Articles > Living Las Vegas

I am not the gambling type. For me, a holiday in Vegas was only ever slightly more appealing than, say, a week of fasting and coffee enemas in Molvania. I don’t care for neon and glitz, Elvis impersonators, wedding chapels, windowless casinos and ridiculous hotels built as scaled-down replicas of everywhere from Venice to New York, especially not in the 40 degree heat of a desert summer. But when a friend who lives in ‘Sin City’ (one of the new settlers in America’s fastest growing city, who keep arriving at a rate of 5000 a month) invited me to visit, I felt it would be churlish to say no. He promised me outdoorsy things to do: kayaking, mountain-biking and hiking in cool, snow-capped mountains.

So, it is with some surprise that within a few days of my arrival, I find myself humming “Luck be a lady tonight”, as I pace across the swirly carpet of the air-conditioned hotel casino. Outside, in the searing heat, the impressive fountains of the Bellagio are dancing and swaying to Sinatra’s swooning. Now, here I am among the bleeping and chinking of this evil 24 hour gaming room, ready to try my first game of craps. A lesson, hoisted on me the day before, using valueless chips, had taught me the basics. It is a complex dice game with a lexicon all its own. ‘Playing the field’ had worked in the pretend game, so that will be my tactic now. At the first table I approach, I cautiously change just $20 into two ten dollar chips. I bet one chip ‘in the field’, just as the man in the check-shirt and denims is ‘shooting’ his ‘come out roll’. He throws a pair of sixes. This means I win thirty dollars. I give an excited little bounce of joy. But, as 2,3 or 12 is ‘craps’, the cowboy loses his bet of several hundred dollars on the ‘pass line’. “You’ve taken my luck, buddy,” he humphs, as he collects his remaining chips and leaves. I’d been told that craps players were a superstitious bunch, but it seemed mean to blame me and my bet for the way the dice had landed.

I kept playing the field and I kept winning. As I finally picked up my $160 profit to leave, another player at the end of the table muttered something. Roughly translated, he seemed glad to see me go. My tutor hadn’t explained the social graces: how, to some extent at least, all players around the table often want the same outcome for the dice and build up some camaraderie.

But gambling’s like that. At least I wasn’t hauled upstairs to have my legs broken by iron bars. OK, so I’m no ‘high roller’ (One of those multi-millionaires who bet as if it’s all play-money and, in return, are persuaded by the casino hotel to stay on and bet more. Anything they want is on the house: luxurious suites, expensive dinners and even a jet pick-up from home) but gambling in Las Vegas had become enjoyable all the same. How had this happened?

I think it was because, by the time I seriously ventured into the Bellagio casino (rather than just weave through it on the way to my swish hotel room), I had done other, more – how do I put this without sounding sanctimonious - ‘spiritually uplifting’ things in Vegas.

The most uplifting – literally – was a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon, where we buzzed below the 5000ft walls and landed by the Colorado river to have a champagne picnic, as the canyon walls turned orange in the evening sun. Then there was a day-trip to Mt Charleston, where we hiked across snow to the top of a 9000ft view point with a view towards Vegas, just over an hour away by car. We drove along a scenic road at Red Rock Canyon as the sun set, colouring the iron-red rocks, in a landscape similar to the Australian outback. Finally, at Lake Las Vegas, just seventeen miles from ‘The Strip’, we stayed at the genteel new Ritz Carlton and kayaked on the cool lake, after mountain-biking over dusty tracks to rugged Mars-like landscapes. It was all so wholesome. Not so much ‘chicken soup for the soul’, more like several good helpings of organic, free-range roast.

So for ‘afters’, I was ready to submit to some indulgent, indoorsy things. As a gentle break-in to things hedonistic, there was the ‘Dreaming Ritual’ spa treatment at the MGM Grand, where I was rubbed and massaged with creams and potions from the Australian bush. That was followed by expensive meals at fabulous restaurants (try the Maytag blue cheese soufflé at Bradley Ogden in Caesar’s Palace, it is food for the gods) and stupendous, awe-inspiring shows. (Cirque du Soleil has not one but three shows in town, with a fourth due to open this Autumn. If you’re seeing any other shows, make sure you save Cirque til last, or else everything else will disappoint. Their main show, ‘O’, is a magical, surreal dream.)

So, as you can see, before I knew it, I was enjoying Sin City, without even having played a quarter in a slot machine. This was not meant to be. Las Vegas was not ‘my kind of place’. I took time-out by the pool to contemplate how I felt. It was after a few lengths that I realised that maybe sometimes I try too hard to be sensible. Being at one with nature is all well and good, but the wilderness will be there – in some shape or form - for many lifetimes. Only now, before we drive the planet to destruction, do we have the chance to be reckless. Vegas isn’t about being good or outdoorsy, (although, surprisingly, you can be that there), it’s about being ‘naughty’. The city’s given up on being a family destination, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is the new slogan. You don’t say that about the Lake District.

And, without any prompting, I was off to the casino (with my sensible budget of $20; I guess old habits die hard?), to see what this gambling lark was all about. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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