Text 9702, 74 rader
Skriven 2014-02-09 02:35:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: LAS trip 178
====================
The Hampton LAS Airport is at the south end of the runway,
which makes for good planespotting; it is a non-gaming
hotel, so relatively quiet, and the staff are very, very
nice. The rooms and beds are comfortable and Hamptonish,
and there's a cheap atmospheric dive bar that serves okay
food just a block away.

It's a pleasant enough hotel, and I'd stayed there before.
In the olden days, I got an amenity of bonus points plus
a snack; now, in an age of pared-down benefits, it was
either or. I chose the points.

The room was fine, but here too the heater couldn't
accommodate the unseasonably chilly weather. Bed was
most welcome.

I had a day to marvel at the Strip and how it has become
even more tawdry than before - walked the length of it, or
at least until it started !raining! around 2 pm, after
lowering clouds and howling winds all day. It looked more
like Minneapolis than Vegas. So I ducked into the Cosmo,
a new and uber-fancy hotel, and wandered about a while:
the airline had given me a stack of coupons redeemable
there, but I discovered that in order to get my free $25
play at the slots I had to register with the frequent-
gambler program, so that was out, and the 2-for-1 dinner
did not translate into a 1-for-half dinner, and the free
cocktail at Jose Andres's Jaleo (the same Jaleo that I've
written about several times, transplanted here as all
celebrity chefs who want to make money seem to come here
or least have a presence here) was also a buy one get one
free, which would have been fine except that I'd have had
to register with the frequent-gambler program to get it.
Forget it!

Speaking of celebrity chefs, I was half tempted to go
across the street for a BurGR at Gordon Ramsay's new
place, but I was to meet Alex in a couple hours so said
forget it to that, too, and opted for just having a
chocolaty snack somewhere and continuing to wander around.

Aria is another fancy new hotel, so I spent some time
looking it over, reading menus at more celebrity joints,
and so on. The art or "art" at Aria seems to be of a
slightly better quality than that at the Cosmopolitan.
After all, the Chihuly store is in the shops attached
to it, so that must be symptomatic of something.

As it was still drizzling and winding, I took advantage
of the connected nature of the Strip hotels and went
directly through the Monte Carlo (getting lost once
because I spent much time trying to avert eyes and ears)
and to New York, New York, where I avoided most of the
populated area. Then outside - there's no public way
underground to cross Tropicana - to the tram station,
as no way did I want to run the kitschy gauntlet of
Excalibur. Ten minutes until the thing came, and even
then it wasn't full either coming or going. I remember
decades ago, when people would have been queuing up for
it 20 hours a day. How the mighty hath fallen, Las Vegas!

The tram bypasses Luxor; to go there you have to go all
the way to Mandalay Bay and take the other tram halfway
back - I'd forgotten that. So I waited at that station
for ten or so, with a real crowd gathering, before
deciding to just go into that hotel and walk through the
warrens until I found Luxor, passing scenes of my former
triumphs such as Charlie Palmer's Aureole, the late
lamented Luxor Steakhouse (for a while the best steak I
had ever eaten), Red Square, ... .

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