Sunday was our only full day in Las Vegas. We wanted to be
ambitious by visiting three attractions: The Hoover Dam, The Mob Museum, and
the Neon Museum. We ended up skipping the Neon Museum because of general
exhaustion but managed to do a bit of gambling and explore the strip instead.
It made for an exhausting and thrilling day.
1) The Hoover Dam
The Hoover Dam was amazing. Its about an hour from the Las
Vegas strip, and we planned to get there by 10am to beat the memorial day
crowds. We bought the 1 hour power plant and dam tour that takes is through the
crawl spaces on the interior of dam itself. The first thing was a little movie
that I found heavily inspirational. They built that entire feat of engineering
and human ingenuity in 5 years. I mean, I have 5 year plans on and off, and
none of them involve building a structure that supports expansion into the west
and will last for 2000 years. I am blown away, inspired by what careful
engineering and hard work can do for the whole civilization. It was such hard, hard work, too. Its not
something me or anyone I know is headstrong or desperate enough to take part
in.
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| Me Standing in front of the Bridge Leading up to the Hoover Dam |
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| Alex at the Observation Deck |
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| Hoover Dam Museum Exhibit |
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| The Hoover Dam Power Plant |
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| Tour Signage |
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| Crawl Spaces! |
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| Tunnels and Secret Passageways |
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| Spillways! |
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| The Bureau Of Reclamation exhibit |
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| Graphic Recapturing |
We are very happy with this part of our trip. It was hot but
not as hot as I would have thought. It was a long walk, but not as long as I
had anticipated. It was a lovely little sojourn.
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| A photo of our hotel, the Downtown Grand. We were in the tower to the right. |
2) The Mob Museum
We went back to the hotel for a quickie nap and woke up 2
hours later to fit the Mob Museum in before they closed. Alex really loved it.
It reminded me of Goodfellas, to be honest.
It was nice to get some texture to some of the older hotel casinos in
Las Vegas. Some of the retro art looks like what I think Palm Springs would
look like.
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| The exhibits were highly dramatized at the Mob Musuem |
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| They had a lot of primary sources, which I thought was quite valuable. |
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| Some of the primary sources were adorably cheesecake. |
We decided to skip the Neon Museum because the tours had
already started by the time we woke up from our much needed nap. We’ll have to
put that on the list for next time. Alex
was disappointed, but it is hard to enjoy everything when we are trying to fit
so much into one day. And Besides, we hadn’t even really checked out the strip
yet.
We got in a small amount of exhilarating gambling in before
we decided to head out.
Recall that our hotel has the lowest crap table minimums in
town. This in mind, we decide to put a few more dollars on the pass line. Alex,
forgetting that he was spending my money, decided to put 10 on the pass line,
losing it immediately. I am still ribbing him for that. The Craps dealer was
surprised that we came back with more money since I was hazing Alex so bad.
3) The Strip
In preparation for the strip, I put on the cheesiest dress I brought. I am horrified that I didn't bring anything that would help me fit in better.
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| Me posing in the closest thing I had to Las Vegas Atire |
After ending up five dollars ahead, we went and parked at
the MGM Grand to hoof the strip. It was so beautiful lit up at night. We walked
into every casino to gasp at the craps table minimums. We checked out the MGM
Grand, New York New York Casino, The Paris Hotel, The Bellagio, and Ceaser’s
Palace.
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| Ceasers Palace had a Legit mall to include totally everyday stores like H&M |
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| Here is me Posing in a totally Gorgeous part of Ceasers Palace. |
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| The Architecture here was beautiful! |
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| Outside of the Grand Caeser's Palace. |
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| Paris Hotel |
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| New York New York Casino! |
We ate at the American Restaurant in New York New York Restaurant
because they had veggie burgers. I asked them for a Mushroom Burger with a
Veggie Patty without the Bacon and they did an amazing thing. They substituted
the bacon with avocado. I never before would have thought that avocado is the
vegetarian bacon, but it had an awesome affect. This is the second evidence of
human ingenuity that we encountered today.
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| Veggie Burger! |
My favorite of all the hotel casinos was Caeser’s palace. It was
amazingly beautiful. Inside the casino was a full on restaurant and bar row, as
well as a huge mall that could rival the Westfield franchise.
We got exhausted by midnight and walked by just as the strip
was getting sketch. It was a long line out of there and we had to wait
patiently in a car line to get back to our hotel by 1am.
This was truly an amazing day!
