As a very young lad I hated The Beatles.  Oh, their music was fine, I thought, but why were all the girls screaming and swooning over the very sight of them?  Hate is probably the wrong word.  Envy is much closer.  When I got into my later teens, The Beatles music evolved.  They excelled at nearly everything they tried musically, innovated in ways other bands would not even attempt.  And they were anti-Vietnam, anti-racism, and anti-Nixon.

  I came to adore their music and adulated the band.  I have most of their recordings, including some bootlegged material and know the music better than that of any other performer.  When the Beatles Love cd/dvd came out in 2006, I snarfed it up as soon as it hit the stores.

The Love album [if you can still call them albums] is a compilation of Beatles songs that have been beautifully re-mastered, re-mixed, and spliced together to remarkable effect.  I've listened to it innumerable times and marvel at the work George Martin and his son Giles did with the material.  Not one note or sound was taken from a source other than the original Beatles recordings.

So when my better half saw an article about the Beatles Love show at the Mirage casino/hotel in Las Vegas and expressed interest in seeing it, I didn't need anyone to twist my arm.  Allegiant airline offered packages including a direct flight from Bismarck and a choice of hotels.  We signed up for a weekend in October.

Vegas isn't as family-friendly as it was perhaps 10 years ago.  Back then the casinos were promoting things for children to do in town while their parents squandered their inheritance at the tables.  While the pitch now is different ["What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas"], the city is certainly as glitzy as ever.

Looking at the Excalibur casino from the overpass walk way connecting MGM and New York, New York hotels.

The tower in the middle of the photo is a replica of the Campanile Tower in Venice, Italy.

This is the front of the Venetian hotel, complete with gondolas.  A replica of Doge's Palace is on the left and the Rialto Bridge is in the background.  I can attest they look very much like the real thing.

If I had one major complaint about Las Vegas, it was the clever way the casino architects concealed the exits to their establishments.  All of the hotels are gargantuan.  We got lost in the Luxor hotel, shown here, and ended up on the second floor walking down corridors searching for a way out.  And that wasn't the first time we needed directions in a casino to find our way to Las Vegas Boulevard, the north-south strip where most of the newer hotels are located.

Ceasars Palace seems to take up more frontage than any other casino on the strip.

Inside Caesars there are more shops than you can count.  The ceiling was painted by Mandan, North Dakota's own Ric Sprynczynatyk.

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