July 2008 Trip to Las Vegas

Due to the ERSA 2008 conference, I paid a short visit to Las Vegas from July 14 to 17.

I was supposed to fly on Sunday (13th) night from National Airport (DCA), however, the flight was cancelled due to the weather. At that moment, I have spent one hour waiting at the airport.
However, it was good for me actually since the new leather shoes were hurting my feet.
After I got back to the campus, I made a phone call to my wife and let her pick me up. Nevertheless, there was a miscommunication about the exact location. So, I waited at the the Vernon shuttle stop on H street and she expected to meet me in front of Tompkins Hall on 23rd street. Anyway, I finally found the car because she was blowing the horn.

The next day, the flight successfully departed from DCA with one hour delay. After a 4 and half hour flight, I arrived at Las Vegas. The first thing I had to do was to find my luggage, which I checked in Sunday night and arrived at Las Vegas with the first flight on Monday morning. It took me another 45 minutes to find it.

Then the bad thing happened. The taxi driver started playing scam on me. Instead of using the shorted route, he used the unnecessary I-15 and made a big circle. The price on the meter was 22, which I was pretty suspicious since one local told me it would cost around 12 dollars. I paid full without tip because I was overcharged already.

After checking into the room, I prepared for the presentation for a while before go to sleep. The presentation on Tuesday went quite well.

On Wednesday I decided to walk through the city. The Las Vegas Strip is not quite long and there are around 20 mega resorts and casinos standing along the Las Vegas Blvd South. I had no interest to the casinos and they look pretty much same to me. On the map, there is a downtown area and I decided to pay a visit as well. Therefore, I decided to keep walking after I passed the Sahara casino. Then I entered the original city before the development of the Stip. All of a sudden, you could not find any people on the street and feel like walking in a ghost city. Occasionally, you may encounter some homeless. Finally, I reached the downtown and saw a lot of tourists again. However, they all crowded in the same block. I took the bus, the deduce, as the most tourists did and back to the strip.

The next day, I decided to walk back to the airport since it is not very far. After the lunch at a Chinese buffet near the hotel, Monte Carlo, I started walking with my bag and luggage. Again, there is no people after one block away from the strip. Since it is hot and dry at Las Vegas, there is almost no tree and grass over there. It took me more than one hour to reach the airport.

At last, I get one the plane at mid night and head back home. I don't like the city at all.