Nevada – where we we put aside our ethical and aesthetic concerns to enjoy glitter and greed in a gulch, scratched our heads at cross-cultural explosions like the Beatles Love (where Liverpool meets Canada and France in Nevada), went to pinball heaven and discovered the American who developed Australia’s first water conservation laws.
Nevada is also known as The Silver State. Maybe because there is one slot machine for every ten residents. It holds the record for having more mountains than any other state but also for being the driest state in America with an average annual rainfall of only 180mm (Australia’s average is 465mm).
But Nevada is by no means a dry state when you look at its alcohol consumption. It tops the country in the highest consumption of beer per capita with 258 cans of beer per person being consumed in 2013 according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA). When you Include wine and spirits, this translates to 34.9 gallons (132 litres) of alcohol per person every year. Obviously, this doesn’t take into account tourists. Even so, New York, a place that attracts more visitors than most states, only consumed 21 gallons per person.
Bullhead City
Leaving Oatman, Arizona, we crossed the wide-flowing Colorado river into Nevada. We soon realised that we were no longer on Route 66 but instead on the flat and featureless Interstate that is almost a straight road to Vegas. We were running low on petrol after our long drive through the Black Mountains and consulted our map for the next town. The map showed the wide expanse of the Mojave Desert in all directions with the only nearby dot on the map being a place called Bullhead City.
From Oatman to Bullhead City.
Driving in to Bullhead City we were surprised at how big the place was. Apparently it was just a tiny dot on the map until the nearby Davis Dam was built in 1953 turning it and nearby Laughlin into a water recreation hot spot for tourists. It now has an international airport. We needn’t have worried about running out of petrol. I think Bullhead City’s sprawling shops could supply you with almost anything.
Heading North from Bullhead City, we made for Boulder Canyon to visit the Hoover Dam.
Bullhead City to Hoover Dam.
Hoover Dam
It was interesting to see that the development of the Hoover Dam had a lot in common with every major Australian Government infrastructure project in being contested, delayed, and politicised.
In 1902, Thomas Edison bought up land in the Boulder Canyon with the idea of building a dam to generate hydro-electricity. Everyone was keen and bold statements were made but it all fizzled out after a few years due to cost. After being frustrated that the private sector let them down, the U.S. Government obtained the land and started work on a dam.
Ten years later, the Government had nothing to show after spending years sitting on its hands and debating possible construction approaches. So it did what every good bureaucracy does in a crisis; it released a report. The 1922 Bureau of Reclamation report outlined an exciting new vision called the Boulder Canyon Project which would involve all the neighbouring states (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) entering into a compact with the Federal Government to build the dam. It took less than a year for the states to sign up to the compact but took another seven years for it to be passed by the Federal Government due to concerns about its cost and the fact that it only benefited the Western states.
In 1928, President Coolidge passed a bill to appropriate $165 million for the construction of the Boulder Dam. A tender was put out for construction and consideration then turned to where those working on the dam would stay. Las Vegas put up its hand and even closed all of its illegal speakeasys (remember this is during Prohibition) on the day the Government representative paid them a visit. However, the Government rep still wasn’t impressed and reported back that the only option was for the Government to build its own town.
So, the consortium of companies that won the tender for construction of the dam were first tasked with building a city for its workers. Once Boulder City had been built, the next task was to divert the Colorado River away from the construction site. When that was done, they were finally ready to start work on the dam.
A ceremony was held to mark its construction where workers were surprised to find that the dam would now be called the Hoover Dam in honour of the then Republican President, Herbert Hoover. Apparently someone wisecracked in response that the dam deserved to be named after Hoover as here was a man, after all, who had “drained, ditched, and dammed the country.”
When Hoover was defeated in 1932, Roosevelt changed the name back to Boulder Dam but left the original Hoover Dam plaques and road signs untouched. In all Government documents it was referred to as the Boulder Dam but for all people working at the dam, it was referred to as the Hoover Dam. The naming battle was settled in 1947, when the Republicans, in a paean to Hoover’s vanity, put up a bill to the House of Congress to restore the name of Hoover Dam. The Democrats didn’t fight it and it was passed. Former Secretary of United States Interior, Harold Ickes, said at the time “I didn’t know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with.”
