I HATE Vegas!

... but I am loving hating it!

It's like Back to the Future II where they go back and the once lovely neighbourhood is now a broken, chaotic hell hole!

The heat is wiltering... I have just spent 1.5 hours walking to a Boots type/baby food selling shop and had to take 4 elevators and 2 bridges just to cross the road. Sweat is pouring from my head and both Harry and I are bright red and drinking gallons of orange juice and water by the hour. It is 8:45am and 44 degrees C (that's 108F, baby).

The place is a shitty hell on crappy earth: Firstly, the flight was an utter nightmare. Sometimes around 3-5pm, a combination of tiredness and hunger can grab H unexpectedly, and an uncharacteristic meltdown can occur, which happened yesterday. I was in the process of feeding him, balancing him on one knee with one hand and mixing the food in the bowl with the other, then spoon feeding him, but he wasn't having any of it and the meltdown began. Screaming and spitting, having clearly confused me trying to feed him with me trying to starve him, food ended up on me, on him and on most of the surrounding passengers and airline staff. As he'd been so smiley and grinny before this, everyone was falling over themselves to help me out. Eventually I took him to the loos to clean up, which is not easy in the teeny space of an aeroplane toilet, when we hit some turbulence which must have scared him, so he weed over me. I cleared that up and was having a wee myself, balancing Harry on my knee, when we hit some more turbulence and I was thrown off the loo to the floor, although still holding Harry with both hands, safe from trouble, while I had smacked my head on the door and was praying the wet floor was just from the sink.

By the time I cleared myself up with one hand still holding H, and loads of wipes and sanitiser later, we got back to our seat and were presented with a free beer from an airhost. Harry looked like he was falling asleep on my lap. I put down the beer can on the fold away table for all of about 2 seconds and Harry, not falling asleep, kicked the underside of the table hard, which threw the beer and can up in to the air. The can soared up off the table, over the aisle and rather artily I thought, hours later when safely out of there and alone, covered the couple to our adjacent left with frothy suds of beer. The kind couple who were sat behind us got them some paper towels. The adjacent couple to our left handed me back the beer can, so I drank the rest of it and grinned at everyone desperately apologetic.

To get us off the plane, another kindly airhost made to take out my huge carry-on bag from the overhead lockers, but it was dripping with a fruity milky mix of cherry smoothie and water that I have been feeding Harry from a sip cup, that had burst open and poured out over everything. The bag, and everyone else's bags in the overhead were soaked and now strongly smelling of warm sweet milky cherries. This added well to the beer stench, the something dodgy from the aeroplane loo whif and the cringey smell of embarrassment, and by now I was thoroughly enjoying myself. H screamed loads more which really helped the situation and suddenly I found myself musing on how the underground infant trading movement might be doing.

As we hit the heat though, H cheered up (strangely) and we staggered around with a huge baggage trolly and H in the baby buggy trying to find an ATM and the hotel shuttle buses. I've noticed with interest how pathetic I must look pulling H's wild-wheeled buggy while pushing an equally wayward luggage trolley, because, happily, everywhere I go seems to elicit huge sympathetic offers of help. I got a free pass on the shuttle and a sweet youngish lady tearfully told me how wonderful I am and how great it is as a single marhm that I am vacationing with H so young and how lucky H is etc etc . If anyone else tells me how quickly they grow up "if you blink" I may just commit something physical and assaulting and illegal, although other people's kindness and compliments to me, Harry and (even more strangely) the buggy are always appreciated.



Once at the hotel, which is a planet the size of Mars filled with strange, sticky large creatures, I noticed that during the get in and get out of the luggage on a 3.5 hour domestic flight, all creams and potions carefully packed in towels in my main checked-in luggage had burst. Not all over the towels wrapping them up, of course, but over anything white and clean and freshly washed. Funny how it survived a 10 hour+ flight from London to Chicago but manages to burst after only a few hours when we're visiting somewhere over 100 degrees F.

The hotel is stuffed full of 8 year old girls wearing full make up and "sexy" glittering things. The men are always 4 times the size of the women, who are staggeringly enormous already. One lady, roughly the size of 11 healthy Europeans, squeezed herself into the huge gilt and mirrored elevator, of which there are around 85. She was clad head to toe in something I think was a Burberrry / goldnsilver mix. She had at least 8 rings on each finger. She said, "my husband loves it here, but I think it's a bit over the top, don't you think?" - which gives you some idea.

There are 6 long long long corridors to walk down to get to my room, which adds to all the above smells with a resident stink of shit, which I initially thought was Harry's fault, until I cleaned him up again but becomes worse if I turn on the air con. This morning, it now stinks of puke and other things clearly happier to be out of the body, but I don't know where any of it's coming from.

I have just discovered there is an unwrapped tampon under my bed.

I cannot eat the food or drink the booze because it feels like I am gagging on a giant, commercial cock, hell bent on pumping me full of sweetly perfumed lard, and it is all I can do to pull back my head in resistance and feel grateful the expulsion only smacks me in the face, which joins the egg that is already there for coming here in the first place.

On the upside - apart from the heat - Harry loves it ! We have to walk through around 5 casinos to get outside and the lights delight him into squeals of excitement.




Despite what I have already said above, the hotel is actually spectacular - in mostly bad ways, but the pool is impressive (although there are 43,000 others to share it with) and there is a wonderful assortment of fish, foliage and flamingos (which also stink) to wander about and look at.

Another upside, I have met Elvis a few hundred times already, and Jackson isn't dead, but being pumped out of every single external speaker the city has.

I came here for the experience and the gloriously hot desert weather, however this morning as I awoke, I find it is still blisteringly hot, but cloudy and has been raining. It is still 44C.

I haven't been here 24 hours and it is now 10am. I am going to sit round a bright blue pool with the smell of shit and fish as company and drink warm beer from a plastic cup, along with the 43,000 others.

I will also demand a room upgrade, relying on the wonderful US customer service which will mean I only have to ask once....


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Update: I got the room upgraded and now have a fab view and a clean fresh smelling room. I skipped off to Bellagios for lunch, which was a clean haven of expense, sadly waaaaay out of my price range for anything but an occasional small meal - and I think that if you have enough money to do Vegas well, you really have enough money to go anywhere else and have a much better time.

And you really should.