Vegas is Awesome!

This place is just awesome.  It's unbelievable.  How do you describe it?  You love it here the minute you arrive!  It's such a buzz.  You feel so alive.  The glitz, glamour, lights.  The size of the place.  The imitations of real places and objects.  The Eiffel Tower, French streets with sky overhead (it's an effective-looking painted ceiling), the reconstructed indoor places made to look like they're outside, the indoor streets, the indoor boulevards, the indoor trees, the indoor beer gardens, the indoor European building facades, the indoor sky and clouds, the indoor outdoor street cafés, the Egyptian pyramid, the massive hotels, massive casinos, massive shopping areas, the choice of where to eat and what to eat, the buffets and cafés, the Gordon Ramsey eating area, the Brazillian BBQ restaurant, the throng of people, merchants, tourists, the commercialism, the merchandise, the souvenirs, the beers, the good deals, the discounts, the sales, the shows, the slot machines, the roulette, the black jack, the craps, oh my God THIS PLACE IS AWESOME!!

And this blog post does not do the place justice!

We arrived at Las Vegas Airport at about 2.25 pm.

We found slot machines inside the airport!

We found our hotel: the Marriott

This is our hotel lobby.

This is our sitting room in our apartment.

The kitchen and sitting room..

The kitchen...

From our sitting room looking into the bedroom..

The bedroom...

Part of our view.  We're on the 35th floor.

Some images of Vegas..

..some more..

Inside the Magic Mile Shops..

In the Magic Mile..

The Eiffel Tower in 'Vegas.

This is the lobby of the Paris hotel.  I think it may be meant to resemble the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

A typical thing to find in 'Vegas!

After arriving at our hotel, we settled in, and then went walking.  'Vegas is very reminiscent of Dubai.  It is so like Dubai.  A city carved out of a hot, dusty desert; temperatures soaring outside; artificial, controlled temperatures inside; massive indoor areas with wide appeal; tall, impressive buildings; much glitz and glamour.  The difference between Dubai and here is this is 100 times better, and it's just so awesome.

We found a couple of casinos.  Currently, Jean is on a roulette table under the Eiffel Tower, near some French flags and the Montmartre.  I'm elsewhere in Paris under some rotunda swallowing an American lager called Third Shift Amber Lager.  I've tasted better.  The Newcastle Brown Ale is much better.  Hang on...I've just remembered I'm gluten-intolerant.  Oh what the hell.  This is 'Vegas!  Ooh, I can hear someone's won a lot of money over there somewhere.  And a crowd cheered.  Hope it was Jean.  I might play black jack later..

Soarin' over California

We flew out of San Francisco a short time ago for the 75-minute flight to 'Vegas.  For the first time ever, we've been able to access the Internet in-flight.  It's excellent.  It ought to be that you can always do this.

Heading over some mountains...maybe the Sierra-Nevada.

We are very happy to be able to access the Internet during a flight.

San Francisco City Tour

After we finished our visit to Alcatraz this morning, we ate lunch and then met up again with the tour bus, which then took us on a city tour.  

The tour began by going to Golden Gate Bridge, which, of course, we'd already seen from a vantage point the other day on a visit to Muir Woods.  But it turned out that today's view of the bridge was much better than the other day.  We were closer.  What's more, today's weather was perfect.

Our tour driver told us that in the summer San Francisco typically has a week of fog followed by a week of sun followed by a week of fog again and then another week of sun.  We felt very lucky to have this clear view of the Golden Gate.  This city is so much colder than surrounding areas only 10 miles away.  I think our driver said it was Mark Twain who said the coldest winter he ever endured was a summer in San Francisco.

The bridge is painted in 'international orange', the colour also of this railing in the foreground.  Originally, the US Navy wanted the bridge painted black and yellow!