The Hoover Dam pioneered many great engineering techniques such as a grid of water-cooled pipes to set the concrete that was estimated to take 125 years to settle if poured conventionally. Of course, it also provided valuable jobs during the Great Depression.
The lake the dam created, Lake Mead, also has a significant Australian connection. The lake was named after Elwood Mead who created Australia’s first water laws in 1909. Mead was an American engineer who was unhappy with the way water was used in the West. Back in the late 1800s, you could pretty much do what you liked with rivers and lakes. If you wanted to divert a stream to water your crops then go ahead. If you wanted to dam a river to create a water supply for a nearby gold mining town, well nobody was going to stop you. The only law that existed was the law of “prior appropriation” or in other words, if someone else did it first you couldn’t take it off them. The rest was open slather.
Elwood Mead changed all that in Wyoming in 1890 when Mead wrote the Wyoming Water Code which was a series of laws designed to conserve and regulate the use of water in the State. These were the first dedicated water conservation laws in the world. Other U.S.States soon followed and in 1907, Mead was invited to Australia to sort out Australia’s growing water problems. He was asked to head up the newly formed State Rivers and Water Supply Commission of Victoria where he was instrumental in introducing, Australia’s first water conservation law; The Water Act of 1909. The Water Act was the basis for all modern water conservation laws in Australia.
We walked along the dam wall that stops Lake Mead from overflowing. The wind blew ferociously and the heat of the sun was fierce. Boulder Canyon is a pretty stark place and I can’t imagine how tough it would have been to work in these conditions building the dam.
We left the dam at dusk and headed to the bright lights of Las Vegas.
The huge Hoover Dam. 221 metres high and containing 2.48 million cubic metres of concrete.
Lake Mead. Being the middle of Summer, the lake levels were low when we visited.
I also thought that the viewing platforms looked like the ones on the Death Star in Star Wars where Obi Wan Kenobi has to turn the tractor beam off.
Michelle and Harrie brave the desert heat.
Apart from the electricity generated by this glamorous trio, here you can see the many electricity towers that take the hydro-electric power to the grid.
Looking downstream from the dam. The huge bridge spanning the chasm is actually a road bridge.
It was at Hoover Dam that we decided to take a farewell picture of our Toyota Camry that we had hired back in Nashville. It had done a lot of miles and had bought us a lot of smiles. Oh what a feeling.
Hoover Dam to Las Vegas.
Las Vegas
We drove into Las Vegas just as the sun was setting. However, we didn’t have to worry about light as Las Vegas is the brightest city in the world according to astronauts who have no problem spotting it from space. As we drove up the Strip, we felt like we were back in Times Square again, as huge video billboards and flashing lights vied for our attention.
The modern Las Vegas started after the Government built the nearby Boulder City. Boulder City was a town of construction workers who had demands for booze, gambling and prostitutes that the Government-run town couldn’t or wouldn’t supply. Las Vegas couldn’t believe its luck and what was once a small town of vice soon become a city of vice.
In 1946, gangster Bugsy Siegel opened The Flamingo at the, then staggering, cost of $6 million dollars. Siegel marketed the casino as offering “the complete experience” where you could stay, dine, see entertainment and, of course, gamble without having to leave the building. This was the model for all the extravagant casinos to come.
Today, they don’t get more expensive than the Cosmopolitan Casino, which in 2010 cost 3.9 billion dollars to build and ranks number six on the list of the World’s Most Expensive Buildings. What was even more surprising in looking at that list is that our own Parliament House comes in ahead of the Cosmopolitan at number five on a per-metre cost basis. Parliament House cost US$15,760 per square metre to build while the Cosmopolitan only cost US$6,307 per square metre.
We didn’t stay at the Cosmopolitan. Instead we decided to stay at the iconic Caesars Palace Casino which opened in the year I was born (not telling but in Roman-speak, definitely AD). Parking the car was like entering King Minos’ labyrinth without a ball of string. We drove around and around down fruitful-looking passageways and up promising-looking ramps trying to find the Hertz drop-off point. The car park was easily as big as the casino itself and like the casino, it was designed to disorientate and prevent anyone from leaving.
