So…I’m in Vegas and it’s time to leave. My SOP (standard operating procedure) when travelling is to arrive at the airport at least 3 hrs early — this leaves time for possible long lineups and for the added time of refusing to go through the naked machines and having to wait for a security woman to come and give me a pat-down. Believe it or not, even with this healthy time allowance, there have been times when I’ve barely made it to the boarding area with much time to spare. This day, I had a 2pm flight, so I was there at 11am. The Delta agent made me check in via a machine rather than a person, but there was a problem and she had to do it herself, she frowned, then took me over to a person at the counter — there was a problem with my flight. The machine had said the flight was delayed until 7:38pm, which meant no chance in Hades that I would make my connecting flight.
I was # 3 in line. By the time I got my flight reassigned (leaving at midnight!!), the lineup was huge, so yeah for my early arrival to discover that I had a very long day(s) ahead of me. At least my time wasn’t being wasted standing in that massive lineup. There was a storm in the northeast that had resulted in cancelled and delayed flights in the whole area, so merely rescheduling me through different airports hadn’t helped my travel plans.
So…it’s noon. My flight leaves at midnight. What to do? Spending the day in an airport was certainly not a very attractive option. It was a gorgeous day outside, so I took a little walk first to ponder plans and found myself on a sidewalk that led away from the airport past a cute little park with a statue, some interesting trees with even more interesting birds, then along a cactus-lined highway leading into the airport. It was so tremendously cool to walk along a sidewalk next to cacti. Well, cool being a descriptive adjective for the experience, not the reality. It was hot outside! (See previous article, Catcti and Stuff, for photos taken during walk.)
Then what? I am in heels, am pulling my luggage along, so decided I needed to fine-tune my day’s plans. The heels were easy to solve: I had my luggage with me, so changed into sandals and pulled out my wide-brimmed hat to protect my oh-so-fair skin from the oh-so-bright sun.
Returning to the airport, I noticed an airport worker and struck up a conversation. This was my dilemma, did he have any suggestions — suggestions that didn’t involve gambling and shopping, that is? My map had shown a park that looked within walking distance of the airport and which might have been a pleasant way to spend the day, but my new friend highly discouraged that. Apparently a lot of homeless people live in the parks and me walking alone with all my luggage (there was nowhere at the airport to leave it) would bring undesirable attention. He and another worker he pulled into the conversation suggested that first I head to the MGM hotel, have them look after my luggage, then talk to the concierge about suggestions of how I could spend my time. So this I did.
Baggage safely checked, I decided to roam the streets. The trip had been all about work and I hadn’t really seen anything outside of that, it was a lovely day, I was in Vegas, so might as well see a little of it.
New York part of town
Vegas subscribes to the ‘go large or don’t bother’ way of doing things. And I never noticed until now — look how the folks standing in front of the Coke bottle match the Coke colours. I’d like to see an animation of people with no red and white walking in front of the bottle and having their colour schemes change as they pass it.
Equal time for the competition. I love vintage signs painted on brick.
Ground level : I have to say that I was surprised at how clean and green the main drag is. Aside from all the blatant commercialism, it’s an interesting, pleasant street to walk with a camera.
Trees, particularly palm trees, soften up the cityscape with nature.
There are a lot of walkways over traffic and the grid seems to have traffic constantly flowing around the main drag.
I love the look of the text against the texture of the architecture and those palms.
These seem to be home to many types of birds, particularly great-tailed grackles. Which are so cool. Imagine a grackle with a long and exotic-looking tail.
Lots of shopping opportunities if that’s what you’re looking for. And, again, the scale of things is grand. Check out the door in the bottom left corner for a sense of scale.
This is backtracking the day a bit. I had gone to the Wyn for breakfast one day with co-workers and decided to go back and dine in a more leisurely fashion before heading to the airport. The breakfast buffet was highly recommended, and rightfully so. It was only about a 10 min walk from where I had been staying. I love the reflections and couldn’t resist the framing of the Wyn’s reflection by the palm trees.
We stayed at the Trump hotel. This is a corner – I loved the framing of the palms against the gold and white.
Las Vegas is surrounded by these mountains. I’d love to go back to check out the surrounding area — it looks like there may be some beautiful places to point a camera. This shot was taken from a taxi window.
I ate dinner at the MGM’s buffet, since I was in Vegas and since there is so much talk about these things. The selection was incredible, as was much of what I tried. Then, my feet unable to walk any more, I headed back to the airport, for what turned out to be a very long trip home. My new flight was delayed by mechanical difficulties, meaning that I missed my rescheduled connection. I was rebooked via two connections and finally made it home at 3:30pm the day after my journey began.
If I had realized that I would have a great view of the mountains at the airport (I had arrived late at night, so hadn’t seen the landscape), I would have planned to be here before the sun had set. I just barely caught the remains of the light.
Images from my little walk around the airport are here.