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Places and Travel

Welcome to Las Vegas/Welcome to the Venetian

The real deal 

They want your money, they want your business, but they don’t want to give you a room.

It is 8:30 on a Tuesday night August 21, 2007 and I arrive at the Venetian hotel in Vegas tired from a long day and on Eastern Time.  I walk to the registration desk and the line is long and there are only three people behind the desk (actually there are six, but three are trying to figure out what to do with one guest, either that or they are playing solitaire on the computer screen).  After a few minutes in line someone comes to us and says we can go to the tenth floor to register, tenth floor, we just walked three miles from the parking garage in hundred degree heat to get here.

Twenty minutes later I am still in line and the young lady keeping the heard behind the barriers says, "If you go up to the Venezia tower there is no wait."  Hmm, no wait and even though I am the next in line to register, given the people now at the desk have been there for ten minutes I take off for the third floor Venezia registration.  Wonder why there is no sign for this alternative registration area?

She must have warned them that a few new suckers took her deal.  Here I am on the third floor of the Venezia tower and there is not “no wait” in fact there are fifteen people in line and three clerks at the desk. 

I wait and I wait, I wait for thirty minutes more.  During that time the endless process of checking in is further slowed because one of the clerks simply disappears, he walks though a door and disappears and now we are down to two clerks, the line behind me is growing.  “Where did he go, I shout?”  No response, the clerks are too engrossed in the complex process of checking in a lucky winner in registration roulette. The people behind me have looks on their faces as if they stopped in the casino on the way to register and now have no money left to pay the hotel bill.

Here comes the clerk who disappeared, at last, but wait there he goes again walking briskly behind the desk to a door at the other of the end registration area and there he goes behind door number two.  My hopes are dashed and I start the stop watch on my wrist to be sure of what I am feeling.  I don’t do well in lines.  If all restaurants had lines, I would weigh 65 pounds.  And don’t get me started on those beeby things with flashing lights, now that’s class (which the Venetian uses in its casual café by the way).

New hope arrives but quickly fades as a young lady enters from door number one moves immediately to door two. What’s behind those doors anyway?  The young man now moves from two to one and we are still with two clerks and still waiting. Neither looks at us as they slink back and forth and my “Hey, why not stop by?” falls on deaf ears.  A pleasant wave as they strode by would have been nice. I feel like I am on the Small World ride at Disneyworld.  Little people are appearing and disappearing and going nowhere.

My turn finally comes and after I answer a dozen questions, check off Yes or No on a key pad, sign my name six more minutes have passed and I am finally on my way to a room.  Before I leave the desk, I ask if they are short of staff at the moment. “No, says the desk clerk, this is normal” Normal uh, it must be a ploy to keep you in the casino 24/7.  But he was right; night and day the gamblers were waiting like sheep for shearing to get their room assignment.  I had less trouble getting my bunk assigned in the army.

After a few false starts getting lost in the maze of the Venezia tower, I am in my room …in which I find open dirty bars of soap, dirty coffee mugs, a dirty coffee pot and the connecting doors between the adjoining room open.  You would think after all my tribulations I would find a show girl in the shower if I was going to get two rooms, but my luck was foretelling of future adventures in the casino and no one was home in the adjoining room, but it wasn’t fully cleaned either.

Later I stopped by the concierge desk to register a complaint and she was sympathetic and offered me another room.  I glanced over at the registration line now three deep and sheepishly said, “Could you please ask them to put soap in my room, lock the adjoining door and get rid of the coffee cups?” They did.  I forgot to ask about the show girl.

To add insult to injury, the WiFi is a crap roll as well.  The information in the room says that there is free WiFi in the registration areas and the food court, but when you try to log on you get a screen which asks for your ID supposedly supplied in the welcoming fax sent to your room.  Welcoming fax, I don’t think so.  No fax, no welcome and no logging on either. 

There are a number of acts at the Venetian, but the hotel sure doesn’t have its together.

But I’ll get even; I’ll drop my cash in the penny slots at Mirage.  They don’t know who they are dealing with.

Old Cape Cod

Bette Midler, Patti Page

These words make Cape Cod sound like a wonderful place and indeed it once was, but like so many other wonderful places, forces of man, and the excuse of "progress" has changed the place forever.  So keep pictures like this in your mind, but never forget the reality is rapidly becoming what you see below.

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air,
Quaint little villages here and there,
You’re sure to fall in love with
Old Cape Cod.

If you like the taste of a lobster stew,
Served by a window with an ocean view,
You’re sure to fall in love with
Old Cape Cod.

Winding roads that seem to beckon you
Miles of green beneath the skies of blue,
Church bells chiming on a Sunday morn
Remind you of the town where you were born.

If you spend an evening, you’ll want to stay,
Watching the moonlight on Cape Cod Bay,
You’re sure to fall in love with
Old Cape Cod.

Not too many months ago this was a stand of trees, then the town declared the intersection a business zone and business it is on every corner and more to come.  If you could read the sign above the door you would see it reads "For Lease"  You see, other than for someone to make money, there is no need for this building or thousands of others like it.

