Okay. I’m back from Las Vegas. I’m trying not to be angry at the world. There I was. In Las Vegas. Now I’m in Winnipeg. And I have a cold. My head is stuffed up and I have a sore throat. And I endured two days of work like this. And… Oh, never mind.

I’ve realized there is no way I can catch up on a day to day remembrance of what happened. So I’ll try to do some blogs grouped around subject matter. Today’s theme is about the hotels I stayed at. There were two of them.

When we booked this trip, we had no idea of where to stay. The only thing I knew was that the Excalibur Casino had installed electronic poker tables in their poker room. So I decided we should stay there. We got online and paid for our rooms in advance.

When we arrived at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, we decided to take the shuttle bus to the strip. It’s only $6.50 per person. It’s a good deal. The bus stopped first at the MGM Grand. Very impressive. They obviously tried very hard to make it feel like the kind of place a movie star from the Golden Age of movies would want. Next stop: The Excalibur.

I was so excited about getting there I didn’t focus on what the place is like. It’s like a tacky adult Disneyland. Once you’ve registered, they point the way to the towers where you’ll be staying. What surprised me is that they didn’t have their staff on hand to offer help with the bags. So we dragged our bags through the casino floor and eventually found our way to the elevators. When we opened the door to our room, we were pleasantly surprised. There was a lot of room and we had been upgraded to a widescreen TV.

The casino occupies the entire main floor of the hotel. I don’t play most of the games offered, Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Keno, or slots, so I have little to say about those. And I’ll talk about the poker room in another post about my poker experience.

High-speed internet is available for $12.99 per day. There are WiFi hotspots at various places throughout  the hotel. I didn’t look for them so I can’t help you find them.

The location is a little weird. It’s right on the end of the Strip. Mandalay Bay and the Luxor are trying to extend the Strip farther south but all the real action is north of the Excalibur. Excalibur shares its corner with MGM Grand, NYNY, and the Tropicana. One of the shuttle bus drivers we had told us that there were over 14,000 hotel rooms at that corner, which he claimed was a world record.

Getting around Las Vegas isn’t a big problem. They have The Deuce, a double-decker bus, which runs the length of the Strip from downtown to the Outlet Mall in the south. It costs $2/trip or $5/day. It doesn’t go very fast so tourists don’t get lost or confused. It’s a great value for those who don’t want to walk a lot.

When we tried to leave Las Vegas, Las Vegas wouldn’t let us. It snowed. At first just a few little flakes. And our plane was sitting there with a mechanical problem. And more snow. Eventually the airport was shut down because nobody in Las Vegas understands snow removal. So we had to get a hotel room for what turned out to be two extra nights. There was no way I was going back to the Excalibur. I phoned Planet Hollywood and got us a room.

I called Planet Hollywood because I had shifted my poker playing to their room. I liked the action there and I definitely enjoyed the ambience. You arrive at the lobby arrive and you don’t hear all the irritating noise of the casino. Instead, you hear music loud enough that you wonder how the staff can get their work done. We quickly check in and go to our room. This is more like it.

The room was a little smaller than the Excalibur’s. But, for comfort, there was a duvet instead of blankets. There was a long, deep tub for those who like that sort of thing. There was John Belushi memorabilia in our room; clothing, props and posters. Internet access was $13.99/day.

Overall, the Excalibur was a less expensive to stay in but not centrally located, and a bit too much on the tacky side for my taste. Planet Hollywood was just a little more money but much nicer in appearance, more upscale in clientele, and close to the Bellagio and Caesar’s. I definitely recommend Planet Hollywood.