I’m spending the last two weeks of the millennium* in America’s two remaining hotbeds of sin:
–I’m going to Vegas for a few days right before Christmas, thanks to an airfare voucher that was about to expire and $20/night rooms at the Barbary Coast. Three days of colon-defying buffets, complimentary gin and tonics, and card counting (although not at the BC; they’re historically paranoid and I’d hate to get barred where I’m staying).
–Then after a few days with the fam over Christmas, it’s off to the Big Easy for four days. We can’t decide if the French Quarter is going to be more or less crazy than during Mardi Gras, or about the same. Either way, I think the French Quarter is as cool a place to end the 1900’s as any.
What can I say? It’s been a rough semester. When a med student gets a couple of weeks off, he’s wise not to waste them. All I know is, should the world end on 01-01-00, I’m going to have a lot of 'splaining to do.
I mostly just wanted to gloat, to see if anyone had any suggestions for either of my destinations (I’m pretty familiar with Vegas, but less so with New Orleans), and see if anyone else had any big plans coming up.
Doctor J: I have one suggestion for you about Vegas hotels: make sure that long distance phone calls, if you plan to make any while there, are sensibly priced. My brother went to a certain unnamed hotel there and made a couple of long distance phone calls. The hotel billed him something like $400 for them. Needless to say, he was mad at them, but they made him pay. If they don’t soak you on the price of the room or the chance that you’ll gamble all your money away, they’ll try to find other ways.
Oh, there’ll be a party in the Quarter for New Year’s, but Fat Tuesday proportions? Not likely.
That being said, remember, that this year’s Sugar Bowl is the national championship. Lot’s of Floridians and VaTechers will be tooling around the city by that time.
I think Vegas lost its “hotbed of sin” status when it decided to become a family vacation spot. Now it’s more like a Disneyland where you can spend all your money without the burden of buying souvenirs.
I have heard however that there is the beginning of a backlash. The business owners are discovering that while they are drawing much larger crowds to Vegas, they’re not making proportionate profits. Amazingly enough, it turns out that married couples with children don’t have as much disposable income as single men. Who would have suspected? Some casino operators are looking back nostagically on the Rat Pack era, when all you needed to draw a crowd was topless cocktail waitresses and Tony Bennett.
Here’s one Hokie that’ll be in the Big Easy for New Year’s and the Sugar Bowl.
I went there a few years ago, the other time when Tech was in the Sugar Bowl–there was, of course, a lot of partying going on for New Year’s then. I’ve never been to Mardi Gras, so I can’t compare the two first hand, but I’ve asked around, and most have said that the Mardi Gras celebration is much bigger.
Don’t know how the Quarter will be in the winter but this past spring it was a blast. Check out the Bourbon Street Blues Club-they had a great cover band, lots of dancing, drinks were reasonably priced (compared with the rest of the quarter). Take the trolley to the Garden District and check out some of the houses; they are amazingly huge and I can’t believe people can afford to live in them.
That’s the streetcar thank you very much. Trolleys are in San Francisco. What’s the difference (I’m often asked)? Nothing. It’s just what we prefer to call 'em.
Don’t forget there’s still a lot of ‘old money’ in New Orleans. Some of those Garden District mansions are still in the hands of the families that built them.
Nemo–I think that the “bring your kids to Vegas!” fad is thankfully passing. The new fad (thanks to Steve Wynn) is upscale, as evidenced by the newest hotels–Bellagio, Paris, Mandalay Bay–and the success of the Cirque du Soleil shows and the expensive restaurants. It used to be that the best meal in Vegas was probably a $2.99 buffet, but there are now 7 master sommeliers (out of 35 or so in the world) employed on the Strip.
Maybe it will come full circle, and Vegas will return to its intended purpose–America’s premier locale for drinking, gambling, and getting laid. (Since the GF is staying at home, I guess I’ll take 2 out of 3. )
I posted this to the other “Vegas” thread, but what the heck. For at least one dinner in Vegas, break yourself away from the buffets and treat yourself to something special. Delmonico’s, at the Venetian, was the best steakhouse I’ve been to outside of a “steak town” like NY or Chicago. And if you’re really going for debauchery, you certainly want to skip all that foo-foo French stuff and go for a big-ol’ steak!
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