The received wisdom is that spending longer than 48 hours in Las Vegas is a) likely to result in serious cabin fever, and b) potentially ruinous for your wallet and your health. The constant dinging of the slot machines alone, they say, is enough to turn a sober woman to a diet of Xanax and frozen-daiquiris. But thanks to a Frankenstorm named Sandy, I found myself stranded in Sin City for seven whole nights while the winds died away and my fellow lower Manhattanites learned how to survive without light, heat and running water. But as flight after consecutive flight back to JFK was cancelled, the only thing to do was sit back and see what Vegas really has to offer.
My husband and I had flown in from New York for the opening of The ACT, the new nightclub from The Box creator Simon Hammerstein. But the morning after, as I watched the storm coverage on TV become increasingly frenzied, it started to dawn on me we wouldn’t be hauling our hangovers to the airport any time soon. Not good news – I had work to do, Goddamnit! I was due to interview Tamara Mellon the next day! But, giving my husband the side-eye as we shook our heads and tutted our annoyance, I could tell he was secretly as happy as me about the situation we now found ourselves in – forced to spend another few days sheltering from the storm in 75-degree sunshine.
And anyway, perhaps because we’d spent the previous night partying our pants off with the likes of Christina Hendricks, Susan Sarandon and David Furnish at The ACT, our first impressions of the infamous Las Vegas strip were more high-octane glamour than high road to hell. “It’s just like Ibiza. But bigger,” the husband had noted as we’d taxied in from the airport, past billboards advertising superstar DJs and sell-out shows. Plus, we’re hotel people – he works in the business, and I just love them – and the sheer scale and grandeur of legends like Caesar’s Palace, the Venetian and the Wynn is breath-taking. It also means even the most basic rooms are palatial. Surveying our suite at the Palazzo, where The ACT is located, I realised that we could easily set up office for the whole time we were delayed in Vegas. “Look,” I told the husband, pointing to a grey lump in the far reaches of the room. “We’ve even got a fax machine. We’ll be fine.”
Lo and behold, we managed to stay on top of all our work commitments from afar – hello, 21st century technology. Turns out Tamara was stranded in LA too, so our interview was rescheduled anyway. And when the emails went dead as London and then New York shut up shop for the night, we were left to our own devices. Which essentially meant deciding which of the city’s incredible restaurants to sample that night. Over the past decade, pretty much every celebrity chef in the States – oh, and Gordon Ramsay – has set up shop in Vegas, and Forbesrecently described the city as “the biggest culinary stage in America”. So much for scare stories about five-dollar, all-the-salmonella-you-can-handle buffets. It turns out we’d landed in foodie heaven.
The Cosmopolitan – interiors by Rockwell Group
As we strolled down the strip that first stolen evening, and reports began to come in from friends facing a total power outage in NYC, the irony of our being stranded in what is surely one of the most brilliantly over-lit cities in the world was not lost on us. “Schlepping 30 blocks to charge my phone and pick up groceries!” went their status updates. As we proceeded to tuck into an incredible five-course feast at the Nobu-standard Yellowtail restaurant at the Bellagio, watching the Hotel’s famous dancing fountains do their thing from our balcony vantage point, it began to feel like the ultimate guilty pleasure. We elected to remain schtum.
Of course, having only packed for a short weekend trip we also “needed” to buy some new clothes. First stop: Barneys, at the Palazzo. If I was expecting little more retail-wise than a few tacky souvenir shops, then the parade of designer boutiques that swagger through the hotel lobbies was as tempting as the Megabucks slot machine in the casinos downstairs (with the prize money up to $16 million, and counting, we found it pretty hard not to have a go every time we walked past). But actually All Saints is more our style (read: budget) than Chanel, and we stocked up on jeans and tees at the gigantic branch of the Spitalfields stalwart at The Cosmopolitan.
In fact, let’s talk about the Cosmo for a minute. The newest hotel on the Strip, this glittering temple of decadence opened in 2010 and is without doubt where the beautiful people hang out. Needless to say, when our second flight out was cancelled and we realised we were here for the duration, we checked into this place. Any niggling feelings that we should really be suffering along with our Sandy-struck friends back home were soon soothed away by a trip to the spa, where the bathrobes alone are plush enough to lull you into a comfort-induced coma. Later that night, excitement (a couple of glasses of champagne) got the better of us, and we posted a picture on Facebook of the lobster we found ourselves tucking into at the Cosmo’s signature French restaurant, Comme Ça.
“Hurricane Thermidor” garnered surprisingly few “likes”.
Dancing on a podium under the ultra-violet lights, he looked like a greenback version of one of those dreadlocked Puli dogs.
Halloween came and went with another night at The ACT. Considering half the inhabitants of Las Vegas spend most of their working lives in some kind of costume or other, it was surprisingly difficult to find something to wear – and one guy had found a way around this by coming as his winnings, with $1,000 in dollar bills pinned to his clothes. Dancing on a podium under the ultra-violet lights, he looked like a greenback version of one of those dreadlocked Puli dogs.
We finally managed to get booked on a flight back to NY that seemed like a cert, and with one night of our impromptu vacation left (by this stage, we weren’t even trying to kid ourselves), we decided to visit Oscar’s steakhouse, located downtown at the Plaza Hotel on the Old Strip, where we found a slice of what felt like old-school Las Vegas at its finest. “Beef, Booze and Broads” is their strapline, and it turns out the owner is the former Mayer of Vegas, Oscar B. Goodman, who starred as himself in Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
Thinking of our friends who were dealing with the chaos of power-free Manhattan, and knowing what chaos might await us too on our return, we decided to raise a toast to the “perfect storm”, and to the lucky star that had kept us safely out of Sandy’s way.
Ruby Warrington is a London writer in New York, former features editor at Sunday Times Style and can be followed on Twitter @The_Numinous