Las Vegas was once part of Mexico before America claimed it in the America-Mexico war. Vegas bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World and is famous for the number of casino resorts and associated entertainment. However it is a growing retirement and family city and is the 28th most populous city in the United States with an estimated population 558,383, similar to Glasgow. Outdoor lighting displays are everywhere on the Las Vegas Strip and are seen elsewhere in the city as well. One light at the top of the Luxor Hotel can actually be seen from outer space!
The legalisation of gambling in 1931 led to the advent of the casino-hotels, for which Las Vegas is famous. Major development occurred in the 1940s. The success of the city's early casino businesses was owed to American organized crime. Most of the original large casinos were managed or at least funded under mob figures Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Meyer Lansky or other mob figures at this time. The 60's brought about a change as many wealthy businessmen and corporations bought up some of the hotels and the federal government managed to run out the mobsters.
As we arrived during the week we could pick up some cheap deals and we managed to get a massive Queen room in the Stratosphere hotel for £20 per night! The Strosphere is a huge tower, which is the main attraction at 1,149 feet (350 m), the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States and the second tallest in the Western Hemisphere, surpassed only by the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario. The hotel is a separate building with 24 stories, 2,427 rooms and an 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) casino. The hotel also features 3 rides at the top of the tower but as they cost almost as much as the room we decided to give them a miss. The standard of the room was a million times better than our usual hostels or the van we lived in for 5 months!
The hotel was located at the North end of the strip which is a 3.8 mile (6km) stretch of hotels. Nineteen of the world's 25 largest hotels by room count are on the strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms. Some of the hotels have fantastic free displays that they put on each night. We managed to catch most of them and got some videos of the Bellagio hotel which you can see here and here as well as the Mirage which you can see here.
Some of the other hotels such as New York New York, the Luxor, the Venetian, Ceasars palace and Treasure Island were all built designed on their theme which was great to see.
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