We eventually found the right spot and started unpacking the car. This was a bit of a task as we had accumulated a lot of junk in our road trip from Nashville. Some of it was in suitcases but a lot was just in giant plastic Walmart bags. Any thoughts of discretely smuggling our accumulated junk in the dead of night via the closest elevator were dashed when we entered the casino. For starters, there is no dead of night in Caesars Palace. Secondly, to walk to your room, you first have to walk through the rows and rows of slot machines that make up the many gaming floors of the casino. So we embarrassingly carried a shabby pile of plastic bags and battered luggage past the rows and rows of gamblers to our room.
The room itself was an upgrade from what we booked as we had heavy-handedly mentioned that it was Michelle’s 50th birthday to the reception clerk who obligingly upgraded us to a Palace Tower suite. The room itself was every bit as palatial as its name might suggest. We particularly liked the decadent spa in the bathroom with its mosaic tiled wall.
Our room at Caesars Palace was our first introduction to the opulence that is on display all over Vegas. Wealth is both conspicuous and crass. It is flaunted in your face at every corner and yet, at the same time, unlike the wealth of say Fifth Avenue in New York, it seems a sad and shabby kind of wealth. It is a nouveau riche type of wealth that is hungry for approval and seemingly uncomfortable in its own skin. Vegas appropriates celebrities from all over the world and pays them generously to prostitute their wares on The Strip. Be they celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay or popular artists like Snoop Dog (who hilariously has his own 1920s cabaret show called The Snoopadelic Cabaret), they have all been lured by money to give Las Vegas a prestige it can’t seem to obtain by itself.
All the conspicuous wealth made me also think about where the money came from in the first place. I thought of all of the forgotten tales of gamblers whose lost fortunes must have fueled Las Vegas’ current riches. Las Vegas is often referred to as “Sin City” and it is certainly an apt title. But, I think Las Vegas’ other nickname of “Glitter Gulch” best captures captures the gulf between the city’s ambitions for eminence and its trashy existence in the middle of the Nevada desert.
But when you can unload your ethical and aesthetic concerns about the place, you can have a lot of fun. Harrie particularly enjoyed checking out all the casinos which were generally the result of what might happen if you teamed up a theme park operator with Liberace. There are 76 casinos in Las Vegas and we were endlessly amazed by the gimmicks each casino had come up with to entrance and entertain their guests.
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. I know the grammarians out there are wondering why there isn’t an apostrophe. Surely if Caesar owns the palace it should be Caesar’s Palace. Well, apparently Jay Sarno the founder of Caesars Palace didn’t want an apostrophe as he said the palace is for everyone as “we are all Caesars.” Umm, okay. Then the place should really be called Caesars’ Palace with the apostrophe after the “s.” Still, we should talk. We have Surfers Paradise.
To flout their word crimes, Caesars Palace opened the Apostrophe Bar on the main gaming floor of the casino. Here you can debate the merits of “The Missing Apostrophe” – The Apostrophe Bar’s signature cocktail.
Our room at Caesars Palace. Veni, Vidi, Vegas.
Our giant bathroom and Roman spa.
The view from our window of Caesars Palace’s many Roman-themed pools. Here they don’t just have swim-up bars, they have swim-up gaming tables with attractive croupiers in bikinis and Roman togas.
Jerry Seinfeld was playing at Caesars Palace the day after we were due to fly to San Francisco. We seriously considered staying the extra night to see him but we would have lost our airfares and also mucked up our trip to Alcatraz. What’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld stuffing it up for us.
The Forum Romanum was the bustling centre of Rome’s political life. In Caesars Palace it is just a mall.
We saw these amazing curved elevators at the Forum Shops that worked like a moving spiral staircase. I began to doubt what I learnt at school about the ancient Romans after hearing Evel Knievel’s story of his great great grandfather and how Julius Caesar had organised for a lion to be flown in from Africa to attack him. I looked into whether the Romans might have had such curved escalators back in the First Century BC (when Evel Knievel’s great great grandfather was knocking about). Sadly, it seemed they didn’t. Would you believe that they didn’t even have EFTPOS, which I thought could have been of Latin origin too. What I did find though was that the word “escalate” as in “to escalate demands” or “nuclear escalation” actually came from the word “escalator” which was coined by American inventor Charles Seeberger in 1897 to describe his invention for the Otis Elevator Company. The word did have a Latin origin though. It was first described as a “Scala Elevator” with “Scala” being the Latin word for stairs. The two words were then combined to “Escalator.” When workers striked for better pay in the 1920s, one American writer described their demands as “escalating” as in they were going up as if travelling on an escalator. The phrase stuck and has been used ever since.
