January 8, 2010

Last night, I met a group of people and we went to the new City Center in Las Vegas. This complex is supposed to be a city within a city. We parked at the Bellagio and took the tram over to Crystals (which is the first stop of the City Center). The Crystals is a giant shopping center with very, very expensive designer stores, few customers, but very pretty to look at. No restaurants open yet either. It is multi-level and circular, which leads you back to the tram. Next we moved on to Aria which is the hotel and casino. The entrance to the Aria on one side is a wall of water convulsing down over and over-very impressive. The hotel does have restaurants, I don't think they have the ventilation system quite fixed yet, because we could smell fish or sushi everywhere. The casino, very nice, nothing special-another casino with lots of high dollar machines. There is an impressive Fine Arts exhibit that is free and worth seeing, starting with a sculpture by Henry Moore, as you enter the Aria from the Crystals level. Comdex was in town (biggest consumer computer/gadget convention of the year), so there were lots of people staying at the Aria. But I think this new City Center is going to take about 2 years or a heck of lot more advertising, before they see any business.

Living in Las Vegas has been interesting to me. The recession has been good to me. I say this because now that the City Center is complete, there is no new construction of any kind here in Las Vegas-no housing, no hotels, no casinos. Where are these people with all of the others going to find work? Even McDonald's can hire only so many people.

Sales are still up on my EBay listing Valerie2901. And now the van is here to take me to the airport, so I will try and blog more later.
That's all for now.
Cookbook Val