The Vegas Strip Monorail

There was something about this cheesy bit of decoration I just loved. This figure is the joker that adorns the entrance of Harrah's Hotel and Casino just adjacent to The Venetian and across the street from The Mirage. It's located on The Strip. Harrah's doesn't seem to be as ornate and classy as the other Strip casinos. I would consider this place the poor man's Caesar's. Its the Belaggio of the Wal Mart Shoppers, the Venetian of the NASCAR set. The feature attraction of the place seemed to be a bar inside that was endorsed by country singer Toby Keith and named after one of his songs. I didn't get the feeling this place was "fancy".

This wasn't the kind of place I wanted to frequent. However, it was necessary for me to visit. This was the Center Strip entrance for the all-important Las Vegas Strip Monorail. Anyone not wanting to spend a fortune on taxi fares and wear out lots of shoe leather had to be a patron of the Monorail system. Therefore, one must visit Harrah's and go slumming with the trailer park folk.

I was a fan of the monorail. There were automated kiosks to purchase monorail tickets. Insert debit card, punch in numbers, out pops a ticket. You can customize your ticket to suit your transportation requirements (2 rides, 9 rides, 15 rides, a day of riding, etc.). There were stations at most of the major casino locations. The north end stopped at the Hilton (home of Star Trek stuff) and the south end at the MGM Grand. Intermediate stops were at Harrah's, Paris Hilton (the hotel, not the ho), and a couple of other unremarkable places.

We had quite a few trips on the monorail. It took us to all the major sites on the Strip. And all of the monorail stops are usually connected to a system of overpasses and escalators to quickly get you to most of the large attractions. Escalators seemed to be a secondary theme of Las Vegas. I've decided that if you count all the escalators, moving sidewalks and the monorail, Vegas probably has more rides than Disneyland.