Sin City: strike it lucky in Las Vegas

Six hours earlier I’d been on my knees in a club called Sapphire, scrambling around stilettoed legs looking for my mobile, which had either fallen out of my pocket or been pilfered during some ill-advised shenanigans. My friend Ben was by the bar, telling Stacie ‘with an ie’ that he’d just sold a TV script in LA and, yes, he did look a bit like Hugh Grant now she mentioned it, and suuuuure he’d let her buy him a drink. But it was all totally fine because — pass the freakin’ litre of margarita — we were in Vegas, baby...

Everything in the city of sin is bigger and brasher than you thought possible. Hotels are sprawling microcosms catering to every possible need at any hour of the day. A restorative brunch at The Cosmopolitan’s Wicked Spoon restaurant was no exception: there were towers of pancakes, eggs cooked to order, steaming Asian soups, cakes, croissants, exotic fruit salads and every source of carbohydrate known to man. After a super-sized serving I was ready to get back into party mode. This being Las Vegas, there’s no rest for the wicked.

Off we trotted into the blazing heat to our first pool party. And where better to make a splash than at the MGM Grand’s Wet Republic, Prince Harry’s notorious playground. Super DJ Steve Aoki — who, along with Calvin Harris, is paid a six-figure sum per gig — was on the decks and rabble-rousing by throwing huge creamy cakes into the screaming crowd. Revellers proceeded to have a frolicking good time rubbing cake over each other, like pigs in… well, you get the idea. We found the one safe spot and surveyed the scene. Squealing girls danced on muscle men’s shoulders as groups of models peacocked in VIP nooks. It was pure Bacchanalia; but the real fun in Vegas — that is, the fun that won’t cost you $100 just to get past the velvet rope — takes place away from The Strip, downtown, where casinos are shabby, bets are cheap and women called Pam have brilliant perms. We went to Binion’s Horseshoe to play roulette and doubled our money through sheer luck and chutzpah.

The main drag here is Fremont Street where you can’t move for bachelorettes drinking fluorescent cocktails out of fish bowls. It’s fabulously tacky and the zip wire that zooms down from one end to the other is really the best way to drink it in. Downtown is also the only place in Vegas you’ll find trendy bars and clubs that aren’t hermetically sealed inside hotels. We were thrilled to discover Park on Fremont, an eclectic artsy-looking place that serves good burgers and has a beer garden with actual trees (few and far between in this part of Nevada). It was here that we got talking to four glamorous locals called Ashley, Ashleigh, Ashlee and (wait for it) Britney. We dined later that night at La Comida, a fun Day of the Dead-themed Mexican restaurant serving excellent enchiladas and fiery tequilas.

Back at The Cosmopolitan, which is stylish and urban in feel (in the lobby there are huge screens playing images that morph from naked writhing bodies to shelves packed with old library books), we realised it had taken us three days to get our bearings — there are 2,995 rooms, 13 restaurants and three pools and that’s just the half of it. Our room had a small balcony that looked over the Bellagio fountains. Every 15 minutes, 460ft-high jets of water accompanied by Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and rays of light put on a profoundly camp display.

The next day we went on an excursion to Vegas’ Neon Museum. This is where flashing symbols of Americana go to die and the ‘boneyard’, as locals call it, is now the ‘cultural’ thing to do. We were guided around the dusty yard by a lady who was extremely passionate about neon signs and gave us a fascinating history of Vegas — from its founding in 1905 when, after the completion of the main railway that linked Southern California with Salt Lake City, and established Las Vegas as a railroad ‘pit-stop’ town, 110 acres of land were auctioned off to businesses. Then she explained about the arrival of its liberal divorce laws in 1911 and the legalising of gambling in 1931 — plus giving us the lowdown on where each of the defunct signs had come from; the Lucky Cuss Motel was one of my favourites.

Our best meal was at Nobu, which is tucked away in an inconceivably quiet corner of Caesars Palace, where we ate Kumamoto oysters, Kobe beef tacos and lobster sushi rolls. On our last night we stayed in a SkyLoft at the MGM Grand. This penthouse megasuite made the three of us whoop and high-five like lunatics. There was a pool table, a living room with panoramic windows overlooking the roller coaster that twists and turns through the Vegas skyline, two huge bedrooms with closets just as big, two en suites (one with a sauna) — we were in heaven. We slipped into fluffy robes, ordered truffled langoustine ravioli from the Michelin-starred restaurant, and laid out the chips to play in-room poker. If there was ever a moment to turn Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ up loud, this was it.