Apparently, you aren't a member of Spirit Airlines' $9 Fare Club, which allowed us to buy plane tickets to Sin City for 1 cent each way, meaning we had to pay only for taxes and fees, about $40 apiece. So TJ and I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning (which is pretty easy when you go to sleep before 10 p.m.; we're old, remember?) to catch our flight in San Diego at 7 a.m. After the hour-long flight and a bus ride, we were on the Old Strip, at Fremont Street, by 9 a.m. The overhead light show wouldn't start for hours, so the street was pretty desolate, but that also meant there were plenty of open slot machines.
We had our way with some one-armed bandits while we waited for some gaming lessons to begin. After we got schooled in roulette -- don't bet on individual numbers unless you have a seat at the table -- and blackjack -- don't buy the insurance when the dealer might have a blackjack -- we caught another bus to the main Strip. We trekked all the way from Treasure Island to Tropicana, stopping every once in a while in a casino to beat the heat and press our luck. Then we headed east from Las Vegas Boulevard toward the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
Actually, we didn't realize the Hard Rock was out Harmon Avenue; we were hunting for the Hofbräuhaus, which we had seen in a tourist magazine that had a section on Oktoberfest activities in Las Vegas. The beer was expensive, especially considering you can get free ones by pumping quarters mindlessly into machines, but we got to see a bunch of guys, bachelors probably, get paddled by wenches; for fair measure, a woman was publicly embarrassed as well, when the entertainment asked her to put the end of a Ricola-horn, otherwise known as an alpenhorn, in her crotch as he played it.
This foray into this overpriced façade was mainly for my benefit. The replications on The Strip -- the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum, etc. -- are a bit overdone and overwhelming to me, and their believability does not rely on an abundance of beer. Plus, I'm not much of a gambler. I don't mean I don't like to do it, I mean I am bad at it, so I didn't want to spend all our time losing money. As was expected, much of my day was spent being a gambling groupie, watching TJ lose our money.
Despite the earlier lessons, TJ and I never got up the nerve to sit at a table. The smallest minimum bet we saw was $5, which seemed like a lot to risk when beers at the Hofbräuhaus cost $1 more. The highest-stakes game TJ played cost $1. He didn't win, but it was worth it, I guess, to feel like he had time-warped back to the era of The Joker's Wild game show.
The key component to Las Vegas, of course, is its allegiance to excess, like having an unnecessarily large slot machine make people feel better about wasting money. Some other A-list extravagances that we saw were the poolside tables at The Tank in the Golden Nugget, where you can also ride a waterslide through a shark habitat, and The Lion Habitat in the MGM Grand, where you can wait in a line under two big cats in order to get your photo taken with one of their cubs.
And then there are the culinary indulgences. We knew about popular steak-and-eggs breakfasts, all-you-can-eat buffet lunches, and prime-rib dinners, but we weren't prepared for this offer: "Over 350 lbs. eats free." Apparently, you step on a scale to prove that you deserve the quadruple bypass burger, with four beef patties and all the fixin's, gratis.
Comparatively, our food made us feel like lightweights (pun intended). We had hot dogs piled high with accoutrements from the 30-item condiment bar at Binion's; mine had green onions, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, bacon, spicy mustard, and cheddar cheese. Not so excessive for noon, but at 9:30 a.m., it seemed a bit exorbitant for a breakfast. Dinner was a pretzel, giant of course, with not one, two, but three dipping sauces and a wurstsalat (sausage salad), which was basically a bowl of the most delicious bologna ever.
We had our way with some one-armed bandits while we waited for some gaming lessons to begin. After we got schooled in roulette -- don't bet on individual numbers unless you have a seat at the table -- and blackjack -- don't buy the insurance when the dealer might have a blackjack -- we caught another bus to the main Strip. We trekked all the way from Treasure Island to Tropicana, stopping every once in a while in a casino to beat the heat and press our luck. Then we headed east from Las Vegas Boulevard toward the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
Actually, we didn't realize the Hard Rock was out Harmon Avenue; we were hunting for the Hofbräuhaus, which we had seen in a tourist magazine that had a section on Oktoberfest activities in Las Vegas. The beer was expensive, especially considering you can get free ones by pumping quarters mindlessly into machines, but we got to see a bunch of guys, bachelors probably, get paddled by wenches; for fair measure, a woman was publicly embarrassed as well, when the entertainment asked her to put the end of a Ricola-horn, otherwise known as an alpenhorn, in her crotch as he played it.
This foray into this overpriced façade was mainly for my benefit. The replications on The Strip -- the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum, etc. -- are a bit overdone and overwhelming to me, and their believability does not rely on an abundance of beer. Plus, I'm not much of a gambler. I don't mean I don't like to do it, I mean I am bad at it, so I didn't want to spend all our time losing money. As was expected, much of my day was spent being a gambling groupie, watching TJ lose our money.
Despite the earlier lessons, TJ and I never got up the nerve to sit at a table. The smallest minimum bet we saw was $5, which seemed like a lot to risk when beers at the Hofbräuhaus cost $1 more. The highest-stakes game TJ played cost $1. He didn't win, but it was worth it, I guess, to feel like he had time-warped back to the era of The Joker's Wild game show.
The key component to Las Vegas, of course, is its allegiance to excess, like having an unnecessarily large slot machine make people feel better about wasting money. Some other A-list extravagances that we saw were the poolside tables at The Tank in the Golden Nugget, where you can also ride a waterslide through a shark habitat, and The Lion Habitat in the MGM Grand, where you can wait in a line under two big cats in order to get your photo taken with one of their cubs.
Comparatively, our food made us feel like lightweights (pun intended). We had hot dogs piled high with accoutrements from the 30-item condiment bar at Binion's; mine had green onions, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, bacon, spicy mustard, and cheddar cheese. Not so excessive for noon, but at 9:30 a.m., it seemed a bit exorbitant for a breakfast. Dinner was a pretzel, giant of course, with not one, two, but three dipping sauces and a wurstsalat (sausage salad), which was basically a bowl of the most delicious bologna ever.
Even with all the enticements, we didn't even come close to crossing the spending limit we had set for ourselves. TJ spent $102 but won $151.70, putting him $49.70 ahead. I spent $54 (plus $10 for a bad gamble on bus passes) and won $21, putting me $43 down. So our net gain was just over $5, which is not bad for a 10-hour shift, at least to someone who is unemployed. But the biggest gain of the day was the fact that TJ was not nearly as blinded by Vegas' bright lights as I worried he might be, so I didn't have to give him this gambling-addiction brochure that I had picked up -- just in case.
You are the queen of cheap deals. I need to take lessons.
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