Canyons and casinos

So, Vegas. If there's one place which caught me completely by surprise, this would probably be it. I've never been particularly interested in casinos, and expected Vegas to be a pretty tacky place, but I've found it be pretty cool, but for reasons which have nothing at all to do with gambling. We only had about 3 full days so we never really had time to gamble, except Michael, who won $4 from $1, but never got around to cashing it in (the pokies pay out in vouchers so you'll be tempted to keep playing I suppose).

There's so much else to look at though the last thing you want to do is sit around for too long. We're staying at the Luxor, inside the pyramid, which we were pretty happy about. Don't have much of a view, the room Tracy and I are in looks out directly at the middle of a giant sphinx's butt, but still, we're inside the pyramid so that's the main thing.



You know you've arrived somewhere unusual when you're greeted almost instantly by slot machines in the airport terminal, and then have to catch a monorail a James Bond villain would be pproud of to get to the baggage collection. Walking down the Strip is pretty surreal, right next door to the giant glass pyramid of the Luxor is the Excalibur, styled like a medieval castle, followed by New York, New York, not to mention the desert palace of Aladdin, the Eiffel Tower at Paris, the pirate ships of Treasure Island and the canals of the Venetian, you would think it would be a complete mess, but somehow it just seems to work. Anyone looking for a hot tip: the buffet at the Excalibur is one of the cheapest and has some of the best food, the Forum shops at Caesar's are amazing to walk through, and you absolutely must spend some time watching the Bellagio fountain shows - these are just brilliant, except for the Celine Dion songs which are a bit wussy. Wait for one of the big dramatic ones which use the really huge jets - they're unbelievable.

One of the things I liked most about Vegas was the desert setting, the red dirt, the wide open spaces skirted by mountains, it's quite striking. And then of course the Grand Canyon. The first thing you notice about the Grand Canyon is that it's really big. Really. Big. Grand you might even say. It's so big you can fly over it for half an hour and still only see a fraction of it. That's pretty big. We were on a 20 seat scenic flight out to the South Rim, flying over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, then went on a bus tour to Bright Angel Point to see the Canyon at it's widest point. The tour was good, but there's just way too much to see in a day trip. It changes so rapidly too, there was a constant procession of big, fluffy clouds overhead, which causes this constantly moving patchwork of shadows across the canyon walls, it's really something to see from the air, even if the flight's a bit on the bumpy side. An amazing place, one I'll definitely be going back to. Did I mention it's really big. Cause it is. Deep too.