Buildings and traffic and of course, a Dunkin Donut on every corner.

Where's the lighthouse?

Hey, you could build with Legos you know!

The town where you were born?

This is a quaint little village? Clearly a strip of land into the Atlantic Ocean populated by fishing villages needs a mall. Hey, what else are you going to do on a rainy day?

Cape Cod

All in all Cape Cod is a horrible place, there is nothing to do, you will be bored out of your mind, it is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. 

The place abounds with anglers, art galleries, antique shops, and an occasional windmill.

Did I mention too many people? 

The beaches are crowded (on a few days a year), the restaurants are too many and with varied cuisine, the Fourth of July is too old fashioned, and concerts in the park are inundated with mosquitoes.  Your kids will drag you to baseball games. 

Did I mention too many people?

You may even be forced to visit the Christmas Tree Shop by your wife.

You will overindulge on lobster and possibly gain weight.

The scenery is confusing; you will not know whether you are at the beach or in the mountains.

Seals may keep you awake at night as will the flashing of a lighthouse.

As I said, all in all Cape Cod is a horrible place, so please don’t go.                                 

If you run into me up there, remember I told you so.

My Trip to Italy

Ah, Italy, Rome by night, renascence art in Florence, romantic Venice (dirty water and lots of it), exciting Capri (crowded and a tourist trap unless you happen to own one of those 150 foot yachts in the harbor), medieval towns and the hills of Tuscany.

Eh!

Ok, so I was only there for twelve days and I was on a hectic tour, but nevertheless who stole all the toilette seats?

My European adventures are limited to a trip to Ireland and Italy, but that is enough to make it crystal clear why people come to America. Hey I’m not knocking the Italian lifestyle if your into that kind of thing, and its hard to argue with taking three hours off from work during the middle of the day, especially for us Type A Americans, but who stole the toilette seats?

If you like really old stuff, Italy is the place for you.  I found it rather cool that the Pantheon in Rome still has it original doors and columns from 1 BC, I was amazed and not a little claustrophobic to visit the catacombs where there are 500,000 graves in just one such burial area. If you are into churches, especially basilicas, Italy is the place. After all who can argue with a structure that takes 400 years to complete (some of the slaves perhaps, but as Machiavelli said, the end justifies the means).

The problem is that when it comes to architecture, it appeared that all the Italian architects died out in the 1600s because anything build since then is a box with balconies just large enough to hang your laundry on not to mention that I think someone needs a new T square. That tower is indeed leaning five degrees.

There must be a lot of lovely scenery in Italy and we saw some of that around Tuscany, but if you think the major cities are going to be a treat, think again.  Rome is a big, crowded, somewhat dirty city with nearly every flat surface covered with graffiti. I thought they had an immigration problem from the South Bronx.

Now about those toilette seats, except for the hotels, you are hard pressed to find one.  No kidding, there are no seats on the toilettes, and while I asked several locals why, no one seemed to know what I was talking about. In a few cases there were no bowls either so one had to have both a good back and good balance to participate. But I have to hand it to the Italians, at least you can find a toilette, Unlike New York City, there are plenty of public toilettes.  You have to pay fifty cents and sometimes a Euro to use them, but they are clean for the most part and they exist. And here is a real advancement, they have a law that all restaurants must let anyone use their toilette even if they don’t buy anything.

Let’s talk food

I was in Italy 12 days and didn’t gain a pound.  Some of that may be do to the fact we walked our butts off, and were quite adapt at running for buses, boats and funicular, but most of it was because the food was so so and in several cases awful. If you are a breakfast person, give up and give in. The mainstay of the European breakfast is cold cuts and cheese and if you are into a ham sandwich for breakfast, you’ll be in your glory.  But I have to give them an A for consistency.  Every hotel we were in had the SAME breakfast.  Well, not quite, in one hotel the scrambled eggs were actually edible, what is called bacon is 80% fat and undercooked….always!  Hard boiled egg for breakfast, why not? Shell it yourself. 

To be fair we did have a few good meals, not in any hotel however. We visited a farm house for a “home cooked” meal and it was…home cooked and good.  We were even served by the grandchildren running around with part of their clothes missing.  

Getting there was a real adventure on roads about two inches wider than the vehicle.

Certainly you have to have pizza in Italy and we did, several times, thin pizza, doughy pizza, good pizza and ok pizza, but nothing great in my view.  I guess it takes Americans to create lobster, Italian hot dog and pineapple pizza.

Would I go back, perhaps if I could find a better way of seeing the sights in a more relaxed way.  When you finish a tour like I did, you may end up looking like this poor fellow from Pompeii.

Remembering Atlantic City

My grandparents took their two week annual vacation in Atlantic City.  No, not the Atlantic City of glitzy hotels and gambling, but the old Atlantic City of gentility and some semblance of class.  In those days the black folks served at dinner, opened the hotel door, operated the elevator, shined shoes, cleaned rooms and lived several blocks from the boardwalk in housing we all concluded was not suitable for us, but obviously their choice of habitat.  Come to think of it, not that much has changed.  What was that promise if gambling came to Atlantic City?

