There are several Volksmarch events in Vegas, including three that are easily accessible without renting a car. In this case, I took the monorail to the Convention Center and walked a couple of blocks to the Best Western Mardi Gras Inn, where I decided to do the North Strip year round event. (The other two walks are the South Strip and the University.)
The walk highlighted the lack of redevelopment in the north strip area, as the casinos there are generally older and less imaginative. I suppose Stratosphere could be called imaginative, but it's always felt tacky and cheap to me. There is a lot of new construction, but it's pretty much all condominiums and time shares (or that modern combination of the two). There are even casinos that still use coins.
After the walk, I checked out the Wynn, which is pretty much the only new casino since my previous visit to Las Vegas. The really impressive thing there was actually best seen from the monorail - namely, the golf course, which was the old Sands golf course, if I recall correctly. I played some video poker in their casino, but was annoyed by the repeated spoken message about joining their player's club. I also meandered their decidedly upscale shopping promenade, but did not visit the Ferrari and Maserati showroom, (There is, by the way, a ten buck admission fee to see the cars. Presumably that pays for cleaning the drool off of them.) They have a free show, called Lake of Dreams, but it doesn't start until evening. So I walked over to Treasure Island to see the new incarnation of their pirate show.
The old show was a straightforward pirate battle. The new one is called "Sirens of TI" and involves slutty sirens capturing a young pirate boy. The pirates attack to get him back but fall victim to the wrath of the chief siren, Sinammon ("Sin" for short). There are still pyrotechnics and they do still sink a ship, but basically they found a way to throw skimpy clothes and bump and grind dancing into a pirate theme. It does seem to be successful witha large crowd gathered.
After having dinner, it was on to the Venetian and a stroll around the Grand Canal shops. I was pleased to see that they took my advice from my previous trip and now have a gelato shop. Unfortunately, I was too full to test its quality and authenticity. Instead, a meander back up the strip included the Forum Shops at Caesar's and yet another viewing of the fountains at Bellagio. One thing I should note is that I was disappointed in the Christmas decorations. I'd figured that there would be particularly spectacular seasonal lighting, but the only really notable specific decoration was a large tree at Caesar's. Yes, there were lights strung on trees at several of the hotels, but many of them had nothing in particular. The Bellagio did use seasonal music for their fountains, but most of the casinos stuck to the generic soft rock soundtracks they always use.
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel