A Las Vegas, Nevada Review.

I personally just returned from a full week's Thanksgiving vacation in Las Vegas, Nevada. The gambling, tourist, strip mecca of the United States of America.

According to a fifteen-year plus Las Vegas resident and my own true blood cousin, she described the city as "half-price" California. Geographically and climate-wise, I would agree with her.  During my fall visit, the outside weather in Vegas was very sunny, crisp, and welcoming. For a desert land, the city averages just 4 inches of rain per year, it was splendid. The daily temperatures ranged from a low in the Fahrenheit '40s to a high in the '60s.

My visiting air mattress and futon bed residence for the week was in the northwest Las Vegas suburbs. I spent pretty much an entire week living with a kind and nurturing family in suburbia. This suburbia to its credit was very clean, flat, simple to navigate and calm. Las Vegas's Suburbia is perhaps the same as any other clean suburb in America with families, gated communities, nationwide known builder subdivisions, and expansive retail shopping centers. The retail shopping centers have your usual Suburbia stores of Starbucks, Chipotle, a Grocery Store, Unique Restaurants, Nail Salon, Dentist office and an occasional Bar. You get it.

The coolest, and nature inducing element of our location was being within walking distance to the Mountains and natural Nevada terrain. The City of Las Vegas sits in a valley, below surrounding mountains. Las Vegas is not quite California and not quite Arizona. The adjacent mountains were fun to explore, bike, and hike upon. The terrain included no grass, shrubs, plenty of cactus, and some bouncy jackrabbits hopping around. The rocky land was enjoyable to loom around. The air was very dry. I loved that aspect. Almost zero humidity! Excellent. Supposedly Las Vegas residents are supposed to buy moisturizing lotion for their skin, to combat the area's superbly airy and dry climate. Oy my actual birthday, my girlfriend and I rented bicycles from Cloud of Goods, that were personally delivered and picked up from our residence. The journey filled bike ride was fun, as we navigated both the rocky natural terrain and recently paved blacktop bike path. We rode southwest to a hiking area called, Buckskin Cliff Shadows. It was an awesome, sunny and healthy afternoon. Watch out Bear Grylls, we're on your tail.

As the weekend arrived, my girlfriend and I booked a hotel room at the New York, New York hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The residents simply call it, "The STRIP." The STRIP is a real estate developer's mecca. Massively tall and enormous hotels stacked tightly upon the same walking pedestrian crowded street. The hotel compounds are epically tall and huge! We personally got to tour, the MGM Grand, the Cosmopolitan, The Wynn, The Paris Hotel, The Venetian, the Encore, and Ceasar's Palace. Each hotel compound contains numerous floors of gambling areas.  Unfortunately, the inside gambling areas are still cigarette smoke friendly, (gross). At one point in the evening, we made a pit stop at a Restaurant called Steak, branded by celebrity English chef Gordon Ramsay. We simply had beers, appetizers, and cocktails. The menu was expensive. The entire strip is littered with Gordon Ramsay branded tourist eateries. The visitors that troll Las Vegas are a mixed bag of Americans and Europeans. They range diversely from the schlubby looking overweight person to the fashionable and elegantly dressed beautiful urbanite.  Gone from my memory of the strip were the Buffet food offerings and Frank Sinatra impersonating Lounge Singers. The visitors run the gamut of humanity. For a non-gambler like me, it limits the fun activities to booze, and people watching. The hotel compounds also possess interior CLUB and SHOW venues. On this specific trip, we did NOT get to experience either the CLUB or SHOW aspect of Las Vegas. Maybe Next time, we'll get tickets to the Beatles Cirq de Soleil or Rod Stewart Concert residency.

Overall, I would grade the city and areas of Las Vegas as a sturdy B Plus! The STRIP is an anomaly in the United States and rightfully deserves to be visited, seen, experienced, and enjoyed. The Strip is a developer's wet dream located in a desert oasis. The outlying suburban lands of Las Vegas are similar to suburbia in the remainder of America. The suburbia is clean, family friendly and pleasantly boring. Las Vegas's true allure resonates as a gambler's city.