Written by Sihyeon Park, J-1 Exchange Student
I cannot believe that Thanksgiving week is very soon as well as Christmas will also be in a very soon. Few days ago, I heard that less than 50 days are left for this year. I am personally trying to spend my time meaningfully.
One of the things for an exchange student to do is experiencing the culture of where you at. This sentence is also informed in my J-1visa explanation, that I am not here only to study but also to meet people and experience what I cannot in my home country. The best way to do this is to go on some trips near San Francisco. So, in today’s blog, I am going to talk about my Las Vegas trip.
Flying to Las Vegas
Las Vegas, located in Nevada, is not very far away from San Francisco. To be honest, I thought Las Vegas is also in California because it is one of the famous cities in the world. Preparing for my trip, I eventually knew the fact. Since it is not very far away, I heard that some students normally drive to Las Vegas. However, I don’t have a driver’s license and a car, so I made a quick decision to take a flight. It is very lucky to have an airport near our school. It takes less than 30 minutes by a car and about an hour by public transportation. By our Gator Pass, I could go to the airport free! Another thing that is good for moving from San Francisco to Las Vegas is that there are a lot of flights so that we have more options to choose the flight based on our time schedules.
Hotels in Las Vegas
Most of the tourists book their accommodations in Las Vegas Strip. I also booked one on the Strip, and fortunately, it wasn’t expensive than I thought. I heard that the hotels usually earn money from casinos, so the accommodations itself isn’t expensive. Because Las Vegas Strip is always full of tourists, the lights don’t get off also in the midnight, and you can check-in to the hotels very late at night too. Las Vegas was the first place for me to go on a solo trip, and this atmosphere made me decide Las Vegas as the first place for my solo trip.
One thing that most of the tourists do in Las Vegas is to go on a hotel tour. The hotels along the Strip have their own themes. For example, I stayed in a hotel which looks like a Pyramid in Egypt. There are some monuments that reminds me of images of Egypt, such as Sphinx and tombs. Right next to this hotel, there are other hotels that look like a medieval castle, New York City, Paris, and so on. All hotels have their casinos on their first floor, so you can just walk around those hotels and watch people playing casinos. One of the best hotels that I visited was the Flamingo Hotel. I heard that this is the oldest hotel in Las Vegas Strip. As its name, there are flamingos in the hotel, but there were other animals too. I have never expected to see a pelican in a hotel of Las Vegas. The walls of this hotel were painted pink, which represents ‘flamingo’, and it was good to take a picture. The Flamingo Garden was opened to the public so though you are not a guest of this hotel, you can look around and enjoy them free.
Foods in Las Vegas
I searched a lot about foods to eat in Las Vegas and found out that there are great cuisines here. Because there are lots of hotels, they have buffets ran by popular chefs. Those places were too expensive for me, and I like to spend more time on walking around rather than eating food, so I made another choice. Hot N Juicy is one of the beloved restaurants by Koreans. From my friends who had already been to Las Vegas told me that I should go there, so there was no such a doubt to choose to go there. As my friends’ recommendations, I chose shrimps and an extra corn, and some rice. In a first bite, I realized why Koreans love this food, because the spice used in this dish was a lot similar with Korean spices. I would highly recommend this place to someone who is planning to visit Las Vegas.
Before I was planning to go on a trip to Las Vegas, I didn’t know that Gordon Ramsey is running several restaurants here. Among those restaurants, I chose Gordon Ramsey Burger because I have a goal to try as many burgers as I can while I stay in the US. There was a long waiting line, but I got there alone, which made me only wait for 20 minutes to order. I ordered Hell’s Kitchen Burger, which looked like a signature here. The ingredients were quite different to normal burgers in fast food restaurants, and the taste was also different. In my opinion, I felt this is a ‘dish’ or a ‘cuisine’ rather than a ‘burger’. Honestly, I wouldn’t say that this was the best burger in my life, but I would say that it was a great experience to taste a worldwide famous chef’s burger.
The Sphere
If you are planning to go to Las Vegas, you must visit the Sphere Experience. Located at the end of the Las Vegas Strip, a giant electronic display board looks like a hemisphere called ‘the Sphere Experience’ will present an unforgettable memory in Las Vegas. I booked a ticket for a documentary and entered the door an hour before the documentary starts. There were 5 AI robots in the lobby, responding and communicating with the visitors in a natural attitude. The only AI robot I have done a communication was ChatGPT, and I didn’t expect AI robots would be able to talk at a similar level to that of a person. The documentary was great too. The whole side of a hemisphere was a screen, and it showed ultra-high-quality videos. What I saw and experienced in the Sphere made me realize the development of scientific technology.
I am not an adult entertainment person, so I didn’t expect myself to enjoy the city this well. It was a great experience to see and listen another part of American culture in person in a ‘fabulous’ city. If I can visit Las Vegas again, I would like to visit the downtown too.