- The hotel rooms are all enormous – the biggest in Las Vegas was as a similar size to our lounge in Johnsonville and comfortably fitted a king size bed with heaps of room to spare. The bathrooms are large with full sized mirrors, lovely tiled work (that includes the public loos – which had automated soap, water, paper dispensers and automatic flushes - which occasionally pre-empted the move off the toilet seat). When we booked our hotel we thought it was rather large at 1000 rooms, only to find some others had up to 4500 rooms. Many of the hotels had encouraged non-residents with amusement areas (roller coasters and other thrilling rides if you like that sort of thing) and of course huge casinos.
- Wide roads (5 lanes in and out of Los Angeles, and usually 3 lanes each way within the city). There is still heaps of congestion and from LA to Las Vegas it took us 6.5 hours for a 4.5 hour trip on the return. Harry enjoyed looking at the cars – many of the Japanese brands are designed and built for the American market eg. Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Nissan ie some models are only available in America. There are SUV’s and stretch......ed limos everywhere. Incredible traffic noise that goes on well into the night – it actually never stops. The Las Vegas Strip was continually congested with ‘cruisers’ having no where to go but up and down the Strip - it took the bus 1.5 hours to travel 4 miles and we were so tired we didn’t get out and walk!! We did make plans for the Strip (getting into urban design now) get rid of the cars, pedestrianise one side of the street and make the other into cafes. There might be some debate about this plan with the extremes of temperatures and the huge advertising campaigns along the roadside but we could turn this city into a real outdoor experience.
- The land – there is a surprisingly wide variety of landscapes within a shortish drive (well a few hundred miles), from the beaches of LA, to the snow covered San Bernadino mountains, to the Mohave Desert (fun for the bus driver in a sand storm), to the 4000 foot high pinnacles of the Grand Canyon.
- The service industry is big on smiles and helpfulness (usually). It seems that most porters (cleaners), bell boys (luggage carriers), waiters and waitresses are of the immigrant and lower socio-economic groups so we willingly gave them tips for a job well done – we were less inclined to give others that expected a 12.5% tip for service without a smile. We had a Japanese tour guide at the canyon and when he described flying as ‘whoosh whoosh’ and pretended to be a plane we couldn’t help notice there were no Japanese there to laugh.
- Food – big on portions. Surprisingly nice, reasonably well priced, wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables, and a wide range of cooked foods reflecting the Italian, Mexican and Spanish influence (apparently LA was originally settled by the Mexicans under Spanish rule). There appears to be a big obesity problem if the subset of the population we saw in our 4 days was anything to go by. Perhaps 10% of the population are very very BIG – there were a number in wheel chairs that with a better diet and exercise might not need them. So, we thought about diet a bit - at our first hotel there was not a lot of choice for breakfast and the toaster was very slow creating a long queue so we settled for the national breakfast of muffins and bagels. There is also a huge range of snack foods and though I didn’t try it roasted and salted pumpkin and sunflower seeds (we know how much fat is in those don’t we). We laughed when we first saw the queuing ranks at Las Vegas restaurants and signs that said ‘30 minute wait from here’. We came back later to see the ranks full of hungry gamblers. I did like the way they brought us tea with honey and lemon.
- Big on throwaway – where we would often expect china and cutlery there was paper, plastic or polystyrene cups and plastic knives and forks and stirrers.
- Big on lights – real glitzy though that isn’t really surprising in Las Vegas and Disneyland – lots of well lit advertising boards, water features and fireworks.
However not necessarily big on safety. No seat belts in buses (though required in other states), and you can still use cell phones in cars like most other countries (some states are now just beginning to legislate for ‘no texting’ while driving). We spent a day in Disneyland – a first for me but not Harry. Harry did the roller coaster ride things – some of which were around way back and some new (eg Indiana Jones Adventure, Big Thunder Railway, Splash Mountain, Matterhorn Bobsleds), and he also joined me for some of the more sedate things like the Star Wars Star Tours simulator ride, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, a ride on the Mark Twain paddle steamer. I did the Carousel Round About and Winnie the Pooh ride all by myself (could have done with borrowing a littley for a few hours). It wasn’t a busy day – people wise - but there were still queues and Harry waited up to 30 minutes for some rides and booked a time later on in the day for others. They seem to cater for the disabled well as they could go on all the rides - the car is taken to a siding while the disabled person transfers to it so this doesn’t hold up the proceedings for everyone else. 
We were both quite impressed with this large sprawling city although we were there on days of low pollution, not in the peak season, and visited the greener, cleaner and more affluent parts on our half day tour. The tour took us to Venice beach (beautiful beach where Bay Watch was filmed – but the retail areas weren’t the cafe style promenade we would have expected but were mainly small stands with poor paintings, tattoo artists, cheap jewellery, unappetising takeaway food etc). The running of the place is quite complicated as there are a number of cities that make up LA including Beverley Hills and Hollywood, and each has its own council management, mayor and police force (3 different constabularies in a 5 mile radius) and regulations eg the height limit in LA is 13 stories but lower in other parts. Where the road needs widening the general theme was to remove the trees but not so much in Hollywood and the other areas we visited. We walked the Street of Fame, saw the feet and hand prints of famous artists such as Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Doris Day, Donald Duck, John Wayne, Kevin Costner, R2D2, C3PO, Arnold Schwarzenegger. We realised as we quickly wandered past the Chinese theatre and Kodak Theatre (where the Oscars are held) that although we enjoyed a good movie we really weren’t interested in what hotel stars had affairs and met each other – but we did enjoy seeing the hotel that Pretty Women was filmed in. We did see the HOLLYWOOD sign though which was originally put up in 1923 to promote a housing subdivision for Hollywood land. We also wandered down Rodeo Drive (big retail names like Versace, Gucci) and the Farmers Market – both very relaxing and uncrowded shopping centres where we could have, if we had had time, eat a leisurely lunch in the sun but couldn’t afford to buy any clothes.
