Viva Las Vegas, Post 1: Fremont Street

On Thursday 30th July, we worked a half day and then set off in our new (secondhand) car for Bellingham, Washington, from where we would fly to Las Vegas, Nevada. We'd found a cheap Expedia flight+hotel deal, and were looking forward to finding out whether Vegas was really as over the top as we were expecting (and hoping!)...

After the usual long wait at the border, during which we bought some water and ice creams from an enterprising man who was wheeling a cart along the rows of cars (the temperature in Greater Vancouver was in the mid-30s that week!), we were Stateside again for the first time since Easter.



From there it was less than half an hour to the little town of Bellingham, and we were early enough to have a late lunch at an environmentally-friendly burger cafe before heading to the airport. Bellingham Airport is a little single-runway affair frequented by penny-pinching Vancouverites like ourselves, who figure the 70km drive is worth the couple of hundred dollars saved by taking a domestic rather than international flight to a US destination. :)

During the first half of our 2.5-hour flight, we flew over some very impressive mountains in Washington that still had a lot of snow on them. Our new (secondhand) camera got quite a workout.



As we flew over Nevada, the view from the window was very different. We looked out across seemingly endless desert, populated only by sharp, rust-coloured, treeless mountain ridges, and few if any signs of civilisation. We recall seeing a road or two, but no buildings.



We descended into Vegas at dusk, around 8pm. It was ringed by the aforementioned mountain variety, but the city itself is in a completely flat valley. It was easy to pick out "The Strip": a slightly boomerang-shaped swathe of glittering high-rises standing in the middle of an otherwise flat city. I also remember noticing a lot of bright blue swimming pools as we passed over the suburbs. As soon as we landed, the reason for them was obvious: it was over 40 degrees the whole time we were there.



Our first sighting of pokie machines came just a few steps into the airport...



We booked a shuttle bus to take us to our hotel, and piled in with a bunch of other young travellers. As our hotel was in the downtown "old Vegas" area rather than on the Strip where most people stay, we were the last ones on board and had quite the tour of the Strip as the others were gradually dropped off. By this time it was dark, and the lights, glitz and crowds of Vegas were all making an appearance. We soon discovered that nighttime is when Vegas really comes alive!

Our hotel was the Four Queens on Fremont Street. We knew it was "old Vegas", and I was expecting a bit of a quieter and dingier, possibly seedier, neighbourhood - particularly as a workmate was so concerned that she had given me the name of another hotel to move to if ours didn't work out!

Little did we know.

The "Fremont Street Experience", which our hotel was literally on top of, is one of Vegas's most happening nighttime attractions.

Immediately outside our bedroom window was the world's largest display screen!

I'm not kidding. It's four city blocks - 1500 feet (460m) - long... a curved canopy above a dedicated pedestrian zone, up to 90 feet (27m) high, and visited by an average of 25000 people daily. It has over 12 million LEDs and a 555000-watt sound system with 220 speakers. A variety of sound and light shows, on average about 6 minutes long, take place every night between dusk and midnight. Two of the shows we can remember hearing are "A Tribute to Queen" and "Bad to the Bone". And yes, this was outside our bedroom window. It was AWESOME!!!

This was the view out of our window to the right...



We quickly explored our room on the fourth floor - our window was right behind one of the big "Q"s of the "Four Queens" neon lettering in the photos below - and headed down to experience Fremont Street.







This summer they had the "Summer of 69" theme on Fremont Street. During our stroll that evening, we saw a 60s'-style hippie band playing on top of a multicoloured van with two fluorescent-lycra-clad ladies doing acrobatics on hanging hoops... another rock band on a stage down the street... a few girls wearing bikinis and tall brightly-coloured feather head-dresses standing in casino entrances... a street artist sculpting a lady's face out of a lump of clay... and some famous old Vegas signs and installations (such as Aladdin's lamp, below) that a charity has restored and displayed on Fremont Street (LOTS more about this charity and their signs in the next post!).

It was loud, bright, spectacular, and overwhelming to the senses!











We ate dinner just before midnight in one of the restaurants in our hotel. During dinner we were entertained by a neighbouring table of four drunk American men on a business trip, who insisted on draping us in some plastic bead necklaces that were being given away to passers-by on Fremont St. They reckoned everyone they'd asked "where are you from?" that day was from Australia.

Then it was off to bed, ready for a big day exploring Vegas on Friday! To be continued...

Photo album links:
Album overview page
Slideshow starting from the beginning