SURPRISE ME!

Last Party Before You Tie the Knot? It's Got to Be Vegas, Baby!

Devika Khosla

Last updated: Mar 5, 2019

Great world cities showcase their natural beauty, architectural heritage and institutions of art and learning. Las Vegas celebrates low culture – in your face, but on a scale so mind-boggling, it leaves all your intellectual pretensions in the dust.

Vegas is the Spanish word for ‘meadows’, the green areas in the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada, that sprung up thanks to numerous artesian wells. In the nineteenth century, this became a stopover for emigrants to California. The development of the massive Hoover Dam in 1931 was a turning point for the city, bringing employment and more importantly, power and water.

In the same year, liberalised gambling and divorce laws set the tone for the future. Vegas’ first casino, El Rancho, opened in 1941. Soon, another type of investor moved in – mobsters, who established huge, lavish casinos with gaudy attractions to entice big spenders. Immortalised in dozens of Hollywood movies, they gave Las Vegas its other name, Sin City! The gangsters are gone, but the template they created remains.

Over the decades, the city’s economy grew in only one direction – up, up and away – enticing not just the well-heeled, but ordinary folks too, looking for a little luck and some fun. Why do people come here? To fulfil their fantasies, of course (besides fancy weddings, quickie divorces and a host of guilty pleasures)!

The 7-kilometre Las Vegas Strip, in permanent party mode, is where all the action is. A hundred odd dollars will get you and your friends a stretch limousine – for a few hours, you are a millionaire, gliding down the Strip, taking in the sights and stopping off to try your luck at poker, blackjack, sports betting, roulette or bingo!

In Vegas, size does matter – if you aren’t wearing comfortable shoes, your aching feet will tell you so as you negotiate your way around acres of carpeted hotel lobbies and corridors. Interestingly, the enormous reception areas don’t have any seating to speak of. You queue up for your turn and once check-in formalities are complete, the only places where you can park yourself, other than your room, are the casino halls or restaurants!

Speaking of hotels, most of the world’s largest and luxurious ones are here. You don’t have to pay through your nose for them (your sessions at their casinos will compensate!). Every resort, built around a specific theme, vies with its neighbours to stun, amaze and gobsmack you. The resorts are cheek by jowl or interconnected, so it’s entirely possible to wander from classical Rome into a Hollywood studio and onward to ancient Luxor. The Grand Venetian Hotel has painted cathedral-like ceilings; at another level, you’re strolling along a canal bank, complete with blue sky and scudding clouds above while a gondolier on the water sings soulful Italian opera! If it weren’t for the crush of folks sporting big hair, shiny bracelets and Lycra, you could well be in Venice.

Many resorts are all-suite behemoths, each suite being expansive enough for you to roll around in if you so choose, not to mention sinfully well-appointed bathrooms. Since the hotels invariably have their air-conditioning turned on full blast, it’s worth toting a jacket along, even if you’re visiting this sunny desert city in summer.

While it’s gambling that obviously oils the economy, entertainment is the other big draw. You don’t even have to pay for all of it! The Treasure Island resort stages an outdoor musical featuring pirates, curvy sirens and a ship that sinks before your eyes, while the water bodies fronting the Bellagio come alive to dancing fountains in 15-minute interludes – just two of the free shows you can take in along the Strip. The range of paid entertainment on offer can leave you cross-eyed with confusion – dance and magic shows, musicals, stand-up comedy and Hollywood’s best and brightest. Lots for kids too – Shark Reef Mandalay Bay is an aquarium housing 1,200 sea creatures (the quantity of water needed to showcase them: 1.3 million gallons!) Museums, exhibitions and thrill rides will keep little ones enthralled.

The Strip by itself is 24x7 entertainment. Get photographed with Elvis lookalikes or burlesque ladies (clad in feathers and little else). Drink margaritas in yard-long glasses and tuck in heartily at eat-all-you-can buffets! Want more? Go golfing, explore desert trails. Visit the Grand Canyon; some tours include white-water rafting on the Colorado River, at the bottom of the Canyon.

What’s a little, harmless sin in a lifetime of being virtuous? In any case, as the saying goes, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”!

Devika Khosla

Devika’s always going ‘somewhere’. Obsessive foodie, spa junkie, animal lover, mountain goat and global citizen. That’s her story.

Comments

Kapil Agrawal | on 16 March 2011

Las Vegas is some place and to know the exact dimensions of it you have to see it by yourself. no imagination is enough. If anyone wantts to see the world he or she must go to las vegas. It is not SIN city, It is a happening city.....