Just back from my first trip to Vegas since March of 2006. I used to visit 3 or 4 times a year; once I quit my job in October of 2005, I'm down to maybe once a year. From the vantage point of a year-and-a-half away, it's fun to see how much has changed...
The Aladdin Resort, which was only around 8 years old, is no more. (It opened up on the heels of the Paris casino.) It's been refurbished into a Planet Hollywood hotel and casino, and looks FABULOUS. It's got lots of chrome and crystal, and the vibe is much edgier and quicker than Aladdin, which used to feel like an old-people's casino.
The Stardust is gone completely, nothing but an empty lot since they imploded it earlier this year, which means that when you walk north from the Wynn, you can see Circus-Circus across the empty lot.
Speaking of the Wynn, before it opened in 2005, the Venetian had announced it was going to build another tower, "Palazzo," at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Sands Avenue (where the Sands used to be until IT was imploded to build the Venetian). So when Wynn opened the Wynn, HE immediately announced plans to build a second tower, called "Encore." Now, I've heard that Wynn is going to tear up the golf course to put in more hotel rooms, plus a condo complex.
A whole series of buildings have been taken down: the old (and dumpy) Holiday Inn Boardwalk is gone, the odd collection of tacky souvenir shops and a nightclub, and the corner where the helicopters used to take off have all been leveled. There's some construction going on, but no definitive signs of what's going in.
Caesar's opened their Augustus Tower a few months ago and wound up redesigning their entire registration area. (They still have the worst organized taxi line of all the casinos, though.) And of course they had expanded their Forum Shops, so now it takes about a half-hour to walk from the Strip in to the casino. Oh, and Celine Dion's show - the one they built the Coliseum Theater for - is ending, and it looks like Bette Midler will be coming to town.
We stayed at the Wynn... their rooms are fabulous. Gradually, even since I've been going to Vegas (1995), the 'center' of the Strip has moved. It used to be at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Tropicana at the south end. From there, you had nearby access to Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM, and New York New York. Now it's shifted to the Strip and Flamingo Road, by Paris, Bally's, Flamingo, Bellagio, and Caesars. With Wynn opening up, he's skootching it up north another bit, where you have Wynn, Venetian, TI, and the Mirage - with more opening between the Wynn and the Riviera in the next couple of years.
Enough traveloguing... I also got some knitting done. I finished a hat made from Yarn Place's Adalie yarn (modified chevron pattern), started a felted bowl using Joann's Licorice yarn (just a hat-like thing that will get felted and turned upside down - voila! Instant bowl!), and made progress on my Marble Arches socks. Oh, and I also tried to work the Magknits Rainbow socks, once I learned the right direction for the short rows. Alas, I think I may have to resort to actually putting them on DPNs (grrrr) and doing it the way the pattern writer wrote it. 'cuz with one circular, it didn't work. Not with the brain I currently have, anyway.
Off to read through the emails that accumulated over these past 4 days. Should be lots!
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