North Las Vegas

So far so good. I've reached the 36 hour mark of my stay in Las Vegas and miraculously, I'm not becoming critically ill yet. I have not yet started to wilt like a dying plant in this sandy wasteland. Here’s the catch though. I have not spent a total of one hour in the real Las Vegas yet. Well, wait a minute? Have I? I landed at the airport, walked to baggage claim and got my rental car. Well, that part is never that bad, so we’ll disregard that hour. At my daughter’s request, we drove to the Golden Nugget to eat at their breakfast buffet. This is a bona fide casino. We had to walk past slot machines and card games and a fairly spectacular swimming pool to get into the restaurant. We had to wait in a fairly short line to get into the restaurant, so that wasn’t really a big deal.

The key thing here is that the Golden Nugget is NOT on the Strip. Sure, it’s a casino, but it may as well be a card club in California because it does not have that suffocating feel that only Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip!) mega casinos can produce. That, right there, has made all of the difference. My daughter and I checked into the Las Vegas Hilton shortly thereafter (still not on the Strip, but only a block away, so close enough) and managed to skirt around all of the commotion. Thank goodness for the Hilton Honors VIP line to get me past the 35 or 40 people waiting to check in.

“YOU’RE a VIP, Dad?” said my daughter with astonishment.
I winked, nodded, and strolled up to the counter where there was only 1 other person in line.
“Really, Dad?” she prodded.
“Yes. Of course.”
It’s funny, Las Vegas is probably the only place where having the ability to check in at a different, shorter line actually makes a difference. Usually, you just walk up and check in because unless it is 2am, there are usually 3 times as many people at the reception desk as are necessary. I was not at all disappointed about getting to look important in front of my daughter. After she guilted me into accepting the upsell that I surely would have replied to with a re-sounding NO in any other instance (the lady at the desk probably looked right at her when she said “flat screen, plasma TV”, thereby adding $25/day to my super-duper $49/day rate), we made our way to our 27th floor room with a view of the strip, set our stuff down and then went to the pool. What else are you supposed to do when it’s 108 degrees outside? We sat out there and baked for about an hour or so and then went back up to relax before she had to get ready for the game. They got their lunches handed to them by some pretty tall girls from Long Beach, but they played much better today against one of their local rivals and then a team that had come all the way from Honolulu.

Out lone brush with the Strip thus far was a failed attempt at dining in the ESPNZone restaurant that resides in the New York, New York hotel. After parking in what seemed like the next county, and walking through the casino and past all of the other novelty restaurants, we happened upon an ESPNZone that decided to close early for some reason. I promised her that I’d brave the Strip with her tomorrow to go by M&M World. If I can keep finding places to eat and hang out in North Las Vegas and away from the Strip, this trip won’t be half bad.