Pirates, Brides & Socialists on the Vegas Strip (2 of 2) - Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

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Pirates, Brides & Socialists on the Vegas Strip

Las Vegas, Nevada



After drinking a few beers and telling some embarrassing college stories we were off on our lengthy tour of Las Vegas. Jim had planned a long night detailed on a map he carried in his back pocket. The map steered a course that would take us from high on the north Strip to far down the south Strip, with many stops along the way.

Our first stop was the Venetian, and it gets my vote for the best hotel in Las Vegas. As mentioned earlier, the Venetian is an attempt to convey the feel of Venice in Las Vegas – complete with the canals, arched bridges, and gondola rides. Add to that a branch of the Guggenheim museum and a groovy, yet stylish casino, and you have a pretty spectacular hotel on your hands. The Venetian also has several tasty restaurants including Noodles Asia – an approximation of a Japanese noodle house that was excellent.

It was at the Venetian that I saw my second bride of the day, and I realized that I'd be seeing many more throughout the night. The bride and her new husband were taking a gondola ride down the canal through the hotel's shops. If they were hoping for a quiet, romantic activity, they weren't going to find it in Vegas. As they floated down the canal they were cheered by everyone they passed.

Soon after we decided to move on to our next destination – Paris – Las Vegas. This hotel is a close second (and tied with Treasure Island) to the Venetian in coolness. Paris is so wholly unlike any other casino that it really surprises. Like the Venetian, Paris is an attempt to create the feel of a European city in Las Vegas. They do so with a half-scale recreation of the Eiffel Tower, a one-third-scale version of the Arc de Triomphe, and a Paris-style café. Unlike the Venetian, the Paris casino has a high, high ceiling in a huge, roomy space. While at the Paris – Las Vegas I never felt that I was on a street in Paris, but I never felt like I was in a cramped casino either. We played the Austin Powers slots, drank the free beers and took photos until a security guard gave us a mean, suspicious look (apparently you're not supposed to take photos inside the casinos).

As the evening progressed we lost a few members of the group. Jeff and Margy had to go back to their hotel due to early flights, and several others went to check out the new recreation of Studio 54 in the MGM Grand. It was getting late, but we all decided to continue on to our destination – Mandalay Bay – the home of Red Square, a vodka bar with a Russian theme.

Though we walked the whole way from the Venetian to Mandalay Bay, there are other transportation options. Unfortunately you have to have a graduate degree in urban planning to understand them. There are trolleys (that costs $1.30 a trip), but we found them to be slow in coming. Otherwise, there is the bizarre system created by the casinos. A light rail system runs only from affiliated hotels and back. For example, there is a train that runs only from Treasure Island to the Mirage and back; the hotels have the same owners. They don't like to make it easy for you to escape their all-inclusive clutches.

For the most part, it's best to walk. And it's on the street where you'll meet all the best people – like the guy wearing the "blow me" shirt, or the endless rows of men and women trying to hand out little cards featuring dirty pictures and a phone number, and the recently married brides – one who was walking down the street in her bare feet.

After a few more stops, we finally arrived at Mandalay Bay around 3a.m. Red Square did not disappoint: a Russian-themed bar, featuring 1930s era heroic murals of factory workers and images of the sickle and hammer – all in the heart of a huge casino. I'm sure that it was not lost on anyone, but no one mentioned the irony of it all.

Woo! We were tired and a bit tipsy. At this point Jessica and I to decided to head back to our pirate hotel that I was now very pleased maintained a "Caribbean hideaway" theme.

Socialists Live Here

As we waited in the cab line, we saw what we thought would be our final bride of the night. A happy-looking couple, all decked out in tux and wedding dress, headed into the hotel as the line of drunken gamblers cheered and yelled encouragement.

Finally our turn came, and we hopped in a cab. At first our cab driver seemed like an aging borsht belt comic – full of one-liners and corny jokes about Las Vegas. As we progressed north, though, his comments turned to what he saw as the evils of Las Vegas: commercialism, a cartel of casino owners who won't let any outside competition on the Strip, and the suggestion that we'd all be better off as socialists.

Coming on the heels of having a drink in a casino bar that appropriated the iconography of communism, it only seemed fitting to have a cab driver outside the casino who offered up the real deal. He seemed to hate Las Vegas and used his bully pulpit to deride the whole capitalistic essence of the place.

While I suppose the cab driver had a few good points, we were too sleepy to give him much of a hearing and we headed inside to our room. However, on the way we saw our real final bride of the night, and I thought that maybe I blew the cab driver off a little too quickly. She was half asleep, sitting, in full bridal attire, at a craps table – her head propped up with the palm of her two hands. As we passed by, her new husband was having his turn rolling the dice.

Read Part One of Pirates, Brides and Socialists

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