Not a horse, I meant a bus. Las Vegas is a Spanish name, which translates to The Meadows. Not the rolling dunes of the Sahara, but miles and miles of barren land.
Sagebrush dotted around the landscape, and of course patches of Joshua trees, but all growing on very dry, dusty land. We have not seen any meadows here. The journey was uneventful and took 6 hours on the bus but we had arrived!
First impressions were that the place is huge! Much bigger than either of us imagined. And I for one thought that was all there was to it. When travelling by bus, you have a choice of two places to get off in Las Vegas; The Strip or Downtown, the two stops being a little over 6 km apart.
You are immediately struck by the huge electronic billboards, some taking up almost a whole side of a hotel! A short wait for our Uber, and 10 minutes later we had joined the 40 minute long queue to check in at our hotel. This is a hotel without a casino, and is situated on the northern end of the strip, around 2. A plain looking building, with no neon lights, but it more than does a job. It is one of the less expensive places to stay, and we arrived on July 5th, when prices had practically halved from the national holiday prices of the day before.
We have a light and airy good sized room with a 22nd floor view of the nearby mountain range, and close to Circus Circus on one side and the Strat on the other. Or should that be the 21st floor? They are evidently a little superstitious here because there is no 13th floor. The only downside here being the long walk home most evenings. There are some trams that run between some of the bigger hotels such as Mandalay Bay and the Venetian.
