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After a trip to a quickfire wedding chapel, an encounter with The King and a foray down The Strip, Catherine Masters says "Viva Las Vegas"
Okay, okay, maybe it sounds ridiculous to be obsessed with seeing Elvis on a trip to Las Vegas.
"You know he's dead, don't you?" friends had said.
"Oh, he's not dead," I'd replied.
There are three Elvis impersonators currently in shows in Vegas and others on the street, but you usually only get to meet the most fabulous one (yes, I'm biased) if you're going for a quickie wedding.
Las Vegas is home of the quickie wedding. Americans go there if they want to ditch the relatives and pay the minimum.
There are 40 or so wedding chapels in the capital of sleaze - which has a panache which surprised me - but one chapel is way more alluring than the rest.
The perfectly formed Graceland has a cute little chapel with stained glass windows with doves on them, church pews and its very own ... Elvis.
Elvis himself okayed the use of the name. The King walked the path to this very chapel when he was hot to marry Priscilla. In the end he got married at the Aladdin wedding chapel but, cor, here we are, following in his footsteps. How cool is that?
We're lucky to have this arranged tour of the famous wedding chapel where, among others, Jon Bon Jovi got married, then staged an impromptu concert in the carpark.
Our Elvis, who we are yet to meet, bought the place about 12 years ago. We arrive in the morning, a little seedy from the piano bar of the night before, and are served champagne and spongy wedding cake with lashings of cream for breakfast. Nice. They go down well.
We sit in the pews and Brandon Reed, the PR guy, tells us a wedding will cost US$300 ($400). They have various packages in which you get the cake and champagne, photos, your wedding streamed on the internet, and, if you want, Elvis serenading you.
You'll also get a genuineness from these folk, who make it their business to make sure your quickie wedding is special, whether it's your first wedding or your fifth.
Reed is telling us why people come here, then says "Enough of that, we have a special guest."
From a side door a tall man dressed in a spangly jumpsuit emerges with a guitar. Elvis is in the building and even the sceptics in the group have wondrous looks on their faces.
To be honest, my Elvis crush had grown like a fish story, but these guys were captured the moment they saw him. The sunglasses didn't come off, the sideburns were real and this guy had his own lip curl, plus the Elvis drawl.
Elvis is actually another Brandon (Brandon Paul) and is recognised, at least by me, as one of the world's best.
You can see why in the photo. Elvis was hot, and he was sweet too.
He strummed his guitar and chatted about all sorts of things, most of which I can't really remember because I had gone into some kind of strange trance.
He's taller than the real thing, who was quite short. Another impersonator in town is actually the right size, but our Elvis says people think the other guy's too short. It just shows how larger than life the real Elvis was, he says.
Elvis grins a little sheepishly and tells a story of the time he almost met Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis' daughter. He was at a function and Lisa Marie came around the corner.
The Marilyn Monroe he was with said, "Hey, you should get your picture taken with her."
But he couldn't do it. "Well, Elvis was her dad," he says. He remembers Lisa Marie blushing at the sight of him and hurrying away.
Needless to say, meeting Elvis was the highlight of Vegas, an extraordinary city built out of the hot and dusty Nevada desert and awash with massive themed casinos all trying to outdo each other.
Tacky, tacky, tacky, you might think. But, somehow, Vegas has been elevated above tacky. The casinos are, truly, staggering.
On the main street, known simply as The Strip, they sprawl out in a long line of twinkling, humming, blinking, extraordinary monstrosities.
Anywhere that isn't already a casino is a gigantic building site where another is rising.
The most staggering is possibly the Venetian, which is an imitation of, you guessed it, Venice. The Venetian has a canal with gondoliers who take customers for rides - and sing opera.
If that's not showy enough, they've built the canal up the escalators on the second floor.
The canal winds past shops you need a very big credit card to shop in and arrives at a Venetian piazza. Under a painted blue sky with clouds which seem to move as you do, you can buy Italian ice cream at the gelato stall or dine at a fine outdoor restaurant (which is actually indoors).
The Venetian is so big I got lost. Turns out that's the idea. I asked a security guard which way was out and he said: "Oh, you can't get out."
A lot of the corridors in the Venetian lead you to the plinking, humming slot machines which accompany every casino in this make-believe city.
