Day 14 – Las Vegas

This was a day to relax followed by a night to remember. 

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve been coming to Las Vegas since 1989, when my parents brought me for my 21st birthday. “Old Vegas” still dominated then, as The Mirage, which heralded the age of the “mega-resort casino”, had just been completed that year. I’ve seen a lot of change in thirty years, not all of it good of course, but there’s still nothing else in the world like it. So visiting here has become a family tradition and is always a little nostalgic for me. 

Even though our kids aren’t old enough to gamble, or to go to some of the shows or lounges, there’s still an overwhelming number of things to do and to see with a 17 year-old and a 12 year-old. I don’t want to wait until they’re 21 experience it with them. (Also, I had a lot of points saved up, so the stay was mostly comped!)

We walked slowly through the Flamingo, then across to Cromwell (which used to be Barbary Coast), and on to the other side of Flamingo Road to Bally’s, and then Paris, where everyone could see the details that had gone into the architecture and design. We walked through some of the shopping center at Planet Hollywood, then continued to Hawaiian Marketplace, which is a largely unremarkable outdoor area but for one thing: in the back is a nearly-empty building with a single restaurant on the top floor: Tamba. 

Our whole family enjoys Indian food (though we have to be careful about nuts with our son), and the buffet at Tamba is second to none. We all ate until we could barely walk, but walk we did: across the Strip to Aria, City Center, and The Cosmopolitan, by which time we finally had put on enough miles that we were ready to go back and rest in our rooms for a bit, then prepare for the evening’s treat: Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” at the Mirage.

If you have never seen a Cirque du Soleil show, there’s absolutely no way to describe it. It’s not a traditional circus in any way other than an occasional mime or clown. Rather, the troupe tells entire stories, generally without spoken words; the physicality of the performers is enough to do it. They simply create emotion in a way that is unique to their shows.

With “Love”, of course, the story is defined by and bound together with the music of The Beatles. Out of the ashes of WWII England ultimately rises a generation of young people ready to flex their muscles, to stake their claim in the world. Behind it all is a decade of music by one of the most influential groups in the history of music.

My wife and I had seen the show at least twice before, and we were excited to share it with the kids. Their reactions were even better than we’d hoped for, and I got a few non-flash snapshots of those faces of pure wonder.

The performance takes place in a round theater, occasionally divided into quarters with translucent curtains, so you are constantly bombarded from all sides with movement, sound, lights, projections, and characters who will come right up to you to make you clap or smile. It’s been running for years now, and I hope there’s no desire (or need) to close it any time soon.

We saw the earlier (7 pm) show, so when we got out, we went downtown to the Golden Nugget for some Asian cuisine food at Lily’s. We stayed to enjoy the “Fremont Street Experience” – a pedestrian mall covered by a large, multi-screen roof which features a musical video show every hour at night. There was also a live band and plenty of mostly-naked weird people enjoying the state’s liberal recreational marijuana laws. It’s a gas, and very different from the Strip.

Exhausted, and with bellies filled, we caught a cab back to the Flamingo and went to sleep.