adventures in las vegas!

Wally registered to attend the American Psychatric Congress this year. It's one of the best meetings for learnng all about the newest and most interesting things going on in psychiatry world wide. The meeting is often held in "go to" locations; Boston, Honolulu, SanDiego,etc.

Ironically, this year the meeting was in "Fabulous LAS VEGAS". I say ironically because my impression of Las Vegas from one previous visit almost 20 years ago was that the whole strip just seemed a little crazy! (it was a psychiatric conference that time too)

I determined to see a little more of the place this time and understood that the strip might have changed in 20 years. The first thing I learned was that the hotel I had stayed in 20 years ago no longer stands.

the implosion of the Alladin in 1998

As a matter of fact, there's an actual website of videos of all the Vegas implosions over the last twenty years or so (http://www.vegas.com/lounge/implosions.html). It is an interesting concept. When they want to build something, it would appear the developers of Las Vegas just blow up a building and then they start busily constructing; and it became very clear to me that the only way to go in Vegas is BIGGER!

My destination for this trip was The Venetian; a 3500 room monstrosity that was overwhelming from the get go. My trip to the hotel is a whole 'nother blog but when we arrived I was amazed at the size of the lobby! It reminded me of the cathedrals I'd toured in Europe as a teenager-only bigger!

As we wound our way to the front desk to check in (I think the owners in Vegas follow the Temple Grandin theory of "herding") I was taken aback by the size of the place and the number of people in one area. I had the thought that there were probably more people in the lobby than there were back home in the whole town of Magrath! Two days later when I visited the lobby for some concierge advice I found it crammed tighter and solidified my theory.

Who knew that something as simple as checking in would be such an adventure? As Wally gave his name and started to check in, the girl behind the counter looked troubled. "You know, Dr. Smart, you've booked one of our smaller rooms. For only $40 more a night, we could upgrade you to a much nicer suite."

Wally and I looked at each other. We really didn't need more than a bed and a bathroom so we smiled and confirmed that we would just keep the little, shabby room. We were planning on being out a lot anyway and how bad could it be?

So we ended up in a "small " 650 square foot king suite with a sunken living room and 3 tv's ! Seriously, the suite was almost as big as my main floor and when you added in the bathroom, the space was definitely as big as my house! (or at least it seemed that way-haha)

So we settled in, tried not to get lost in the cavernous "room" and wondered just what the heck the extra 40 bucks might have provided....

(to be continued...of course)