The Forum Shops even run to a replica of the Trevi Fountain from Rome. What you will also notice from this picture is the surreal fake sky that covers all of this level.
From the glory of Rome we travelled a few blocks down the road to visit her northern city of Venice at The Venetian Casino. The Venetian is the largest hotel in the world by room size with 7,117 rooms. By comparison, the Crown Casino in Melbourne only has a modest 1,604 rooms.
Piazza San Marco at The Venetian. Here you can order a pizza as gondolas float by.
The Venetian also had an Oxygen Bar where you could breathe in the scents of things you like without the calories. Twenty two dollars gives you half an hour of inhaling the scent of cocktails without getting drunk or breathing in the odors of different chocolates without putting on weight. We just went with the downmarket free air that the Venetian was pumping around the place.
From Italy, we then journeyed to ancient Egypt at The Luxor.
This photo from the Internet shows what the Luxor looks like at night. This is also one of the reasons why Las Vegas can be seen so brightly from space. The light used at the top of the Luxor pyramid holds the record for being the brightest light in the world at 42.3 billion candela, or in other words, the power of 42.3 billion candles. Another comparison would be the wattage. An average light bulb draws between 60-100 watts of electricity whereas the Luxor Sky Beam draws 315,000 watts of electricity.
Inside the Luxor pyramid. Unfortunately, most of the shots in Vegas were taken on our phones as we didn’t want lump the camera around all day. It is hard to make out in this shot but if you look towards the back you will see the rows and rows of hotel rooms that climb to the apex of the pyramid and look into its open interior.
The Luxor also contains an accurate replica of the tomb of Tutankhamen.
From Venice we headed to Paris to see the latest work from Mr Eiffel. Paris is the name of the casino by the way.
Feeling nostalgic for New York, we revisited its replica in Las Vegas called New York, New York. It included faithful replicas of the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, The Chrysler Building and the New York Public Library. Snaking around the outside and travelling through the gaming floor is the Manhattan Express; a rollercoaster based on the New York subway.
Nine Fine Irishman Pub. I’m not sure things get more confusing or post-modern than a replica of a pub from New York trying to be a pub from Ireland built in a casino in Las Vegas. Harrie certainly looked stupefied trying to grasp the concept. Here we had a very late dinner while we listened to a band from California pretending to be a band from New York pretending to be a band from Ireland. Harrie still can’t take it in.
The restrooms in the New York, New York. When patrons put their hands under the tap, a little LCD screen lights up and plays an ad tempting them to engage in some form of vice such as gambling or drinking as they wash away their previous sins under the cool water from Lake Mead.
Holy games of probability Batman! In the same post-modern way as the fake NY Irish pub, it only seemed appropriate to find an elaborate roulette-machine homage to the Gotham city crime fighters in New York, New York. Gotham City of course being a fictional homage to New York City.
Leaving New York, we headed on the road to the last royal capital of Burma, Mandalay. Mandalay Bay where the flyin’ fishes play. They literally do in the massive Shark Reef Aquarium housed in this casino. In a place devoid of water, the main tank in this aquarium is one of the biggest in the world holding 4.9 million litres of water.
I hadn’t ever conceived of a four story wine tower where sommeliers zip line up and down Mission Impossible-style to grab bottles of wine but when I saw one in Mandalay Bay it just seemed to have an inescapable logic to it. Check out this video to see the acrobatic Wine Angels in action.
Lots of bad-pun shop names in Vegas. I did like this one though in Mandalay Bay.
From Burma, we went to the United Kingdom to admire the wonders of Camelot at Exclaibur. “It’s only a model”
Next, we journeyed back to Italy to the Lake Como town of Bellagio and a Las Vegas casino seeking to cash in on the town’s reputation for elegance. I bet the townfolk from the real Bellagio wish their fountains were synchronized to the music of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Over 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers cover the ceiling of the foyer of the Bellagio.
Keeping with the floral theme, the Bellagio has its own botanical gardens which change with each season. We were there during the “All-American Summer” which featured patriotic themed plants and sculptures.
