Day 30 - Viva Las Vegas!

Woke up in the wonderfully named town of Pahrump, Nevada. I caught with the news & was disappointed to see that the British pound is now at a record low against the US dollar. Perfect news for a 3 month road trip. Luckily, Jackie had used her BlueLightCard last night & saved well over $100 for a 3 night stay in The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas...every bit counts!

I got ready & at 8.30am I toddled down to reception to get 2 free cups of coffee. It was funny to see that there was already (or still) people playing the machines in the Casino & puffing away on their fags.

After checking out of reception, we drove over to the Laundromat opposite & fed the machines with 25 cent coins. It was like being back in the Casino again, they paid out the same amount!

We drove out north of town & eventually found our next point of interest, Coffin It Up. Apparently they made exotic coffins to order. When we got there we found it to be a private house with a fence round it & a macabre, hopefully fake, graveyard in it’s grounds. I got out to take a couple of photos & saw the sign that said ‘Private Property. Trespassers will be Violated. Survivors will be Shot’.

Now lunchtime, we stopped for a burger at Sonic America’s Drive in. We were impressed & will have it again over a McDonalds. Next stop on the agenda was brothels!!

We drove out into the middle of nowhere, primarily to see an (in)famous brothel called The Resort at Sheri’s Ranch, which is owned be an ex-homicide detective, Chuck Lee & was previously known as The Original Sheri’s Ranch Brothel. It was fine, but not a great deal to look at.

Next door, however, was ‘Yes, The Best Little Whorehouse In The West’. It was The World Famous Historic Chicken Ranch,which proudly advertised itself as ‘Voted #1 Nevada Brothel of the Year’.

We parked up outside it & actually it looked more like a brothel theme park. More signs advertised ‘Free Tours & Gift’ and ‘The Leghorn Bar & Souvenirs’. By the front door there was a novelty cut out of a lady & a cowboy for you to put your head on for a photo, regrettably we didn’t. I also noticed that there was disabled parking spaces. Men & Women were welcome, but we didn’t go in.

Instead we drove the the 60 odd miles to Las Vegas. Our 1st stop was the ‘Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada’ sign. There were a hundred plus people there, many in a long queue to have your photo taken immediately in front of it by a volunteer photographer. We chose not to wait & took our photos at the side.

We then drove along The Strip (not so impressive during daylight hours) & on into Downtown Vegas. We passed the World Famous Chapel of the Bells, the Little Vegas Chapel (that did Elvis 🕺 weddings), the Little White Chapel & Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel to name just a few. They were all next door to each other on just one street.

Our next stop was the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, the scene of one of my favourite TV programmes by the same name. There was no filming going on, but we were allowed to go into the still operational pawn shop to look around & buy stuff or souvenirs. Next door was Chumlee’s Candy shop & Rick’s BBQ Joint. It is now a massive money making enterprise & the main ‘stars’ are now multi millionaires.

We then drove to the kitsch Flamingo Hotel & self parked (if you’re too lazy you could get a valet to do it for you). It was now just after 4.00pm & the queue to check in was horrendous. I queued in the long check-in line, whilst Jackie attempted to speedy self check-in. She just beat me, but didn’t have the bonus of chatting to an English woman who had just flown in from Gatwick for a wedding & behind her an elderly mother with a Down Syndrome daughter who had driven down from Wyoming to see the Donny & Marie Show playing in our hotel. Apparently they lived in the same small town as Donny & Marie’s mother.

After asking for help, we finally made it to our room #5056, which I would describe as tasteful, but minimalistic. You’re not supposed to sit in your room in Vegas, so we didn’t. A quick shower & we were out.

We wandered around our hotel trying to get our bearings & looked at the outdoor flamingo park in the middle. We then hit The Strip & turned down The Linq Promenade, which was new since we had last visited. It was full of bars & had the High Roller (Vegas equivalent of the London Eye) the end. We chose a bar for a beer & to do some people watching. As it’s said ‘Anything Goes in Vegas’ & dress sense certainly does. People were wearing literally anything. The worst offenders were overweight girls wearing way too skimpy outfits & it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Next stop was The Bellagio which we strolled through, but hadn’t really changed since before. I’m my opinion it is too posh for Vegas. We circled the giant lake outside & timed it right to watch the fountain show, played to My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

We then did Caesars Palace, but our timing were all wrong for the Fall of Atlantis fountain show. Now hungry we returned to The Linq Promenade & selected Off The Strip, a bar & grill. We were shown to our table & then a rather surly waiter took our drinks & food order.It took several attempts to establish that they only served Heineken beer on tap & then only by the pint. Not a great start, then he plonked our cutlery down as he passed.

We waited at least 15 minutes for a drink & contemplated walking out, but eventually he plonked down our 2 beers with a large head. I was not impressed & I’m sure my face said so. He then reconfirmed our food orders & completely had Jackie’s wrong. She ordered salmon & he thought she wanted a cheeseburger! He was definitely not getting a tip.

10 minutes later & weirdly out of the blue, our waiter came over with another waiter who gave us 2 pints of beer free of charge & said he was our new waiter, who turned out to be over friendly. Our new waiter soon brought my gnocchi (which he pronounced with a Ker) & Jackie ‘s salmon. All very nice. The check arrived with it’s suggested tips of 18%, 22% or 25%. Not a chance, we left about 8% & did a runner.

We returned to our Flamingo Hotel & Jackie took to the machines again. We only had $10 cash, because the hotel ATM was charging $9.99 fee! I found a good old fashioned fruit machine that took our $10 & we could play at 1 cent a spin. We had 1000 credits. This was my type of gambling, but we struggled to make a dent in our credits, so we joined the high rollers & started playing for 5 cent a go.

The absolute bonus was that a cocktail waitress asked if we wanted a drink. I told we would but couldn’t tip her, but she didn’t mind, so she brought us a bottle of beer each. Result!! That was us done for the night.

FITBIT = 17,165 steps / 7.97 miles.

Song of the Day - Viva Las Vegas by Elvis Presley.

Bonus Songs of the Day :-

A Little Bit Country - A Little Bit Rock ‘n Roll by Donny & Marie Osmond
My Heart Will Go On by Celine DionRead more