Friday, May 20, 2005
Home, and more photos of Las Vegas
I am home, quietly blogging at my perch in the kitchen, munching on reheated Domino's pizza.
I certainly appreciate that just about everybody in the world has been to Las Vegas and that amateurish photographs of the place are probably a waste of bandwidth, but that does not trump my yearning to share.
Wednesday was given over to meetings until the cocktail hour, but we did manage to change into casual clothes and see some of the sites.
Here's a view of "Paris" from my friend's room at the Bellagio:
We wandered over there, of course. Here is the blogger himself in front of the petit Arc de Triomphe:
We then went to dinner at an excellent restaurant called Alize. They served, inter alia, tiny little dishes of melon and proscuitto "compliments of the chef," to wit:
Ok. I admit that this is a sort of "Sissy Willis" shot, absent (of course) the aesthetically pleasing formatting and wildly creative connection to some current event.
After dinner, we saw "Second City Scriptless" at the Flamingo. I had my doubts about improv in Las Vegas -- it seems much better suited to the city of its birth -- but dammit if they didn't put on a hilarious show. It was excellent. If you like comedy and you are in Vegas, by all means burn a couple of hours at "Second City Scriptless."
We finished up the evening with a walkabout of some length. Treasure Island's "Pirate" show was cancelled due to high winds, so we went to the Venetian in search of ice cream. The fake ceiling is so deceptive that it almost looks like early evening in Venice:
The same winds killed off the fountain show back at the Bellagio, but I did get this shot of my hotel from across the artificial lake:
Count the floors of the Bellagio. You see how many? Maybe 15. Even allowing for a few floors below, the building does not appear to be more than 20 stories high. But my room was on the "30th floor," according to the desk clerk at check-in and the buttons on the elevator. It turns out that hotels in Las Vegas often skip a few floors -- not just unlucky 13 -- when they number them. Presumably they do this because they think it will appeal to their guests, who presumably think it is cool to stay in a room on a high floor. Isn't this running the risk that people will feel bamboozled when they figure out the fraud? Or perhaps guests who care about the number of their floor in the abstract are not the sort of people to wonder whether it might not just be another illusion.
I certainly appreciate that just about everybody in the world has been to Las Vegas and that amateurish photographs of the place are probably a waste of bandwidth, but that does not trump my yearning to share.
Wednesday was given over to meetings until the cocktail hour, but we did manage to change into casual clothes and see some of the sites.
Here's a view of "Paris" from my friend's room at the Bellagio:
We wandered over there, of course. Here is the blogger himself in front of the petit Arc de Triomphe:
We then went to dinner at an excellent restaurant called Alize. They served, inter alia, tiny little dishes of melon and proscuitto "compliments of the chef," to wit:
Ok. I admit that this is a sort of "Sissy Willis" shot, absent (of course) the aesthetically pleasing formatting and wildly creative connection to some current event.
After dinner, we saw "Second City Scriptless" at the Flamingo. I had my doubts about improv in Las Vegas -- it seems much better suited to the city of its birth -- but dammit if they didn't put on a hilarious show. It was excellent. If you like comedy and you are in Vegas, by all means burn a couple of hours at "Second City Scriptless."
We finished up the evening with a walkabout of some length. Treasure Island's "Pirate" show was cancelled due to high winds, so we went to the Venetian in search of ice cream. The fake ceiling is so deceptive that it almost looks like early evening in Venice:
The same winds killed off the fountain show back at the Bellagio, but I did get this shot of my hotel from across the artificial lake:
Count the floors of the Bellagio. You see how many? Maybe 15. Even allowing for a few floors below, the building does not appear to be more than 20 stories high. But my room was on the "30th floor," according to the desk clerk at check-in and the buttons on the elevator. It turns out that hotels in Las Vegas often skip a few floors -- not just unlucky 13 -- when they number them. Presumably they do this because they think it will appeal to their guests, who presumably think it is cool to stay in a room on a high floor. Isn't this running the risk that people will feel bamboozled when they figure out the fraud? Or perhaps guests who care about the number of their floor in the abstract are not the sort of people to wonder whether it might not just be another illusion.
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