Loved the hotel Pita and I stayed at last week – – Paris Vegas.  Extremely clean, soft and cozy mattress and bedding and rose-scented toiletries.  Quiet rooms and fast elevators.  What’s not to like?  But would I stay there again?  In a heartbeat.  Seeing La Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe and Bellagio water fountain show were extra perks from our 24th floor room.

Love how shops are designed to mimic old buildings with a twilight sky.  The casino even had buildings with silhouettes of people inside.

FirstBorn stayed in an extended stay hotel a couple of weeks ago for less, but I think that’s a bad trade-off, since you’re spending a ton of cash on transportation plus time to get anywhere.  With current road construction, your Uber trip will cost you a very pretty penny (one hour by bus to get to Fremont Street Experience downtown!). With center-Strip lodgings we could walk to so much as well as look at more than rows of wedding chapels and tattoo parlors 🙂  Passes were great because buses run every 15 minutes throughout the day and early evening with slightly longer waits later.  Almost 24/7 service, in fact.  Very clean, quiet with free wi-fi!!!

Gimme a bus pass and the world’s my oyster – or in this case, my entry to Dollar Tree and Goodwill, for a taste of what high rollers experience.  Surprisingly enough, the Dollar Tree was pretty darned similar to local ones!  I have to check my local store for these tasty Product of Italy biscotti – yum! Pita likes Loma plant-based protein and it’s much more expensive at Jewel (surprise!).

With the exception of heavy winter gear, the Goodwill selection was similar to our local stores as well.  Nevada isn’t connected to Illinois stores yet, so your loyalty account won’t transfer over, but it’s not a big deal to open a new one with your phone number.  Pita got 3 Lauren skirts, a tee and a couple of books for 40% off … paid $12!

I have so many Vegas vacation pictures taken over the past week that I’ll try to break them down by day/location.  Pita and I grabbed bus passes, which meant we decided on the fly where and what we’d be doing (sorry, Mark, we would have loved to get together).

My feeling is that Vegas is schizoid, advertising itself as family-friendly while nearly naked women costumed as showgirls, police officers and dominatrix crowd the boulevard. Unless you have some very strange family values, this will involve extensive future therapy (Daddy, why is that woman hitting the man with a whip and Tigger moving his hips like that?).  One thing that I can’t stop thinking about were the vast number of scooters on the sidewalks.  These are slightly smaller than the ones you find at stores, available for rent to any and all, and since the majority of tourists seem to be mid- to late-twenties and deeply invested in alcoholic beverages, lots of speed races and wheelies.  Just what you want – hot wheeling drunks you can’t avoid.  This photo is of a convoy of older folks ’cause they were moving slow enough to shoot 🙂