Las Vegas seems to have become synonymous with gambling. Most of the stories I've ever seen on Las Vegas have surrounded the idea of gambling. Of course, since it's the city's biggest industry, it makes sense to mention gambling; however, there is a bit more to do there. Haven't people gotten married a few times in Vegas? Isn't it located in a desert? I heard there were shows there that even kids could see. Las Vegas has grown from The Godfather's "Moe Green" little Mecca of sin to a second Disney World.

Day 1

We flew over on Spirit Airlines, famous for the catch phrase, "Catch the Spirit." It had a little stop over in Detroit, which we took advantage of and grabbed some Mexican food as dinner. Overall, I admit I was at first nervous about riding one of the airlines that wasn't one of the big five, but realistically I've found it to be quite a pleasant experience and an alternative I'm surprised I didn't take more often.

Upon landing, we picked up our luggage, and then stood on a line of 100+ people waiting to grab a taxi. The line moves quickly, and you get a chance to see the nature of the people heading to Vegas. It's everything and everyone, a complete cross-section of America. Millionaires standing next to bachelor parties standing next to college kids, who are next to your average person from the heartland of America.

My first impression of Las Vegas struck me as I walked through the airport. No, it wasn't the slot machines at the terminal gate. That, I was prepared for; everybody mentioned it. It was the fact that this city essentially evolved into a living, breathing version of Disney World, a gambling version, but certainly something similar to what Walt himself probably imagined for Epcot, a city that was a massive playground with one main purpose. In this case, the purpose is gambling, but the side "amusements" of shows and such is what we were here for.

We grabbed the taxi and learned Rule Number Two of Vegas: The taxi drivers will attempt to rip you off every chance they get, so memorize a map before hand. I seemed like a paranoid freak entering every taxi, and it was only the last taxi ride where I stopped being paranoid about getting ripped off.
Anyway, we did the stereotypical thing and rode along the strip to our hotel.

Riding the strip for the first time is a mind-blowing experience. You see large hotels and think, "Wow, it certainly is quite large." And then you see a drugstore and a souvenir shop and think, "That's not so large. What's it doing here?" The strip then begins to resemble miniature kingdoms with each kingdom separated by a souvenir shop.
We then arrived at our hotel, "Viva Las Vegas Villas." This was probably one of the hardest aspects of the trip I had to write about.

I'll tell you why.

Everybody who goes to Vegas asks, "What hotel did you stay at?" They're asking which "major" hotel you stayed at. Then, they'll answer every time, "Oh that's nice..." every time that you respond with a name of hotel that they didn't stay at. Occasionally they'll mention one of the bigger hotels, and the time they stayed there and how great it was. The rest of the conversation involves one person or the other saying, "Oh THAT'S nice," and "OH, that's nice," by either emphasizing THAT'S or the OHs.

When it comes to your "bragging rights," to some, it's almost a sin to stay off of the strip. We were officially on the strip, but learned that, to some, north of the Stratosphere is considered, "Off of the strip." Vegas's frequent guests have an elaborate logical system to determine your location and social worth based on the strip and where on the strip you are.

Viva Las Vegas Villas

Anyway, back to the hotel. Why stay there? It's a reasonable question, and given the social stigmas that I received, it made the answer much harder to write.

There are four answers. One is the biggest: The weddings. Viva Las Vegas is known for weddings. In fact, half of the locals we ran into had no idea it had a hotel attached. They only knew it as the place where Elvis (Ron Decar) performs marriages. This they do a lot. So much so, it's an anomaly in itself. Every weekend, they're doing dozens. They live and breathe for weddings. They have Elvis Weddings, Gothic weddings, Star Trek Weddings...you get the idea. Of course, I'm not the type of man who feels spiritually fulfilled by having his nuptials said with Captain Kirk while Elvis sings to us...but if that's your thing. Just call them up, grunt that you'd like to get married, and the rest is handled for you.

Actually every night we got in a cab, the driver asked us, "Oh, you're going to Viva Las Vegas Villas? Are you getting married?"

Number two relates to number one, and that's the attitude. The bigger hotels seemed to generally not have that personal touch, except for the Excalibur and a few others. It was almost a struggle to get someone to even seem happy that you were thinking of going. The intimacy of Viva Las Vegas with its 40 rooms allows them to know everybody by name. Believe me, this can be quite an advantage.

Number Three: Location really is relative in Vegas. We used the hotel as our central base of operations and were taking taxis everywhere anyway. You're not going to walk the strip more than once, so get used to the taxi or a car. Fortunately, it was right between "Downtown Vegas" and "The Strip," so it worked out quite well.

Viva Las Vegas Villas

Number four is most of the rooms are theme-based rooms, so if you want to spice things up a bit, here's a much more reputable way to do it than to go to the local "per hour" hotel.

Anyway, I'm babbling too much. We got to Viva Las Vegas Villas and settled in.