Las Vegas

We returned to Mr Sy’s to discover that we had missed our dinner, so as it was after midnight we got coupons for steak and eggs breakfast. Picked up our photographs from the girl at the booth – nice souvenir. We went back to the car so that Shôn and I could take some pictures of the neon signs. A film crew was working in the next road filming a scene from a series which will apparently replace Colombo. There was an awful lot of messing around for a half minute scene. Back at Mr Sy’s we got our steak and eggs breakfast; steak, scrambled eggs, saute potatoes, toast and coffee – all free!

We still hadn’t found the Golden Nugget, something I’ve seen so many times on TV. We took the car down the Strip and sure enough, there it was. This end of the road was so brightly-lit it was like daylight, and walking under the signs you could feel the heat from the bulbs on the top of your head. By this time (2-3am) things were a lot quieter which surprised me. I thought Las Vegas would have been alive all night long.

After visiting the Golden Nugget we went to Lady Luck casino where we obtained another Fun Book. The girl asked us for ID there (you have to be 21 even to play the fruit machines). I had two nickels left which I decided to put to good use. Just as a change girl was passing I put one in a machine and my ploy worked! “Would you like a free drink, sir?” I got a glass of beer for a nickel! A bit later I changed $3 into quarters to make it more realistic. I sat at the pontoon machine and put one in every time she came round, and got a couple more free drinks. John tried to use the free three-minute phone call offer to phone the nurses in Cleveland but there was no reply. By this time we were all pretty shattered, but we had a free breakfast voucher so we went to the cafeteria part and got bacon, eggs, toast and coffee – not bad tasting either.

Drove back to the campsite. Met a guy in the restroom who had been up all night playing blackjack and had won $80.