Our travels to the west coast took us through Las Vegas. We planned to enjoy a bunch of family friendly activities in the city most famous for its gambling and adult entertainment.
We stayed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. It's swimming pool, known as "the tank" is listed on on "top 10 cool hotel pools." Part shark tank aquarium, part swimming pool, it allows you to "swim" with sharks. Plus there's a clear acrylic section of the 3 story waterslide that passes right through the shark tank. Kid factor and Cool Dad factor = 10/10.
The Golden Nugget is located in downtown Las Vegas. It is one of the classic Vegas hotels, built (probably with mob money) before the all of the grandiose casinos began popping up on the strip. The hotel is named for the world's largest gold nugget on public display - 61 pounds. It is also near the Freemont Street Experience. Freemont street features an overhead screen with 12 million LEDs - I guess to try to rival all of the newer hotels on the strip. It is also the largest "screen" in the world. It's crazy at night, people are zipline racing under it.
An unplanned fun part of our stay at the Golden Nugget included the chance to watch the Winnipeg Jets play the Las Vegas Golden Knights as part of the Stanley Cup playoffs. We are not real hockey fans, but when we learned that the Jets would be in Vegas for playoff games 3 &4 while we were there, we looked up ticket prices on stub hub - the cheapest tickets were $330 USD on stub hub - so about $2000 CDN for our family to watch a game. Oh well, we thought, guess we won't be doing that. However, it just so happened that the Golden Nugget hotel is across the street from the Vegas Downtown Events Center - which was playing the game on a huge Jumbotron screen. Admission was free!
The next night we stayed at the Stratosphere hotel and went up the tower to see the famous Vegas lights at night. The next morning, I took the kids for a swim on the family-rated "elation pool" on the 8th floor of the hotel. I played a spontaneous game of volleyball in the surprisingly cold pool.
Our misadventure in Vegas happened at the Stratosphere. Our truck and camper were parked in the oversized vehicle lot. During the night, someone stole Twylla's bike. They took a pair of bolt cutters and cut through the lock, two tie down straps, and the the two securing straps on the bike rack. They removed Maelle's bike and put it on the ground. It was a downer for sure and we checked out of the stratosphere with some sadness. I had bought Twylla that bike for her 30th birthday - it was the first new bike that she had ever owned. We tried to cheer ourselves with the thought that three of our bikes had not been stolen, no damage had been done to our camper or truck, and that many others had lost much more in Vegas than a bicycle.
Midweek rates at casinos are super cheap. We paid $33 to stay at the Golden Nugget and $29 to stay at the stratosphere. The price to swim at the Golden Nugget shark pool would have been $140 for a family of four. Same story with the stratosphere tower admission - about $160. Cheaper to stay at the Casino than to camp or pay tower admission - if we hadn't had a bike stolen!
Weekends are a different story though. The same hotel room on the weekend would have cost $150 or $200, so we checked into an RV park for two more nights. That night while we were watching game 4 of the Jets vs Golden Knights hockey game at the RV park activity center, a retired soldier offered to give us a fat tire bicycle! On the same day that Twylla's had been stolen! Not exactly a replacement, but at least we have four bikes again.
One our last day in Vegas, we went for Sushi and then visited the conservatory and water fountains at the Bellagio. The theme in the conservatory changes with the seasons - and the theme at the time of our visit was Japanese Spring. Sushi and Cherry Blossoms. Nice!
We also walked along the strip to the Venetian Casino to show the kids the replica of the canals, gondoliers, and St Mark's Square in the famous Italian city of Venice. We had been to Venice years before on a tour of Europe and loved it. It's crazy how realistic it was.
We took a double decker bus back to sushi restaurant where we were parked. Maelle counted "interesting outfits" while waiting at the bus stop. She counted 8 and categorized 2 of the outfits as "extreme." A man on the bus sitting in front of us called out, "EDC weekend, I got Coke, I got Ecstasy... (snort)... I got what you want." Enough of the craziness! All in all a fun stay, I guess, with minimal losses...thankfully none from gambling!
