Vegas, A Family Unfriendly City (for Now)

While most of our stay at Vegas was pleasant, there were a few annoying attributes about the city that was quite disturbing:

1. Smokers die hard — literally. Coming from a relatively smoke-free state like California to the Sin City is like I died and fell to smoking hell (no puns intended). There were free second hand smokes on every square inch of the Las Vegas Blvd.

2. Liquor anyone? — Beer bottles were everywhere on Las Vegas Blvd, from one end of the strip to the other. Coupled with clueless college kids with cigarettes, who are out to prove themselves, that’s formula for trouble (and super, super annoyance, especially when they are in groups of three or more).

3. Relatively terrible food — Las Vegas is famous for extravagant buffets. But if you are not into sirloin steaks or meatloaf, the veggie stuff is all pretty much the same. Besides, how many kinds of food can they really serve up in buffets? Let me just say they didn’t even try at places we went to. Ironically, the fatter the people we saw eating the buffets, the less we felt like eating. And then there’s the “Bryan factor.” Whenever we were eating relatively expensive food, he started getting cranky and became Mr. Choosy on what he wanted. But this one time when we decided to grab a quick Panda Express, he was the happiest child on Earth. The upside is, now I know I can make Bryan happy on the cheap.

4. Sex Sells — The free pirates show outside of Treasure Island used to be decent. It was a show about pirates. I mean, how else could “Treasure Island” be interpreted? But I guess some idiot in the TI management figured sex was the next big thing and changed the whole theme with a hidden sexual connotation to it (get it?). Half of the pirate crew was now a bunch of barely dressed, sexy, foxy dancing young girls (not that I am complaining). But that made the whole show stupid and pointless. People actually started leaving about 1/3 into the show.

5. No show (but 2 stupid ones) would allow kids 5 or younger to attend. Com’on… that’s the whole point of going to Las Vegas for non-gamblers or people who aren’t there for businesses!

6. If you have a baby that requires a tub to take bath in, good luck finding a hotel with a tub. This really ticked me off.

7. The air in Vegas is as polluted as those mobile chimneys I talked about in point #1. Some pictures I took have tonnes of dust particles caught by the flash of my camera. I don’t know how anyone can live in that city without getting some kind of respiratory problems.

I took Grace and Bryan to Vegas forgetting there were all these things attached to an adult-oriented themes in every corner of the city. Come to think of it, I think Vegas would make a great vacation spot for bachelors who can’t get laid anywhere else, newly weds looking for a different experience and gamblers who don’t know what else to do with their money. Whatever Las Vegas is, it’s no place for family vacations. That’s for sure.