A floral frog from the Bellagio.
The Flamingo. The model for all the modern casinos in Vegas. Gangster Bugsy Siegel named it after his girlfriend’s nickname (she had long skinny legs like a flamingo) and hired famous architect, George Vernon Russell to build it. His instructions to Russell were apparently “make it classy and not like those other sawdust joints.”
We went to see David Copperfield perform at the MGM Grand Casino. We were hoping to see Penn and Teller but couldn’t get tickets. The Hollywood Theatre is a classic old-style Vegas venue where you sit around tables while waiters continually take drink orders. It reminded me of somewhere the Rat Pack might have performed. The show itself was pretty good but boy, oh boy, David Copperfield is a seriously vain guy. Before the show started a woman went around to all the tables to inform us that “David has a new trick tonight that he is really not confident about. He plans to disappear and reappear in the audience. If he appears near you it would really help David’s confidence if you all stood up and gave him a rousing applause.” Looking online, I found that this speech is given every night. When David wasn’t performing magic he was carefully preening his hair and pulling Blue Steel looks. Overall, though I thought he looked bored. He has been doing Vegas for the past fourteen years and apparently he does up to three shows a day. His new contract with the MGM Grand stipulates that the Hollywood Theatre be renamed The David Copperfield Theatre. David Copperfield was everything we were wanting from a cheezy Las Vegas magician.
The previous billboard picture showed David Copperfield as he thinks he looks. This is how the 58 year old Copperfield really looked on stage. In 2006, Copperfield bought eleven islands in the Bahamas for US$50 million and renamed them The Islands of Copperfield Bay. Here he claimed he had discovered the fountain of youth. Yes, quite literally a natural spring on one of the islands that he claimed was the secret of his youthful looks.
And this is David Kotkin in 1985. The Brooklyn-born son of Ukrainian Jews starts on the path to shed his Russian Jewish image by taking on the stage name David Copperfield from the Charles Dicken’s novel whose titular character was himself renamed many times. Of course, Dickens has often been accused of being anti-Semtic in his portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist who he referred to bluntly as “the Jew” (257 times) and who evilly describes himself as “a born devil.”
The second Vegas show we went to see was the Cirque du Soliel production of Beatles Love at the Mirage Casino. Cirque du Soliel have eight different shows running in Las Vegas. It made me realise how much of an industry Cirque du Soliel had become. Employing over 5,000 people, they are the biggest theatrical producer in the world. The Beatles Love took three years of negotiations with the surviving Beatles and their widows and can only be seen in Las Vegas. Similarly, it is one of the few places in the world where The Beatles have allowed tie-in commercial ventures. Thus you have the Beatles Revolution Lounge where you can sit under a Sky With Diamonds and sip a Lucy cocktail. The show itself was fab-four-tastic! It is performed as a theatre-in-the-round with an elaborate multi-level circular stage. At one point the entire audience was draped in a giant gauze sheet and we could only see strange psychedelic lights flashing in front of us. Then the sheet was then dramatically pulled away to reveal an entirely new set in front of us. It was a great way to change sets without an intermission. The George and Giles Martin’ (Giles is George’s son – no nepotism there) remix of Beatles songs was very clever and a treat for Beatles tragics (like me) to identify the various looped samples and sly references to Beatles folklore. When it came to Las Vegas’ shows, Love was all we needed.
After a few nights in Vegas, I actually began to feel guilty that I hadn’t gambled. Here I was seeing all the attractions of the Las Vegas casinos without actually losing any money to support them. Leaving Michele and Harrie in the Palace Tower suite (at least I didn’t leave them locked in the car with the windows up like I usually do) I went down to the Caesars Palace gaming floor. I ordered a gin and tonic at the Apostrophe bar and sat down at a nearby blackjack table. I watched a few hands being played and slowly realised that it cost $100 a hand to play. I was quite shocked and slowly edged away form the table to find a cheaper option. I went to one of the nearby slot machines to find that the cheapest option was $10 a spin. Still nursing my G&T, I walked the floors of Caesars Palace for what seemed ages before I found a $20 a hand blackjack table. I only lost two hands before calling it a night. Luck gave me the brush and wasn’t a lady that night.