Each summer one of the grandchildren was taken for the first week of the two-week vacation to stay in the Hotel Morton just a block west of the Steel Pier on Virginia Avenue.  Try and find the hotel today and you will end up at the service entrance to the Taj Mahal casino.  In those days the hotel room included a full breakfast and dinner.  We dressed casually (defined as slacks and a sport shirt, not shorts or jeans or a bathing suit or anything else that today would pass muster for a casual day in the office) for breakfast, we arrived at our appointed time and sat in the same seats each morning, and we had the same waitress (as distinguished from “server”, Don’t you just love, Hello, I’m Jason and I will be your server today, heaven forbid the man is a waiter and the women a waitress).   Dinner was formal and everyone above age ten was required to wear a jacket and tie.  Before dinner we would sit on the large veranda, listen to organ music, and watch the people walk by on the sidewalk below.  The song of the shoeshine man on the sidewalk punctuated the organ music.  “You can’t look neat, if your shoes look beat.”  If you could sit in the same place today you would hear the clang of slot machines, the screams of winners and (mostly) losers. Say, could you give me that definition of “progress” again. Just for the record my dictionary says in part “gradual steady improvement or to advance toward a higher stage.” Ah, not so much.

Strange what we member after fifty years.  I should have that much luck with remembering what day of the week it is.  As we sat on the veranda we absorbed the smells of Atlantic City of old.  Those smells included salt water taffy, and peanuts being roasted in the Planters Peanut store at the corner of Virginia Avenue and the Boardwalk, and very greasy hot dogs and fries.  My favorite aroma came from the donut and pancake shop where I would stand for hours and watch them make donuts in the window, (Ok, perhaps not hours, but it felt like that when I was 10 -  either that or I was as dull then as I am now).  The shop was located at the entrance to Steeplechase Pier, a few hundred feet south of Steel Pier. Oh, the glorious smell of aged cooking oil.  There was this automated system that plopped the perfectly round donuts into the hot oil (no doubt the same oil on my last visit to AC as on my first).  The donuts traveled around a large vat moved by man made currents, flipped by a paddle like device and finally were skewered on a long rod by the baker who threw them into a tub of cinnamon or powdered sugar.  This was truly a fascinating process for young and old.  Although I was never allowed to eat one of those donuts, I can taste them to this day.  Little did I know at the time that the closest thing in my life to come to these donuts would be when my wife introduced me to Zeppole.  They make up for the lack of automation in the Zeppole process by using the same oil I was fascinated with in the 1950s in Atlantic City.  I must admit that on a trip to San Francisco I did find a store with a donut machine similar to what I have described.  As may be expected, the thing was miniaturized and the donuts traveled a total of 12 inches as opposed to their AC journey of twelve feet.  Instead of an African American baker with a tall white bakers hat, there was a Japanese-American teenager with pierced body parts…not the same.  The donuts were an inch and a half in diameter and cost a hundred times as much as the AC version.  Nevertheless, there were children pressed near the window in fascination, if they only knew what they were missing. 

In 2005 I was in Atlantic City for a meeting. One morning early I walked the length of the boardwalk, looking for memories I suspect, but my reward was more like depression.  There is nothing left that even hints at the Atlantic City of my youth.  The only recognizable buildings are the (original) convention center and the top two thirds of the Claridge Hotel.  Now even Miss America is gone. The Steeplechase Pier and the Million Dollar Pier are gone, the Garden Pier is a wreck and the famous Steel Pier is in name only.  Walk on the north end of the boardwalk and you see acres of open space, boarded up buildings and a depressed area where a thriving boardwalk once was.  The inlet is no more and the old Captain Starns seafood restaurant is long gone. 

If you would like to see some old pictures here you go:  http://barryrich.home.comcast.net/starns/acnj109.htm  or,  http://www.cityofatlanticcity.org/historical/gallery/index.htm

As I gazed at the beach just south of the Steel Pier I couldn’t help but see me and my grandparents on that beach many years ago baking the in sun and doing who knows what damage to our skin.  Hey, who knew that baby oil and iodine didn’t do the job? I even thought I smelled those donuts now coming from the empty space that once was Steeplechase Pier, well not exactly; a homeless person was perusing a garbage can.  Why should anyone care about my memories or the old Atlantic City?  I have no good reason unless you share the loss of a time when little pleasures were more important and harder to attain making them that much more worthwhile.  Some would call what has happened to Atlantic City progress.  I call it symptomatic of our new standards of quality, pleasure and reward.

In the 1950s you had to walk under the boardwalk if you wanted to reach the beach in your bathing suit. Today you would probably get mugged if you went under the boardwalk and why would you, wearing a bathing suit on the boardwalk is an upgrade from some of what you see nowadays.