We did have some fun getting to Las Vegas (yeah right!!). We are convinced most Americans don’t walk because the 10 minutes we were told it would take us to walk to the bus terminal turned out to be a 60 minute nightmare. Firstly, we were directed down a 3 lane highway with no footpath and the hour we gave ourselves wasn’t enough. We couldn’t find the bus station anywhere, and none of the locals could help (finally we sweatily stumbled into a motel office where the attendant knew his surroundings) – just go through the car park – well we ran through it and out the other side with no success. A few wrong turns later we saw the bus driver close the door and begin to pull out. He kindly stopped as Harry hammered on the door and after apologising for being late and recovering from the work-out we enjoyed the rest of the trip (I became rather paranoid though about being early for the rest of the trip). I have decided we were jet lagged as not only did we have that near-miss, I left my camera on the bus (which they thankfully found) and we didn’t pay for the trip as we didn’t have time to go to the office (they got us on the way back). You know Harry and I have travelled quite a bit in the last couple of years, but for the first time we managed to lose each other - and we were only going through the hotel to the lobby. The casino area is massive, loud and darkly lit and it felt like about 1 km from the door to the lobby through crowds and up escalators. We did a bit of walking that day - about 2 km to the bus station – another 2 to the hotel and about 4 to the outlet shops (they didn’t look too far away from the window of our 18th story hotel room but looks can be deceptive). The next day we floated down the Colorado River that flowed through the Black Rock Canyon, down river from Lake Mead (rather large man-made lake as the shoreline stretches over 550 miles) and through the Hoover Dam. We started from the base of the dam - 12 of us on the boat – no need for life jackets if we were over 13 – it wasn’t a worry as there wasn’t even a grade 1 rapid. The Hoover Dam was built during the depression years mainly to manage floods, reduce silt, provide water and power. The greenhouse effect means that the lake is now low – about 100 feet below what it was 8 years ago – and we clearly could see the calcium mark made by the once higher levels. From an economic perspective the dam was a business success - built 2 years earlier than planned and under budget. Not surprising really when the men worked 3 shifts around the clock and had 2 days off – Christmas and Independence Day. Boulder City was built to house the workers (I think Muldoon modelled his 'big think' policies on this) – it is in the middle of the desert – when the dam was completed workers could buy their houses for $1. Since then prices have somewhat sky rocketed and now they are building a new bridge to reduce the congestion on the road across the bridge. 96 people lost lives during construction and I suspect that it was lucky there were no more when you saw them abseiling down cliffs to loosen rocks (on film), walking along wooden planks precariously placed along cliffs to take water levels. There was some lovely wild life, cactuses some in flower, the Indian lettuce – Dodder – edible but a pest like old mans beard, birdlife (coots, ducks and vultures) and fish (carp, rainbow trout and striped bass – the latter only being in the lake until 1983 when they escaped into the river during a period of high water flow) and the big horned sheep (horns can weigh up to 35 pounds – more than the sheep apparently). The river now rarely reaches the sea, has only one town (Willow Beach) with a population of 7 so low on pollution. Above the dam it is muddy due to the silt, but below the dam beautiful and clear. We stopped at some hot water streams and falls - water 1000 years old as it falls to the molten rock in the centre and then squirts from the fissures. Great day, we thought as we sat in the sun getting a tad burnt and eating our lunch from a souvenir yellow chilly bag. Before we went ‘floating’ we had to sign a piece of paper acknowledging that the Federal government told us that there is a risk associated with this activity including ‘slipping, tripping, falling, exposure to heat, exposure to cold water, encounters with poisonous wild life and vegetation, which could puncture the skin, falling rocks and debris...’ Did they really want us to spend our tourist dollar? There is a lot of this kind of thing, even at our hotel they warned us that you could smoke outside and so the hotel contained chemicals dangerous to our health. I guess all these warnings are designed to stop us ‘sueing’. 
The next day was Grand Canyon Day. We took a flight out to the Canyon (we were allocated seats for the ‘Physically Challenged People’), and took a bus trip to Eagle point and Guano Point where we stood looking down at 4000 feet of colourful canyon (there were no fences so I didn’t get too close and kept saying to Harry ‘don’t let Caramello get to close to the edge’). The natural environment has been well protected as you can only visit the site by bus, plane or helicopter. So, time for our helicopter ride. After weighing us all and our luggage I got a stamp on my hand ‘FRONT SEAT’ which I insensitively waved in front of Harry quite a bit during the rest of the day – sometimes it pays to be small. We had a 7 minute flight down to the river 4000 feet below, a ride on a boat up the river (peaceful and quiet) and then another helicopter ride to the top before flying back to Las Vegas in the 19 seater. What a day (Harry has a new aeroplane to add to his list of ‘travelled in’ a Dornier 228 and also saw his first deridgeable (its an airship). 
I think we enjoyed Las Vegas more by day – though others enthusiastically embraced the shows (girls, ice skating, singers, comedians), the lights and casinos. We enjoyed wandering around the hotels and were particularly struck by two:
- New York New York – the hotel was just like the New York skyline – it looked like lot of buildings but was one hotel and inside was a small scale New York - buildings balconies, little windows, pavements etc.
- Bellagio where Oceans 11 was filmed. Harry did the George Clooney thing and got his photo taken by me outside the hotel. Inside was a wonderful flower garden (rare as most of the city is covered in rock – too dry for anything else).
Other hotels were modelled on Venice (with St Marco Square and Bridge of Sighs), Treasure Island, Caesars Place, New Orleans etc but these were mainly just casinos and large areas to watch horse racing and sports.
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