrah’s which was right next door to the Imperial Palace:

This casino was okay and had a great steakhouse on the second floor that we ate at one night.  We sat at a table with a great view of the strip and the service was absolutely excellent.  Expect though to pay about a hundred dollars a couple to eat there though.  We had a great experience and my Aussie friends, my wife, and I all agreed it was worth every cent.

Another casino we checked out was Caesar’s Palace right across the street from the Imperial Palace:

Caesar’s Palace may be getting old, but it is still a great casino with just a beautiful interior that includes many Roman statues to include of course one of Julius Caesar:

Besides being a casino, Caesar’s Palace is also a well known shopping destination in Las Vegas with its Forum shopping area that is filled with expensive shops and restaurants that is themed after an ancient Roman village to include even a very realistic sky that even includes sunsets and eventually changes to a night time sky:

It is actually a pretty cool effect to see happen.  The casino is also filled with a number of moving and talking fountains and statues that are also very cool to check out:

Here is my wife in front of one of these fountains:

Another pretty nice casino we went to check out was the Bellagio which is famous for its dancing fountains.  The fountain show did not disappoint:

The inside of the Bellagio was also the best decorated of all the casinos we went to for Christmas:

It was very well done and overall a nice casino, but a little bit to high class for our taste.  We also stopped by The Mirage which was actually a bit lame except for the awesome volcano show they put on every hour outside the casino:

The volcano is right along side Las Vegas Boulevard and draws pretty big crowds for this free show.   You didn’t need fire though to enjoy the lights of Las Vegas at night which we were completely surrounded by:

Here is a picture of my wife and I together surrounded by these lights:

We went to plenty of other casinos but I would say without a doubt the nice interior of all the casinos is the Venetian which much like Caesar’s Palace had the strangely almost real looking sky as well as a canal system complete with gondalas running through the casino:

My Aussie friends were having a great time in Las Vegas but little did they know that they would experience their first snow fall not in Colorado, but instead right here in Las Vegas.

Next Posting: Snow Fall on the Extraterrestrial Highway