| Las Vegas is a long way from Europe. Thirty-five | | | | buildings, with no clocks in sight, was strange. It was |
| years ago, I had seen the place on TV, and wanted to | | | | August, so the journey from one casino to the next |
| go there. When you're 22, Vegas has a magnetic pull.I | | | | involved leaving one very cool casino and entering |
| was on a tight budget, so my girlfriend and I bought the | | | | what seemed like the very hot outlet of a giant hair |
| cheapest air tickets we could find to the west coast, | | | | drier, before escaping once more into the next.We |
| together with vouchers to stay in cheap motels. We | | | | quickly learned where to eat well for practically nothing, |
| pre-booked the cheapest rental car we could and then | | | | if you didn't mind standing in line for a while. It was |
| complained about it at the airport pick-up, so they gave | | | | possible to drink cocktails free 24 hours a day, just by |
| us a free upgrade to a more expensive model.In San | | | | putting a coin in a slot whenever you caught sight of a |
| Francisco, we looked at the map. Being used to UK | | | | waitress.Circus Circus was just amazing - high wire |
| road maps, which were on a bigger scale, the distance | | | | and trapeze artists performing right over the heads of |
| from San Francisco to Las Vegas looked like a | | | | the folk on the gambling floor.For us, the nightly |
| half-day drive - so we left in the early afternoon. Late | | | | entertainment was the most enjoyable part of our |
| in the evening, having driven longer than was good for | | | | stay. We saw the Four Tops one night and Diana |
| me, tired and probably dangerous, we saw the great | | | | Ross on another and at a tiny fraction of the price we |
| glow of Vegas ahead in the desert. I felt like I was on | | | | would have paid elsewhere - especially in Europe.I |
| a different planet.It was midnight when we checked in | | | | have returned to Vegas twice more over the years |
| to the Vagabond Motel on the Strip. The lady owner | | | | and now feel its time to get back again. My best tip for |
| insisted on chatting to us for half an hour, even though | | | | European visitors arriving in the summer, which is low |
| we just needed urgent sleep. She told us about the | | | | season in Las Vegas, is not to make advance hotel |
| high number of unsolved homicides in the area and the | | | | reservations. If you tune in to local radio when you |
| numerous bodies regularly found in the desert on the | | | | arrive, you hear numerous casinos competing with |
| edge of the city. We probably wouldn't have slept if | | | | each other by making really great offers. On two |
| we hadn't been so tired.Next day, we hit the town. We | | | | separate visits, I got a high-class room in a casino for a |
| set a limit on our gambling expenditure and made it last. | | | | fraction of the normal price, with a free or |
| I think we just about broke even, by careful betting. | | | | reduced-price show and free gambling thrown in!Las |
| We loved the excitement, the constant buzz, the | | | | Vegas is a great vacation destination for a short |
| timelessness. Being in air-conditioned, artificially lit | | | | break and I'm ready to go back. |