On our last full day in Vegas, Vegas won, and Vegas won big time. And no, I am not talking about the gambling, I am talking about sleep. Or perhaps, jet lag. After a bit of a boozy but not toooo late night on Saturday, I woke up on Sunday around 8am, and with a bit of a headache and a woozy stomach, popped an electrolyte and some painkillers, and went back to bed for what I was hoping would be an hour or so. Dave barely stirred.
Next thing I know, I groggily look over at the clock and holy guacamole, its 4:30pm in the afternoon!? I know, right.. What the?! How did that happen!? I genuinely thought my phone had reverted back to Perth time for some strange unbeknownst reason and went into my iphone settings to change it back, but nope, still on US time… so yes, Dave and literally slept away our last full day in Vegas!
Luckily we did not have a lot planned – our main goal was to venture north of the Strip to what is commonly referred to as “Old Vegas”, or “Fremont Street”. We bought bus tickets, hopped on the northbound SDX bus and within half an hour had arrived at the glittering hot mess that is Fremont Street.
Fremont Street dates back to when Vegas was founded, and by the 1920’s was a hotbed of gambling (illegally, or legally, same difference!). It was the first paved street in Las Vegas and also had the first traffic lights, so it was quite literally the central gambling destination in the town, and boy, does it have the neon lights to prove it!
Both still feeling abit dopey from our epic 18 hour sleep (yes, I think we can safely say this was jet lag finally catching up with us), we were quite happy to wander the Fremont Street Experience (FSE) without too much of a care.
The FSE is basically a pedestrianised mall in the downtown Las Vegas area where there are some of the original restaurants, bars and casinos that used to attract all the punters before the Strip came into its own. There are gogo dancers dancing on bar tables, buskers working their magic and basically loads of people having a really god time. It is probably a lot more family friendly than the Strip as its more lit up and has a more old fashioned vibe.
Fremont Street Experience
The whole mall is literally full of casinos, and neon lights. We arrived when it was still daytime but within a half hour or so, the sun had gone down and the lights really came out to play.
Neon lights everywhere!
We did however, manage to find a Tony Roma’s and both of us almost jumped out of our skin with excitement – something about fresh meat on a hangover and the world’s longest sleep seemed to jointly appeal to us. Go figure. Anyhoo, we each got a full rack of ribs, polished them off and had some of our energy back.
Tony Roma’s Ribs
Don’t mind the bibs (or my very tired, kind of wonky smile), I had an excuse – not getting my white top stained with rib sauce on day 4 😉 Not sure what Dave’s excuse was hahah.
One of the cool parts about FSE is that the entire mall is covered by a canopy that displays a light show every hour on the hour – the whole thing is choreographed and you would not believe how awesome it is!
Everyone stops what they are doing, all the other neon lights dim, and for 10 minutes, everyone stands gazing up at the ceiling enthralled by the lights and music. Pretty cool. You can get an idea of this in some of the pics below.
Fremont Street Experience LightShow
Fremont Street basically focuses its ‘sell’ around four things – gambling, meat, booze and girls. In fact, the below sign for the Oscars Hotel nicely epitomises this with its “Beef. Booze. Broods” sign out the front – we found this hilarious, but where was the “betting”?!
Despite having slept so much, by 10pm we were both pretty shattered and given we had watched an Elvis Impersonator as well as your more typical buskers, I was pretty chuffed to call it a very short, but ultimately very successful day / night in Vegas. Tomorrow, we are off to Mexico City, which will bring with it a whole new challenge – speaking Spanish! Will keep you posted on how we go!