However, even when I lived in Jamaica, I enjoyed going to Vegas to celebrate the occasion with my grandson's maternal relatives, and this year they did not disappoint at all.
There is something I noticed at the airport this time which I don't remember experiencing on any other visit and that was their having a separate floor for passengers waiting for private transportation and those taking shuttles and taxis.
I have never seen a similar arrangement at any of the other numerous airports I have traveled to over the years and while I have no problem with this, system, I just found it unusual.
Of course I only noticed it because I was on the wrong floor when my ride arrived!
This time we were joined by relatives from Canada and really had a great time touring the Strip as usual and consuming great Jamaican food without turkey as we are curry goat, pork, ham, fish, rice and green gungo people!We started one tour at the Mandalay Bay where on October 2nd 2017 that vicious white killer who was staying at that hotel, massacred 59 people and injured 520, on October 2nd 2017, when he fired from his hotel room at a crowd of music lovers at a concert across the street.
He had been armed with over 30 weapons and unlimited ammunition and had tried to blow up the fuel storage tanks nearby to kill even more people. Fortunately, while he did hit the tanks, the force of the bullets was not enough to penetrate them, so lives were saved.
The hotel itself is quite luxurious and I was impressed with their huge statue of Michael Jackson, the late king of rock, which graces the lobby.
Pity their security was so terrible that the murderer was able to take so many weapons into his room undetected. I bet if someone was trying to cheat in their casino, their cameras would have picked it up. SMH.Despite my many previous trips to that city, I really had not explored downtown before.
This time we did and it is really interesting down there and we saw the notorious heart attack grill where people weighting more than 350 lbs can eat free. In other words, they get greedy and foolish people to eat themselves to death with the highest calories available for each meal. Sick.
We also did two excellent treks, one to Red Rock and one to Mountain Edge.
Red Rock is a huge canyon some twenty miles out of Vegas where families flock to see the wonderful rock formations and climb a few challenging ones.
It can be dangerous to climb though as the rocks can be slippery and there is nothing to hold on to.
We heard that the day before we went there a twenty year old young man slipped and fell to his death.
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| The sun peeks from behind a huge rock at one of the peaks at Red Rock |
Once there you have the most comprehensive view of the city and the famous Vegas strip. Unfortunately we went there in the day but the night view must be unforgettable as Vegas is known for its bright lights.
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| On the way to the top of Mountain Edge |
The night before we left we went to the Chris Angel show and although I have been fascinated with him for years based on his many appearances on TV, on his live show, he had so much light effects, that one could not tell what his actual illusions were versus tricks caused by the manipulation of the lighting.
I was very impressed with his "heart" though as after his performance, he made a moving appeal for the public to support cancer research and said he had been on that subject long before his own two year old son was born with leukemia. Bringing his little son on stage to take a bow was a real tear jerker.
One thing I just cannot get accustomed to in Vegas is the weather for whereas in the summer it is unbearable at triple digit temperatures, in the winter it can jump from a low of 40 to 80 in one day. Weather guaranteed to make you sick.
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| At the Chris Angel theater |
While she is by profession and environmental engineer, her hobby is fixing cars and everyone in the neighborhood uses her skills but she doesn't mind at all. She also buys cars people sell cheap when they can't figure what's wrong with them, fixes them and resells. Great hobby.
She advised me she is autistic but said she told the doctors she loves it and wants no medication to deal with it. She also seems to have some medial issues with her body, like having only two inches of intestines left but that does not seem to affect what she eats! She should be studied and recorded in the scientific journals but she says the doctors in Vegas are afraid to even treat her as they are scared she will die on their tables as she has so many complications and has been at death's door many times!
She plans to go back east were scientists are serious about medical research unlike in Vegas where everything is show biz, she revealed.
Incidentally she also speaks five languages including Mandarin and Arabic. If I was closer, I would certainly do some serious interviews and research and write her biography!
After an eventful and exciting week, I returned on Spirit airlines and saw something I had never beheld in my life before, strange looking flight attendants.
One was a man with a beard and shaved head who was about six feet five inches tall with a huge paunch. I wondered if he was an air marshal in disguise as he looked more like a wrestler than a flight attendant.
The other was a man who looked to be over 70 years old and the only times I saw him, he was leaning against something as if he could not stand on his own. Thankfully, there were a third attendant who fit the bill as the other two looked really out of place and clumsy.
Only in Vegas!
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