I visited Las Vegas for the first time last week. What a place! The city of Las Vegas is all of America’s worst qualities dropped into one location. There’s greed, money, gluttony, sex, alcohol, partying and a disregard for consequences (what do you mean I just lost my house playing Blackjack?!)
All of Vegas’ sins aside, it was a neat city to visit. I was there attending the Society of Professional Journalists Convention & National Journalism Conference. With almost 900 attendees, we had a fabulous conference and I managed to squeeze in some time for fun.
My husband came along for his first visit to Las Vegas too. While I attended conference events, he strolled the Strip, checking out all the most famous hotels—the Bellagio, New York-New York and the MGM Grand. We stayed at the Aladdin Casino & Resort, which will become a Planet Hollywood casino and hotel next year.
The hotels in Vegas are amazing. Each with a specific theme, the décor is amazing. Most have large shopping and restaurant areas. The buffet at the Aladdin was incredible—although at about $20 a person, it’s a little pricey. But we did our best to eat as much as we could!
One evening we headed to the Rio to see Penn & Teller do their magic and comedy act. It was a great show and the stars were outside afterward so we managed to snag an autograph.
Another afternoon, we boarded a shuttle and headed to the Elvis-A-Rama for a walk through the Elvis museum and a 60-minute show by an Elvis impersonator. Even though I was a mere year old when Elvis died in 1977, I’ve always been a fan. The show was great and the tribute artist (Justin Kurtis) did a respectable job impersonating the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll. He posed for photos after the show and I couldn’t resist (once the film is developed, I’ll post the photo).
We also trekked out to the Hilton, using the monorail. There we experienced the Borg Invasion and the Klingon Encounter, part of Star Trek: The Experience. Married to a Trekkie, I had no choice but to attend. I’m a recent convert to the Star Trek world, so some of the references don’t make much sense to me, but I do my best.
I had never wanted to visit Las Vegas. I’m not into gambling and just didn’t have Sin City at the top of my “places to visit” list. In fact, it wasn’t even on my list at all. But when I found out the SPJ convention would be there, I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to at least say I had seen Vegas.
Vegas was better than I had anticipated. There’s plenty to see and do outside the casinos (I spent only enough time there to lose $3 in the slot machines). The hotels are amazing, the neon lights are dazzling and there are countless shows to be seen and even more restaurants to sample.
Las Vegas puts on quite a show and I was impressed. I might even go back someday.