One resolution I made this year (and I don’t make many) is to take a night stroll, every month or so, down the Las Vegas Strip.
For world-class walking, the Strip is hard to beat. It’s laid out on (pretty much) a straight line. The visuals, discoveries, and choices for spending time choices are limitless and ever-changing. Strip people-watching is first rate and there’s almost always a convenient restroom. The trip can be done primarily indoors or outdoors and if you get tired, there are buses, cabs, trams, and a monorail to help complete the journey.
I don’t gamble on the Strip. Nor do I go to the Strip just to eat. I have plenty of good gambling and dining choices near my home. What I look for are unique, fun, and relatively inexpensive experiences that I enjoy and can tell friends (and a blog audience) about.
Last Saturday night, I parked my car at the Palazzo garage, which is still free and probably will remain so due to the adjacent Sands Convention Center, then wandered through the casino to Las Vegas Boulevard, crossed the elevated walkway, and boarded the Deuce bus. The fare is $6 for two hours, $8 for twenty-four hours, and $20 for three days. (There are discounts, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming post on Las Vegas public transportation.)
I got off the bus at Mandalay Bay and began a leisurely 3.5-hour 3.5-mile stroll back to my car. My plan was to visit a couple of places I’m fond of, plus check out three dueling piano bars located on the Strip.
Skyfall Lounge
Located on the 64th floor of the Delano hotel (behind Mandalay Bay), the Skyfall offers superb views of the Strip that can be enjoyed sitting at the bar, in the comfortable seating area, or on the couches located on the balcony. There’s no cover or admission. Beers are $10; whiskey and wine run about $15. One warning: Don’t go there if you’re hungry. Demands on the kitchen from the adjacent Rivea restaurant (which does quite a business in large groups) make obtaining even light snacks impossible. Grab a quick bite downstairs before your ascent.
Rí Rá Irish Pub
Located in the Shoppes at Mandalay Place, Rí Rá is part of a national nine-pub chain that hires many of their waiters and bar staff directly from Ireland, so the pub has an authentic feel (at least to me, who has only been to Ireland once). The menu is well-priced and well-prepared (I’m especially fond of their Scotch Eggs), plus live entertainment begins about 9 p.m. On Fridays, local Las Vegans get a 40% discount on food.
Bar at Times Square
The Bar at Times Square is the oldest and best-known dueling-piano bar on the Strip — and in my opinion the most disappointing. Customers pay $5 to walk in, $15 to sit (or you can sit at the bar outside for an overpriced drink or earn it on awful VP machines), all to listen to a third-rate, very corny (“Bohemian Rhapsody” sing-a-long), very touristy (“Who’s is from Texas?”) piano act.
Napoleon’s Lounge
Paris is one of my favorite casinos on the Strip, for no other reason than they still maintain their original theme and atmosphere, and far better than the Egyptian-less Luxor and the Gotham-shallow New York-New York. Originally a cigar bar (which I assume changed when the non-smoking laws went into effect), Napoleon’s overall decoration and seating arrangement create a great atmosphere for dueling pianos. You can sit at a nearby table, in a quieter room off to the side (where you can still hear well), or at the bar. There’s no cover and drinks are reasonable. I could live without the talentless Elvis impersonator posing for selfies (the King has been dead for 40 years — enough already), but Napoleon’s can be an entertaining evening.
Harrah’s Piano Bar
The almost right-on-the-Strip location of the Piano Bar creates a very crowded room very early, so I didn’t stay that long. To its credit, there’s no admission charge and identical twins Kim and Tamara Pinegar do put on a lively act.
Having just three drinks in over four hours, I drove home about 11 p.m.
One final tip: If you’re parking in a large casino garage, especially for the first time, take a picture of the nearest sign post showing what area you’re in and note how to get back there from the elevator. Saves bother late at night.
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This comment was submitted by Brad via email.
Read your note today about mass transit. As a long time tourist I was a frequent user of the bus. Then the bus changed. It became a s- l-o-w boarding process for paying; trying to get a fare card from a machine is trying (and at times, impossible). But the big thing is the schedule and the way the buses now run. Used to be the buses would leapfrog down the Strip and there was maybe an 8- to 10-minute wait at most from Mandalay Bay. Then they went to some kind of stupid “timing,” which I read but cannot explain, except to say that the buses WAIT at stops when there are no riders to board. How smart is that? Then the rules changed for the all-day fare on the Strip and the price went up up up.
It almost makes you want to use the monorail. No, it almost makes you want to walk, except for all the in/out of the sidewalks such as around City Center and crossovers which take you everywhere except where you want to go.
Need more buses running every ten minutes on the Strip, low fares, easy-to-pay fares, and a return to leapfrogging.