The bridge has several lanes.  They don't always operate in the same direction but change morning and night and at weekends.  I took a short walk onto the bridge itself in the time available.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

Our tour took us to Lands End, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  A little round the shoreline to the right is the ocean side of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Our driver said white pointer sharks stay in the ocean and don't swim past the Golden Gate.  Not so sure the sharks know where the bridge is.

At Twin Peaks, this 'vista point' (what the Americans call a lookout) overlooks the city of San Francisco.  Here, we are 900 feet above sea level.

Jean and I above San Francisco.  This is our last evening here.  We will take some very good memories away with us of our time here.  Tomorrow, we fly to Las Vegas, the focal point of this blog.

On the Rock: Alcatraz

We took an organised tour this morning to 'the rock', in other words to Alcatraz, the former prison which operated between 1934 and 1963, and housed notorious prisoners like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly.  I had wanted to go to Alcatraz since I was very young, ever since I first saw the film 'Birdman of Alcatraz', starring Burt Lancaster as the prisoner Robert Stroud and Karl Malden as the warden.  We arrived at the island, took an audio tour, and meandered past the cells, the library, the hospital wing, the exercise yard, the dining hall, and absorbed many interesting facts, such as that Alcatraz originally served as part of the defence of San Francisco during Spanish times.

We took the 12-minute ferry ride across the bay to the rock, just the same as so many prisoners did before us.

We approached Alcatraz, just one and a quarter miles across the water from Pier 35 in SF.

An informative map of the island

In all directions from the island, land appeared so tantalisingly close.  Prisoners must have felt tempted to try to escape.

In one of the ordinary wings inside Alcatraz

Cells were very basic and did not offer much space.

A bed, a toilet, a wash basin, and somewhere to sit was about all a prisoner got in his cell.

Everyone's heard of Al Capone.

In the prison library, prisoners could read books.  They could also subscribe to approved monthly magazines.  Once a prisoner arrived on Alcatraz, they were entitled to only four things: food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention.  Everything else was a privilege.  They had to earn it.

This is the Treatment Unit.  It is isolation.  When Robert Stroud arrived in 1942, he went straight into here.  One benefit appears to be that the cells were more spacious.  Near the back wall are several smaller rooms.  These rooms were solitary confinement.

Robert Stroud is featured in Birdman of Alcatraz, but he kept birds at Leavenworth Prison, not here.  He learned a great deal about birds, contributed to scientific knowledge about birds and was even regarded by some in the bird world as a genius.

Back in the normal part of the prison, this is the gun gallery.  Guards could shoot a prisoner from here if he posed a serious enough threat.

A movie was made about this escape, which starred Clint Eastwood.

The prisoners made up dummy heads, placed them in their beds, and escaped through the air vents.  Note the hole in the wall under the basin.

The escapees scaled this utility corridor to the roof...

This is Alcatraz's dining room.  Prisoners were allowed to put as much on their plate as they wished, but they were then expected to eat it all.  Prisoners and staff ate the same meals.

This is the kitchen.  In the box at right, you're not looking at knives hanging, you're looking at their images.  Staff could quickly tell if a knife was missing and what type it was.

The steps down into the exercise yard.  Prisoners had a perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the hills all around the horizon.  It was thought best that the prisoners be allowed to see the world they were missing out on.

I can't help being reminded of the movie starring Clint Eastwood.  "Wolf's comin' at yer.." a fellow-inmate tells Eastwood.  Eastwood then pauses temporarily and then leaps round to bash his nemesis, a large boulder-shaped prisoner called Wolf, who had intended to stab him.

The exercise yard has seen better days.

Prisoners could play baseball.  In the foreground, you can see a base mat.

In the hospital wing, a prisoner might be operated on.  A guard and surgeon would be present, and a fellow prisoner would do the operating at the guidance of the surgeon to teach the prisoner new skills. But if the prisoner didn't like the one being operated on, he could simply mess up the operation.

Stroud spent 11 of his 17 years on the rock in a hospital cell.

The rock has some natural beauty.

There is said to be around 2,000 bird's nests on the rock.