This week's
blog is up a little late, courtesy of my son – read on to find out why. For the
same reason the post differs from the usual historical fare and is about Las
Vegas (and Los Angeles)
 |
| Los Angeles and Las Vegas - hey ho! |
But first, to
understand the background to this post. My son is studying fine art and won a
travel prize, with a proposal to visit Nevada to draw and paint the rocks
(small scale rocks, rather than large scale landscape…but that’s another
story). The plan was for him and a friend to fly to Las Vegas and drive out
into the desert in an RV.
He's been
excited about visiting Las Vegas for weeks, and yesterday, with one more sleep
to go he was double-checking arrangements. But…oh no…disaster!
 |
| Las Vegas |
It turns out
he'd booked to pick up and drop off the RV from Los Angeles – NOT Las Vegas!
The problem is that he's dyslexic and spotting the "L" he felt
confident he'd got the right place and went ahead and booked. Aged 21, and no
longer living at home, we trusted him to make the arrangements. Oh dear.
Long story
short we had a hell of a 24 hours but fingers crossed, with parental
intervention things are back to Plan A. I took him and his friend to Heathrow
this morning – so it's now out of my hands. Anyhow, I decided to use this as an
excuse to find some Las Vegas trivia. I'd love to hear any experiences you have
of Vegas, so do chip in and comment.
 |
| Los Angeles |
Las Vegas Trivia
Las Vegas means "The Meadows" in Spanish (ironically named I presume, given the
desert setting.)
Vegas Vic –
the huge neon cowboy standing over Fremont Street, is the world's largest
mechanical neon sign. But in a town with 15,000 miles of neon tubing, what do
you expect?
Vegas has 30
million (plus 2) visitors a year, and the native population is around 1.7
million.
 |
| An example of my son's artwork. You can see now, why he wants to paint the desert! |
The average
length of stay in Vegas is 3.7 days (or around 90 minutes if you are my son,
who has to catch a bus from the airport to Los Angeles).
 |
| Ben "Bugsy" Siegal |
What Do
Las Vegas and Los Angeles have in Common?
They both
begin with the letter "L".
Also,
gangster Ben "Bugsy" Siegal founded the Flamingo hotel, Vegas in 1946
using mob moneny. He named the Flamingo Hotel (where my son stays on his final
night) after the long legs of his showgirl girlfriend. However, Bugsy died in
Los Angeles, shot dead whilst reading a newspaper in Los Angeles – probably because
he skimmed mob money.
So there we
have it. A tale of two cities and a dyslexic artist. Ho hum.
.jpg)
