Sunday 29th March

Another day of recovery after a very late night, we booked another night at the motel which fitted in fine with our schedule we had worked out for the rest of the trip. We had a look at a couple of casinos round the corner from us on Fremont, firstly The Golden Nugget which has the The Hand of Faith nugget, the largest chunk of gold ever discovered, from somewhere in Australia. We went to eat in Binion’s casino, having signed up for a free card purely to get a discount on the chicken and ribs dinner. I went to do the final laundry run, chose to walk rather than drive as it didn’t seem that far on the map. Bad idea really, it was a long way and seemed to be in an insalubrious part of the town, which our motel was on the edge of. Took a cab back and then we headed out to have a proper look at The Strip. Had a wander around The Flamingo and Caesar’s Palace, massive and impressive places but lacking any real substance. It’s easy to get sick of seeing people gambling everywhere, and the whole lifestyle of the city that is built around it. Hard to think of the place as a family holiday destination, but I guess it all depends on your perspective.
We took a cab back to the Downtown area that we were staying in. This is the original part of the city so it has the oldest casinos, it’s now for the more serious gamblers that want to get away from the showy glitz and overpricing of the strip. We went for a drink in an Irish bar called Hennessey’s, met a local guy there who told us about another bar to go to called the Griffin, and he also recommended a place to go tomorrow for the best breakfast in Vegas. We moved on to the Griffin and were delighted with it, it was a really cosy, genuine place with not a gambling machine in sight. It was clearly a place for locals to escape from the tourist side of the city. It was really nice to find that such a place could exist in Las Vegas, and we were happy to spend the rest of the night in this haven. A very pleasant ending of a trip to a city that would otherwise have left somewhat of a bad taste in the mouth.