Wednesday 9th July - I have a Degree so Why Can I Not Understand This?

Having slept on our gambling fear, we found breakfast and approached the red card table for a little help. We asked about lessons to realise people who are rich enough to stay at the Wynn are also proficient at gambling. With our playing cards sorted and confidence to cope with a slot machine we headed into the foray. Of course we had failed to predict the immense boredom of pressing a button and pulling an arm, pressing a button, pulling an arm, pressing a button… There was even a button to negate the arm which just seemed bizarre to me. Agreed that poker was more likely to interest, and hopeful a certain amount of skill would put us back in some level of control, we swapped machines. Sure enough we started to win and in we were sucked.

Tim, with an elevated credit score, decided we should try a different machine. There were funny cartoon characters and a grid. I was asked to pick the number in a line and press a few buttons until having lost a few credits, and in utter confusion I gave up. As I retrieved my card, metaphorical steam was rising from Tim’s ears:

‘I have a degree so why can I not understand this machine?’

Defeated, we retreated to the pool area where the marble tables and cutlery could have been torture implements. Thankfully this wasn't a problem as eating or even moving enough to get food from the plate and into our mouths was not at all appealing. Instead and in an attempt to cool down we went for a dip. Bizarrely the shaded end was empty and we enjoyed a 30m span to ourselves. I had assumed there were limits to sun seekers but apparently not - did they not realise how hot it was? People were even sun bathing..

We had opted for an early showing of Cirque du Soleil - Ka at the MGM Grand and so headed off, walking (!) down the strip. Ignorantly it took us almost 45 minutes to walk – we had started off happy that it was only a few hotels away but in Vegas that is quite some distance. Half way along the strip we started ducking into casinos for a blast of air conditioning. By the time we reached MGM I felt like an oil slick and the cooling relief of the theatre was heaven. Neither of us had any real expectations for the show - we were visiting because it was something you should do in Vegas. Two minutes in and Tim and I were drop jawed. For the next hour and a half we sat in amazed silence at the spectacle before us. Yet again I don't feel my illiterate ramblings could do the show justice. The movement of the performers' bodies was at the very least enviable - like urges to start a martial art after a few hours of karate kid I left with the illusion that I too could do Capoeira. The stage was immense with fighting on a 50 metre rotating platform which quite frankly put Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's attempts at flying to shame.

Stumbling out later we walked back along the strip at a pace slow enough to keep my innards from scrambling. At the Bellagio we stopped to enjoy the water display before having a late dinner and a spot more gambling. It hadn't taken me long to reach a stage of boredom, however, which left me trying to lose all my credits. Having accrued $20 of free credits I felt I either had to triple it or lose it all to feel I had in some way reached a definitive end. Of course tripling it was never going to happen with my 25 cent bets and soon enough losing it all became the task in hand.

I hadn't factored in the maddening comparison with attempting to score a double to end a game of darts – just as I was down to 1 credit I would suddenly win a few. Why I didn’t just cash in my $5.50 is beyond me. I had concluded I wasn’t going to win and the only way to finish was when the machine decided I was going to - luckily this wasn't really all that slow in coming and I could eventually crawl into bed.