Mattias in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is truly fabulous. There cannot be another place on earth like this and everyone should go here at least once. Las Vegas has a population of about a million, most of who are employed in the tourism sector, serving the 42 million tourists (and increasing) who come to Las Vegas each year.

The only reason Las Vegas exists is that the place happened to be half way between Salt Lake City and San Bernardino, where a fort was once built as a stopover on the “mormon corridor”. The city was established only 100 years ago by residents in the Las Vegas Valley. At that time, the valley had a total population of 30 people. Then you could become a major of the city with only 15 votes.

Another interesting fact about Las Vegas is that it gets around 10 cm of rain each year. This is not even enough to keep grass alive so every tree, every grass field, every park etc in the city is generously watered every day.

Las Vegas is famous for “The Strip”, which is the entertainment street where all the fancy hotels and casinos are located. There is an incredible amount of money involved here and the hotels spend absurd monies on design, decoration, luxury, size etc, all to attract the richest and fanciest customers. All hotels do of course have in-house casinos, at least 10 restaurants, numerous bars, cafes, shops, health spas and so on.

At only one intersection, where the hotels New York New York, Tropicana and Excalibur are located, there are more hotel rooms than in the whole city of San Francisco. Only the hotel New York New York can host 9000 guests, served by 6000 employees.

So what did I do in Vegas then? Except from walking around in the fancy hotels, enjoying the Las Vegas Strip, visiting casinos and admiring all the luxury everywhere, there are mainly two things I’m proud over;

1) At the hotel Caesar’s Palace, I visited a poker room. In poker rooms, the cheapest tables are normally at the entrance and the further in you walk, the higher are the stakes. In a dark room at the back of the hall, they were playing stakes of ¼ million dollar per person and at the table sat Gus Hansen and Barry Greenstein, two of the world’s greatest poker stars. Particularly Gus Hansen is big. We were able to stand at the door and watch for a while before the staff told us to get out of there if we were not going to play.

2) In Vegas, you normally lose your money but I managed to beat the casinos of a total of $30 (not too much I know but it’s the principle of winning). I was particularly successful on the Roulette.

The hotel "Luxor", built like a massive pyramid

The hotel "New York New York", imitating famous sky-scrapers on Manhattan

The hotel "Paris" claims that "everything is sexier in Paris".

A street inside "Paris"