We had seen Fat Burger before when we visited America in 2001, so were not that surprised to find it in Vegas. Fat Burger pride themselves on being unhealthy and politically incorrect. I tried to find the ad we saw when we last visited Fat Burger in 2001 but couldn’t see it on the Internet. It was a take-off of the old McDonalds “Two all beef patties” ad but instead listed all the things they didn’t have in their burgers (“No Tofu, Mung Beans… etc).
Fat Burger knows its customers don’t truck with anything green.
Fat Burger’s grudging attempt to kow-tow to healthy eaters.
That’s for sure.
And if Fat Burger isn’t extreme enough, you could try this place in Vegas. We picked up this flyer in the foyer of Caesars Palace. You can really do anything in Vegas. You can race cars or monster trucks at the Las Vegas Motorway, you can operate construction machines such as bulldozers and cranes at Dig This, you can swim and do Yoga (sorry no Pilates though) with dolphins at The Mirage, you can fly an Extra 330LC combat jet over the Mojave desert at Real Top Gun Flights, you can experience skydiving without jumping out of a plane at the Las Vegas Indoor Skydiving Experience or you and your friends can have dinner at a table that is hoisted 45 metres into the air on a giant crane at Dinner In The Sky. And I didn’t even mention the drive-through marriage services and Grand Canyon tours that Vegas is traditionally known for. Of course, nor did I mention the various X-rated adventures that would titillate even the most jaded Lothario.
Being a mad Pinball fan, I sought out the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. This was quite a hike and we got to see how seedy Las Vegas is when you move a couple of blocks off the main strip. We were approached by a woman seeking signatures for a petition on gun control who was initially very happy that we supported gun control and then disappointed when she found we weren’t U.S. citizens. We saw lots of homeless people and people sitting on curbs drinking alcohol. At one point, we went into a service station to get some money and found people sitting at 1 cent slot machines in the service machine sipping cans of beer. Yes, there is gambling and drinking off the strip. It is just sleazier.
The Pinball Hall of Fame showcases over 200 working pinball machines dating from present day to the 1920s. I was in heaven playing old favourites (such as the 1980’s Williams machines) as well as finding unknown gems and historical curiosities. In sad bit of irony, all the old pinball manufacturers now make slot machines for casinos leaving only Roger Stern and his Stern Pinball Company as the sole remaining company manufacturing pinball machines. Good on Roger Stern for keeping pinball alive but the problem for me is that I don’t really liked his style of pinball machine. Of course in switching to slot machines, pinball manufacturers were simply returning to their roots. Pinball stemmed from bagatelle machines (invented in France in the early 1700s) which were very popular in the early twentieth century as gambling machines (in fact they are still used for gambling in Japan where they are known as pachinko machines). In the 1930s and 40s, many U.S. states began banning bagatelle and pinball machines as part of strict anti-gambling laws. The pinball makers hit back with the introduction of flippers and instead of winning money, they offered free games to anyone who reached a certain score. They successfully argued that, with the introduction of flippers, pinball was now a game of skill unlike gambling which was a game of chance. Starting with Los Angeles, many states started to repeal their bans on pinball machines. Surprisingly, New York was the last state to repeal their ban on pinball machines in 1976.
The unique 1971 Gottlieb Challenger. This machine allowed two players to face off against each other playing pinball.
After four days in Vegas, we were ready to leave. It was that same feeling we felt in Florida after a week of theme parks. Too much artificial living. Somehow, we managed to down-size our luggage to carry on to our last domestic flight to San Francisco. Once again, we lugged it past all the gamblers on the floor of Caesars Palace and caught a taxi to the airport.
But even at the airport, we weren’t safe from slot machines as you can see in the picture below.
We hope you enjoyed your stay in Las Vegas and remind passengers that there is still time to lose money in our airport gaming lounges.
As we flew out over Las Vegas we got a good aerial view of the town. Despite Elvis Presley’s exhortations, the bright light city hadn’t really set our soul on fire but we did have a swingin’ time. From the Silver State we headed next to the Golden State of California.
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Once again… Wow Wow Wow! Funny thing… why do they let the drivers of cars in America do the filming 🙂 Jerry Seinfield, what a shame 😦 and the Venetian looks just like you were in Macao!! Wonderful post once again Simon, loving it… will come back to this post.
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