You can't get away from them but you also don't have to go too near to them. There is a lot of free stuff on The Strip. Most of the casinos have kinds of re-enactments or displays they put on near the sidewalk.
The Mirage has a perpetually exploding volcano, you can watch pirates clash at Treasure Island or groovy fountain displays outside Bellagio set to music by the likes of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
There's Paris with an Eiffel Tower and New York, New York with a Statue of Liberty. My favourite was Luxor, which was a damn long walk to get to (sorry to be so unglamorous but take sensible shoes to Vegas, you can wear your feet out just exploring inside the casinos, let alone hiking up The Strip).
Luxor is a shiny black pyramid with a sphinx outside and - though you do have to pay US$15 for this - inside you can take a tour of King Tut's tomb as discovered by Howard Carter in the 1920s.
The casino has an exact replica of the tomb as it appeared when Carter first peered inside in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Well, not an exact replica. The gold of the statues is just gold paint, but they've done a pretty good job. You can hire an audio tape and listen to an excited Carter in British tones narrating what he saw.
Very entertaining. Even the only violence I saw in Vegas was entertaining. Standing out on the balcony in the night air of Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, a metre or so above the pavement, a couple of opposing gangs members clashed. There was quite a bit of name calling until one of the inebriated young men backed away and fell over a fire hydrant only to be kicked half-heartedly in the face when he was down.
He stumbled up and backed away again but this time a young woman chased him down the street and hit him with her handbag.
On the way back through the throngs, she lied. "I hit him with these," she said, pointing at her boobs to the passers-by.
Despite the lukewarm fight, Vegas, at least on The Strip, felt ridiculously safe. This could be another illusion but there were so many people out and about having an obvious good time, you just get swept up in the ambience.
But across the road from Margaritaville is the famous Caesars Palace, where they have an Elton John shop and, of course, a statue of Julius Caesar out front, and it's around here that rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead.
Of course, there is a downside to Vegas. There's plenty of sleaze. Poor immigrants line the pavements handing out prostitutes' cards, a sea of which end up trampled on the ground. And we never ventured to Hooters, which has its own casino and hotel.
Some of the casinos have dubious sounding attractions - lion enclosures and even a shark aquarium. The slot machines jangle 24/7 until the sound drives you nuts, and some of the punters are pretty depressing. You can go to bed in the early hours and find the older woman in the far-too-short sparkly silver dress still glued to the same machine when you get up.
They have motorised scooters in the casinos for the larger punters - okay, obese - to get around on. But, all in all, you can have a great time here and not gamble a cent, just wander about and marvel at the man-made madness of it all.
There is one thing nearby, though, which Vegas cannot outdo. It's easy to forget Vegas is in the middle of a desert and a short helicopter ride away is the Grand Canyon.
The sheer awesome scale of this natural wonder of the world is hard to comprehend. And flying over where trails of Mormon wagons once travelled in the old days of the wild west, and were encircled by Indians, brings a shiver to the spine way over and above the plink-plonk of the stupendous artificial splendour of Las Vegas.
But it still doesn't quite top Elvis.
* Catherine Masters travelled to Las Vegas courtesy of Air New Zealand.
Checklist: Las Vegas
How To Get There
Air New Zealand flies twice daily to Los Angeles. Online fares start from $2107 per person return. From there you can take a domestic flight with the likes of United Airlines. See www.airnz.co.nz and www.united.com.
Where To Stay
All the casinos double as hotels with prices varying from as little as $50 a night at the three-star Sahara to $437 at the five star Venetian. There are many budget hotels as well outside the central strip. Prices can also vary according to the day of the week and many casinos offer good special deals. Good websites are www.lasvegas.com and www.visitlasvegas.com.
Things To Do
You can get married or renew your wedding vows at one of the cut-price wedding chapels. The Graceland Chapel is on the Strip at 619 Las Vegas Boulevard. See www.gracelandchapel.com.
See a show. Take your pick. There are hundreds of shows on night and day, from magic shows to Elvis impersonators to former Broadway shows such as The Producers and Monty Python's Spamalot.
Take a ride over the Grand Canyon in a small plane or helicopter. This will set you back a few hundred dollars but is well worth it.
And you can gamble - any time, anywhere, even at the airport.
Further Information
Visit www.visitlasvegas.com and on arrival pick up one of the many free booklets on offer which are packed with the latest attractions.
