After a fitful sleep I awoke at about at about 9:30, surprisingly free of jet lag and tiredness..

"The Motor.."

"The Hotel.."

We decided to take a stroll up the strip and find us a hotel buffet for breakfast, the Frontier was our destination as we left the hotel.. FWOARGH!!! what the hell is that!!!?? Have you ever stepped out of air conditioned comfort into the bleeding edge of a 110 degree Nevada morning? nope? well I just did.. let me tell you, it's a culture shock.. warm isn't the word.. balmy is but a memory.. this is the inside of a brand new, fully guaranteed, electric fan assisted oven.. not to be detered we headed off up the strip..

Classic Vegas

Current Vegas

Future Vegas..

It felt like layers of skin were being evaporated & replaced with tingly pink stuff.. we'd gone about half a mile when the realisation kicked in that this wasn't a bright move.. however continuing to our destination was easier than retracing our steps so we forged on.. upon arrival we discovered the Frontier buffet sadly lacking in the desired breakfast items (at this point I reveal a certain travel companion was craving Barbeque for breakfast...) RK said that "The Bellaggio Casino" had a decent buffet so we headed off in that direction.. halfway to the Bellaggio we realised it was way beyond our endurance to actually walk there, so we ducked back into the Mirage & got the air conditioned car.. (The American way of life is startiung to make sense to me now..)

The Bellaggio is to be recommended, all the food is behind glass, it's constantly being prepared by chefs in their individual sections (Italian, Chinese, American, Pastries, Deserts etc..) you can eat as much as you like & it's $12 all in.. (£8) So after 2 breakfasts & 5 deserts each (I kid not) we decided we were full. The only downer with buffet food is the fight to get at the good stuff, some races don't know how to queue you know.. (Japanese & Germans take note...) but naked aggression saw 'em off..

On with the day.. now, what would you do when surrounded by the most expensive entertainment complexes in the world? .. no, we didn't do that.. off to "Rad Trax" we went.. a slice of pure American fun.. RadTrax is a lovingly cluttered Slot car racing shop, containing 3 large tracks, a pinball museum and a webcam (See RadTrax at www.radtrx.com) we had previously gone slot car racing in Illinois and RK had gotten addicted so once again we parted with some cash & spent a happy hour chasing each other around a fiendishly simple figure of 8 track that was impossible to complete more than 4 circuits of without a major wipeout..

Follow the slot racing with several games on the 1970's pin tables which lurked in their own corner overlooked by the coolest quadrophonic 8 track cartrdge player in the world.. (ever) it even had a joystick to "Place your seating position".. the 8 track tape collection was pure 70's schlock too.. Disco nights volumes 1 - 99.. "Sound Explosion" "Rock Fever" .. you get the drift... glorious, we had a great time .. highly recommended.

The horrific "Beelzebub Beatles" play on, overlooked by their leader "Evil Paul" to think, these people actually took over the world...

We found a Sid Vicious slot machine and RK couldn't resist a go.. a Jimi Hendrix machine was being played by a chain smoking 90 year old child of love (or something) (We fought the Punk wars for THIS??) now, we've been trying to win dinner on the slots since we got here and failing miserably, but RK was in luck & a line of "Censoreds" coughed up on the Sid Slot enough change for oooh... maybe a coke?

We decided to go back to the Mirage & have a swim in the pretty good pool there, the sun was just setting as we wandered into the "Lagoon Style" pool enclosure & tentatively tried the water.. freezing! how the hell did it manage to be that cold after 12 hours in 115 degree heat I'll never know however, we had a good swim..

After changing for the evening and watching the volcano outside our hotel erupt & turn the water fountains into rivers of fire.. really quite tasteful it was .. honest.. we headed down to old Las Vegas & had a look around the "Fremont Street Experience".

Fremont Street was the heart of Vegas until they started building the new mega casinos on The Strip, the new Casinos had lured the punters away from the old paces & the area has been in decline for a while, so to breathe life into it the local planners have built a 4 block long roof over the whole street & lined the inside with a TV screen half a mile long... on the half hour it plays a 5 minute show which is pretty cheesy but technically very impressive, the punters on Freemont Street are a seedier looking bunch than those at the new casinos, and the machines in the casinos reflect this, 5c machines were common.

We ate dinner at 11pm in a Generic Rib Place, not great but not bad, an attempt to ride the rollercoasters on the 1000 foot tall Stratosphere Tower was aborted (They were closed), so we went for a drive up & down the Strip with the top down taking pictures of the neon signs completed the day... or so we thought.. "have we ever been in the Venetian?" asked RK, a "nope" from me sealed it and we pulled into their parking lot sometime after 1am.. the Venetian is one of the new breed of "Grown up" casinos, this means they have no exploding volcano, or rollercoaster on the roof, not even a live tiger show.. what they do have is leggy babes serving the drinks wearing next to nothing and a fine line in pseudo Italian Architecture.. as nice as all that is, it only held our attention for 30 mins, but we took some fine photos...

Time for bed, we have decided to get up at 8:30am & go swimming while the pool is empty... like that'll happen...

Onward to tomorrow..

-S.