Well, it was a disaster. Even with a careful strategy, a compulsory fruit course and super-human res

Everything you ve heard about Las Vegas is true. Stuck in the middle of the Nevada desert, an overgrown relic from Roosevelt s New Deal, the city is a neon-lit, air-conditioned oasis; a huge, glitzy cubic zirconia set in sand. The Strip, at least, is exactly as it looks in the movies, all fluorescent lights, tits and limousines, people on corners hawking night clubs and whores, and feathery showgirls who ll pose for a dollar. Walkways connect one sumptuous hotel to another, all of which boast their own casinos, wellesley inn suites nightclubs, bars, restaurants and anything else that might increase their slice of Vegas $6 billion-a-year pie. To differentiate themselves from one another, almost all Strip hotels are extravagantly themed: Ancient Rome, complete with miniature Colosseum, lives on at Caesar s Palace; a half-size replica of Eiffel s masterpiece towers over the casino at Paris, and our own hotel, the New York New York, boasts wellesley inn suites its own roller-coaster. You can spend days just touring the hotels: most of them feature unusual boutiques and attractions to lure in punters. The most famous is the Bellagio s fountain show, set in an eight-acre artificial lake, which sends elaborately choreographed 400-foot jets of water into the air throughout the night, but the best was the pirate show at Treasure Island. Set on a full-scale pirate ship in front of the hotel, a troupe of all-dancing buxom sirens kidnap a chiselled young pirate and lip-sync their way through twenty minutes of cringe-making innuendo ( Bring your salty seamen into my cove! ) It was both hilarious and awful, but bizarrely we were the only ones laughing
wellesley inn suites We also went to the MGM to see its famous lions, apparently wellesley inn suites all descended  from the one that roars at the beginning of all MGM movies. When a brisk scour of the building yielded zero lions, we were told by the concierge that they were no longer in residence after one of them, presumably fed up with the hordes of fleshy tourists gawking at it, went berserk and savaged its keeper in front of everyone. We looked up the video on YouTube afterwards but nobody got their face eaten or anything so it isn t that interesting.
If you have ever been to the United States you will appreciate how filthy-dreadful the food is. Many people are horribly overweight, but really there are nowhere near as many as there should be. The average American in constantly bombarded with adverts for things that make arteries go clang : French fries, drippy buns, deep-fried pastries fossilised in sugar. Obviously Vegas is a bit special because, wellesley inn suites well, it s Vegas, but where in the UK can you buy a dozen Krispy Kremes and a bagful of freshly popped jalapeño kettle corn at 4:45am? Nowhere, which is why we could be found eating ourselves sick after a Friday night out quite literally in Maxine s case, who was putting in some serious face-time with the porcelain throne the next morning.
While Max was choking up some curiously cinnamony stomach bile, Merce and I went down to the casino to piss away some of our holiday money. Despite elaborate fantasies wellesley inn suites of winning half a million bucks on the 25c machines, I m not much of a gambler. We were too big a pair of pussies to sit down at the proper tables and play craps or roulette so we just spent our quarters on the slot machines, which require all the brainpower of a lobotomised tomato. I always thought a small amount of strategy might be required to hold the reels at certain points, but that isn t the case at all. You just sit there waiting for your arse to seize up and your right arm to either get a repetitive strain injury wellesley inn suites or beef up disproportionately like those crazy-dedicated world arm-wrestling champions. In fact, most of the machines don t even require you to physically pull the lever yourself any more, which means even a quadriplegic with a short stick and a good set of teeth could play if he wanted to.
At least I was getting my money s worth in free drinks. The casinos are staffed with scantily-clad waitresses who wander around serving players complimentary beverages to keep them gambling, even on the small stakes machines. I looked around while I waited for Merce s infuriating winning streak to ebb. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday and the casino was a hotchpotch of dead-eyed gaming veterans mechanically pulling their levers, middle-aged Californian weekenders wellesley inn suites and young men with horrible shirts and horrible wellesley inn suites moustaches already betting recklessly on the blackjack tables. Occasionally you d hear a whooping from the depths of the casino. No hardcore gamblers yet though, they seemed wellesley inn suites to come out at night. Not that you can tell when it s night-time, the casinos are eerily wellesley inn suites time-less. They keep them bright and windowless so you can t tell how many hours you ve whiled away in their pits. I wished I d brought a watch.
Later that evening I came up from the frozen margarita stand that was exactly 32 paces and a 16 second lift ride from my side of the bed. A man of the overenthusiastic and horribly moustachioed variety was lying prone in front of our door, emitting a faint whiff of weed and wee. I stepped over him.
