Vegas Weekend

Started: 2025-11-05 21:05:09

Submitted: 2025-11-05 22:09:44

Visibility: World-readable

Arriving in Las Vegas for a long weekend

While I was a teenager in the 1990s, Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill achieved cultural saturation. Sometimes her angry cathartic songs about her exes were just the thing I needed to listen to. I bought most of her albums on CD and played them on my Sony Discman (and, later, my slot-loading CD player in my car stereo). But I never managed to see her live. (Last year, in a moment of awkward timing, she played at Shoreline Amphitheater the day I left to fly to Scotland to attend Worldcon.) This year she announced a residency in Las Vegas so I knew I needed to go see her. I bought a ticket for her show on the first of November, and took Friday off so I could spend a long weekend in Las Vegas.

I left work early on Thursday the 30th of October to drive to the airport to fly to Las Vegas. My office in Santa Clara is close enough to the San Jose airport that I can watch flights climbing out of the airport as they depart to the north. (Every time I fly out of SJC I'm surprised how close the airport is and how easy it is to park and get into the terminal. But that only works if SJC has a flight to a destination I care about.)

737 wing over the Sierras

I flew Southwest (on a 737 MAX 8) and got a window seat near the back of the plane so I could watch the scenery as we flew over the Diablo Range to the Central Valley, then over the Sierras to the Nevada desert, then landed in Las Vegas with a view of the Strip just out the plane window at the edge of the airport.

Rather than deal with the hassle of renting a car, driving on the Strip, and parking at the hotel, I decided to try relying on taxis and ride-hailing to get around. Getting from the airport to my hotel on the Strip was fast and easy: I walked right out of the airport to the taxi stand, followed the directions of the attendant to the taxi parked on the curb in spot six, and then we were off. I didn't have to worry about matching with the right ride-hailing driver, or getting a shuttle bus to the rental car facility on the far side of the airport across the interstate. My driver dropped me off at my hotel a few minutes later for a flat rate of $25 to the middle of the strip (plus tip, and I think there was a $3 credit card fee too).

This time I decided to stay at Park MGM, because it was the first (and still only?) smoke-free casino-hotel on the Strip. I've lived in places that banned indoor smoking for most of the last 35 years and I prefer to avoid cigarette smoke wherever possible. I got a room on the fourth floor overlooking the HVAC equipment on the roof with a view of the parking garage.

Once I was settled in my room I headed downstairs, through the casino floor, to get pizza for supper at Eataly, then headed outside to wander up the Strip. It was just after sunset on a warm fall day and the street was awash in sparkling lights from the casinos. I made it to the Bellagio and joined the crowd waiting for the fountain show. It started a few minutes later, choreographed with water and lights and music and spectacle.

Fountain at the Bellagio

After watching the fountain show I headed up the walkway into the Bellagio and walked through the Conservatory, crowded with people all trying to get pictures for social media. This seemed like a very Las Vegas way to do a conservatory: instead of being an indoor respite from the rest of the casino it was a glitzy over-produced fake garden, more spectacle than anything else.

Bellagio Conservatory

But all the spectacle was still fun to watch. I took special note of the "sage parliament of literary-minded owls" (according to the sign at the edge of the path), because I figured Kiesa would appreciate it, arranged in a 16-foot pumpkin probably because it was fall.

A parliament of literary owls in the Bellagio Conservatory