Boop Cards & Blackjack

Because I am too lazy to tie things into a coherent narrative, I present: a list of thoughts about our recent trip to Las Vegas!

• The room at The Cosmopolitan was good…but still ended up being a generic hotel room with a few extra additions. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I’m fixated on how hotel rooms and corridors all look so similar. The balcony was…well, I’m told it was a nice balcony. I simply could not go out there; I managed to put a foot outside on the final morning, but that was enough for me.
• Having said that, when you are paying a premium for such a room, you do start to be a little more critical of things that you’d normally just let slide. Light switches that are coming off the plate, and a curtain rail just entirely missing. Nothing worth actually complaining about, but considering how the hotel markets itself as a haven of luxury, it did feel a little off.
• I also fretted that I’d booked the wrong hotel entirely; I’m not exactly the type of person that goes to nightclubs, and I had to google to find out exactly what a dayclub even is (I mean, it’s not exactly rocket science, but there are differences! There’s pools involved!). But we did end up eating at a large selection of the restaurants in the hotel, it was relatively well-placed for everything we needed to get to, and it wasn’t actively horrible¹…so even though I coveted the Aria’s patisserie, The Cosmopolitan worked out well.
• There is no way the eggs at Eggslut are worth the queue.
• Being my first real trip since the pandemic, I hadn’t realised just how self-conscious I’ve become with my psoriasis over the past couple of years. Long sleeve shirts for the entire trip, and despite having an outfit more akin to Victorian standards of swimming costumes, I couldn’t face showing off my legs at the hotel pool. So that’s something I need to deal with at some point…
• There should be more soup dumplings available.
• You might think that due to its proximity to Fremont Street and its subject matter, that the Mob Museum is just going to be an expensive bit of fluff. But actually it turns out to be a fairly large, comprehensive history of the building of Las Vegas as well as the Mob’s involvement in the city, and is definitely worth a visit!
• The Neon Museum is a lot smaller — you’ll probably be done within thirty minutes, but looking at the bits of Vegas that have been tossed aside is interesting, and it is nice that the city is starting to looking after some of its heritage instead of just dynamiting everything in sight.
• Who knew that a visit to a strip mall in the north of the city could trigger separate existential crises in both of us? Trader Joe’s had mini stroopwafels, though!
• Also, don’t trust Total Wine’s online stock count.
• The Wicked Spoon upcharging for a holiday that doesn’t really exist in the US (Easter Monday) was a little breathtaking.
• Remember to check all the possible side effects of medication you’re taking! On a related note, the people at Number One Escape Room are lovely and handled our abrupt exit very well, giving us a voucher to come back another time (which we did on our last full day). The Pandora’s Box room at Trapped was rather good too, feeling more like an extended game in The Crystal Maze rather than a traditional escape room.
• I think I wore real trousers consistently for the longest time since January 2020.
• It was also my first time really using public transport in Las Vegas…and it was pretty decent? There’s a route that goes back and forth between the Strip and Fremont Strip which runs double-decker buses that are very similar to the ones that traverse the S5 route from Bicester to Oxford, so they felt quite familiar. The other routes use the oft-maligned-but-really-not-bad bendy buses. The city’s transit network is currently running a Saturday service during the weekday due to ‘labour shortages’, but honestly we had no trouble getting around using the system (except for one long trip on Wednesday, but that was a bus malfunction and could happen any time, really), and as the stops were so close to our hotel it was easy to hop on and off even on short trips to avoid the heat. It’d be nice to see a few more routes, e.g. to Area15, but I imagine that’s not really possible right now with their staffing issues.
• The terrifying realization that my basement has a better bourbon selection than pretty much every bar on the Strip.
• A word of warning: the french toast you see on this page for The Henry really undersells just how big the slices are. Each one is larger than a person’s head.
• Having the mask mandate struck down while we were on holiday was a little stressful, although obviously nowhere near as much as the poor people who had everybody unmask on the planes in the air. Masking was pretty spotty in Vegas before the end of the mandate; probably around 10%, which fell to 5% or so towards the end of the week.
• Be prepared for a lot of “Let’s Go, Brandon” if you venture to Fremont Street at night. But it was nice to see some of the old-style slot machines instead of the massive LCD panels you’ll find on the Strip these days.
• I think the pandemic (and probably the last five/six years in politics) has made people forget how to behave in public. Our trip started with somebody cutting in front behind us, a time advantage of likely thirty seconds in the queue, and got incredibly hostile when people called him on it. Then there were the golfers drinking beer right on the access ramp in the hotel hurling abuse at people trying to get by, and people getting angry at being told to follow the rules. If I was going to make a generalization, they were all white men of a certain persuasion…
• Finally, Omega Mart. This was amazing. We went twice, spending over six hours in total at the installation. You can just wander around the area, taking in the absurdity of things like “Doomed Expedition” chewing gum, ‘tattooed chicken, and infinity melons. And then discovering the other part of Omega Mart behind the counters, a multi-level setup taking in offices, a village, and a factory. Oh, and wormholes to an alternate dimension. No big deal. Everything is trippy, glitchy, and with a staggering amount of attention to detail. AND THEN! There’s an ARG layered on top that you can chose to take part in which sees you trying to unravel various mysteries and fighting the system from the inside. And there’s even more secrets - telephone networks and connections to other Meow Wolf installations in Sante Fe and Denver. The only downside to Omega Mart is that we left brimming with ideas for our second Escape Room. There’s a reason why I have one of these staring at me as I type.

Anyway, that was most of the Vegas trip, which was a great way to spend a birthday. Back home now - Helvetica has almost forgiven me for abandoning her for an entire week. Almost.