Hearing the news today, I’m thankful that we aren’t in Vegas this week. The “shootout” appears to have taken place in very close proximity to our hotel! Of course, it happened in the early hours of the morning, so we probably would have been safe.

On Saturday, we took a break from the lights and boarded a bus to Hoover Dam. We had a very congenial driver who filled us in on some the history of Las Vegas and things of interest along the way. It took us about an hour to get to the dam, where we were immediately taken on a video tour of the building of the dam, then down through the tunnels and into the Generator Room.

Hoover Dam Generators

Back up to the top, we were left to explore the museum and gift shop (isn’t there always one of those?) before heading outdoors to take pictures from every angle.

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam

What an impressive feat!

We arrived back on The Strip in time to meet up with the rest of the family at New York New York. They’d arrived while we were gone and were already enjoying the infamous yard high drinks that we’d seen everywhere. We didn’t need to wait for them to finish. Drinks of every sort can be carried along the streets from one establishment to another, the empty containers left anywhere along the way to be surreptitiously picked up by city cleanup staff and re-distributed among the hotel bars.

We watched the Pirate Show outside Treasure Island Hotel and grabbed dinner at Senor Frog, before catching cabs to take us downtown to Fremont Street.

Fremont Street is the older “strip” where the original hotels and casinos can be found. To compete with the flashing lights of the “new” strip, the many-blocks-long street has been closed to traffic and covered with a huge white canvas canopy. Every half hour the throngs of people partying beneath it are treated to a moving light show on the ceiling, each with its own musical theme, such as music by Queen or The Beatles, and you can’t help but laugh at some of the costumes and antics of revellers.

Fremont Street

As much as we would have liked to stay to enjoy the show, we had to leave the “young ones” to it because we had reservations at 6:20 am for the Grand Canyon Tour of a lifetime.