On Sunday we hired a car and drove to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon,  nearly 300 miles from the faux skyscrapers and pint-sized Statue of Liberty of our hotel. wellesley inn suites In America, where the fuzz are pretty hot on speeding and the average limit is a soul-destroying 60mph, even on the big flat roads, wellesley inn suites this was a ten hour round trip. And we were hopelessly inexperienced driving an automatic car on the wrong side of the road, trying our best to adhere to a bevy of strange and un-signposted rules about right turns and school buses and fuck knows what else. We also knew from the telly that the breaking of any of these rules may well lead to swift retribution from an overweight and heavily armed member of the highway patrol, possibly by way of a sharp rap to the head with the butt of a handgun. This was of particular concern to Merce, who despite being able to reliably untangle the linguistic clusterfuck of the Geordie dialect wellesley inn suites after just three years at the University of Newcastle, was completely unable to comprehend the American accent after a lifetime of Hollywood movies and  Friends wellesley inn suites .
Although we managed the trip without any speeding tickets or police brutality, the journey was a long and boring one. America is vast and relatively sparsely populated, so its roads are very long and very straight. Occasionally we d see a billboard or lone trailer, presumably the home of some mutant cannibal of the desert, but overall the drive was just really dull. Fuck this road trip lark, you really wellesley inn suites haven t known proper boredom until you ve sat staring at miles and miles of sweet FA for five hours at a time.  It ll be worth it though, I thought to myself as I fed Maxine cheesy wotsits wellesley inn suites the size of a man s thumb as she drove. The Grand Canyon was something I d always wanted to see, one of the greatest wonders of the natural world. Carved wellesley inn suites into solid rock over two billion years by the untamed might of the Colorado River, wellesley inn suites the Canyon is testament to the awesome force of Mother Nature, manifested as a magnificent 277-mile vista of rugged landscape for us mere mortals to enjoy. It has five stars of Trip Advisor. I was expecting to be awed and inspired, captivated even, by this unique and beautiful natural phenomenon. It wasn t a road trip; it was a pilgrimage.
It s a strange thing, he said chewily. It s awlmost awlways clear, but today the fog s gorn an filled wellesley inn suites it righ up. It were clear yest rday, it were clear the day afore yest rday, an it s prob bly gonna be clear again t mor-
The next day, when we d dealt with our disappointment and unanimously agreed that Mother Nature was in fact a sour-faced, slack-twatted old whore, we decided wellesley inn suites to go to a breakfast buffet. Now, you can find good old-fashioned, gut-swelling, wellesley inn suites belt-loosening American food anywhere in the country, but Vegas in particular wellesley inn suites is famous for its buffets. wellesley inn suites All you can eat and that s a challenge, not a figure of speech is big business in Sin City, and God knows I can t be trusted anywhere that invites diners to eat unlimited syrup, bacon, pancakes and cheesecake until they might conceivably pop. That very British determination to get one s money s-worth wellesley inn suites combined with our innate aversion to waste is a powerful and dangerous mix. And at a Vegas buffet, where a steady stream of staff remove and replace food to ensure a constant supply of hot, fresh options for fickle tourists, pretty much everything is potential wellesley inn suites waste.
Well, it was a disaster. Even with a careful strategy, a compulsory fruit course and super-human restraint we felt sick for the rest of the day. On the way out we passed wellesley inn suites a couple of homeless people sleeping rough on the walkways. wellesley inn suites The Southern-fried chicken with maple syrup for breakfast may not have been my brightest idea, but passing the people with cardboard signs asking for food after a morning s worship at one of these great temples of gluttony was even more nauseating. I felt like an arsehole, and the gurgling signs coming from my stomach as it tried to process all the shit I d just thrown down it was not helping matters. Perhaps it was karma.
wellesley inn suites You know what though? We didn t eat for a full day after that breakfast, but there are some people who will pig out at them for every meal. There is actually a ticket you can buy called the Buffet of Buffets , where for $60 you can eat yourself wellesley inn suites into a stupor at restaurants across the Strip over a 24-hour period. And it s very popular. There are people out there who like to eat all they can three or more! times a day. It blows my fucking mind.
But overall, Vegas is amazing. You d die there eventually if you stayed too long: of sleep deprivation, diabetes, liver poisoning, bankruptcy wellesley inn suites or possibly venereal disease, but for a few days the Strip s toxic wonderland is a fabulous diversion from tedious wellesley inn suites things like work and council tax; a glittering, fantastic holiday from real.
Not going to lie, when I saw the word count I did w