Exactly two years ago, I visited the United States of America for the first time. More specifically, I went to Las Vegas. Yeah boy. Go big or go home as they say. And you can’t really go bigger than the quintessential American city of them all.
The entertainment capital of the world.
The city of lost wages. Sin City.
The city where you can eat breakfast at all times of the day.
Las Vegas. The most crazy city of them all.
Vegas, baby.
How it all started
Originally my girlfriend and I were looking to go somewhere warm. We both had a week of vacation and wanted to escape the dreary and cold winter here in Denmark. We only had two requirements initially. We wanted to fly from Aalborg and we wanted to go somewhere warm.
That pretty much limited us to the usual suspects. Turkey, Spain, Greece. You know, the places where everybody and their dog flock to when they want to go on vacation outside Denmark.
Just for shits and giggles, I checked whether it was possible to fly to the US from Aalborg. It was, though it was quite expensive as I had chosen New York. Then I spotted Las Vegas on the list, selected it, checked the price. And hit jackpot.
A flight for two persons incl. hotel for a week for around 8500 DKK, flying out from Aalborg. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that.
The only caveat, was that due to the time-differences we would be landing in Denmark again on a Monday. Cue to me asking my boss the next day if it would be a problem if I took an extra day of vacation (hint: it wasn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post).
With that cleared, we booked our trip.
Arriving in Las Vegas
Let me just start out by saying, Las Vegas is not like any other city. The city never sleeps (or at least, the Strip and Freemont doesn’t) and there’s very much to take in.
After a long flight with two transfers and heavy turbulence on the last leg of the flight, we arrived in Vegas late in the evening. Nothing quite says “Welcome to Las Vegas” than seeing slot-machines in the airport. Then you know what it’s all about.
One short cab-ride later and we were at our hotel. The Westgate Las Vegas.
A hotel with a lot of history (both Elvis and Liberace performed here), located conveniently with the Monorail just outside the entrance. The hotel is not located on the strip as such, but the Monorail more than makes up for it.
Pretty hammered by our flight, we basically just checked in, grabbed some food, had a shower and went to bed. Only to wake very early in the morning the next day due to jet-lag and excitement. Onwards to adventure!
So much to see and do
What really surprised us, was how big the hotels were. They’re not just big. They’re big. Huge, enormous and slightly confusing to navigate. More so when you use the Monorail (so convenient if you live at a hotel where it stops. Much faster to use than taxi/Uber or bus), as you arrive at the back of the hotel and have to go past all the slot machines and poker tables until you arrive at the front and are standing on the street.
The hotels doesn’t just consist of gambling, though large ares are dedicated to it. There’s also shopping, restaurants, museums, bars, mini-golf (even a roller-coaster inside one of the hotels!) and much more to see and do.
So much, that we actually spent the entire week walking up and down The Strip (it’s quite long, nearly 7 km), visiting nearly all the hotels to see what they have to offer (they all have different themes, ranging from medieval, Egyptian, Roman/Italian, futuristic and everything in-between), enjoying all the novelty stores and their wacky merchandise (there’s an entire store dedicated to M&M’s. It smells very funky though, now you’ve been warned), gazing at all the crazy-ass expensive art, shopping and of course eating / tasting us through the entire city.
The food
Buffets in Las Vegas is really something else. So many different dishes from every corner of the world and they’re not skimping on quality. Some days it felt like a Roman feast, where we spent a couple of hours at the buffet. Needless to say we couldn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day after such a pig out. But it was glorious.
If buffets are not your style, don’t worry. You can get whatever your heart desires at all times of the day. Want to eat breakfast for dinner? You can. Do you want a giant steak for breakfast? Why not. Go for it.
Craving sushi at 2 o’clock at night? Got you covered. Want a giant donut that looks like a unicorn had sex with a rainbow? It’s yours.
Freemont
Freemont deserve a chapter for itself. It’s the old part of the town where the hotels and gambling originally started. It’s also here Las Vegas is usually depicted in movies.
If you think you’ve seen some funky people at The Strip, just wait until you get to Freemont. It’s like everything is just a tad more weird here. Not to mention all the street performers. Something you don’t see at The Strip. There’s people playing drums on buckets, strippers, dwarfs, cos-players and everything in-between.
Just go there, you won’t regret it.
Going back
Depending on your personality and temper, one week in Vegas might be enough for a lifetime. But for us it wasn’t enough. Far from it. We didn’t even see or experience a quarter of the things we wanted to see. There’s just so much and it’s all so over the top.
In fact, we liked it so much we knew we had to go back another time. We didn’t know when, but we knew we had to stay for more than a week next time. But that’s a story for another time.