Storm Eowyn

I’m selling a house this week. Well I was.

It's an old property from the 1880s and recently we have opened up the space at the lower roof area so there's a view of the sky. The garden is now part of the property and we have allowed the "living space to flow from dining room to the kitchen to the garden and the water features beyond." 

We have called this new area the arborium and it has extra features of air conditioning and automatic watering of any of the plant features inside and adjacent to the arborium area.

It's a lovely property, pitch pine fireplaces, corniced ceilings and a bell for ringing the servants.

Do you fancy it?

That was my spin on the fact that a tree came through the roof in the storm. 

That was just to prove that estate agents can spin anything. 

I do slightly curse my luck that, with a view to selling the house, we had an estimate to cut down three of the big trees and they were due to come down at the end of February. Storm Eowyn had other ideas. That’s why there was no blog last week 'My Lord.'  There was a lack of electricity and a lack of cohesive thought processes during the once in a lifetime event.

                                            

                                                                      Ouch!

 It was the first time that the Red Alert had gone off on everybody's phone. I landed at Glasgow Airport on the Thursday night, the plane slid along sideways aiming roughly for the runway. The minute the seatbelt sign was off, all the passengers put their airplane mode off on their phones and 200  threat to life alerts went off at the one time.

Imagine the worst tinnitus ever.

                                       

The taxi driver said that the airport was closing at 5am . Three Ryanair flights left mainland Spain in the small hours of the morning knowing they had nowhere to land. One went to Stansted (London), one to Poland and one to Germany, then presumably headed back to Edinburgh.

Here's a clip of Scotland's finest. 

Watch as tree almost falls on police officers in Glasgow amid Storm Eowyn damage | STV News

The taxi driver was interesting. He was going to work through the storm as all public transport was going off at 9 am. Essential workers had no way of getting to work, so taxi's would be in demand, doing multiple pick ups. Workers had been advised to get into their place of work before 9 am, and stay there until it was safe to go home. The red alert was lifted  in the early evening.

There were bursts of winds in excess of 110 mph, which is nothing compared to the weather that hits parts of the US on a regular basis, but we are so unprepared.  Our ground is sodden, the trees couldn't hold on. The local golf course lost 60 trees.

It was a mercy that only two lives were lost- both young men, in their cars driving to get to a safer place and  the vehicle impacting a tree.

That was the first red alert. Everywhere closed, stay indoors, do not go out under any circumstances.  With typical humour,  it was quickly said  there were four stages of the storm- yellow, amber, red alert and then 'oh no, Greggs is closed'.

During the storm, the noise was unbelievable. We were upstairs, watching the three trees known as The Three Amigos. They stood up to the threat but lost branches that fell and got caught in lower branches  and, as I write this, they are still hanging precariously over the road, awaiting the attention of the tree surgeon.

A tree through the roof is obviously an issue. There's broken tiles and all kinds of things.... and then, as the builder pointed out the roof has sagged under the pressure ( don't we all!).

With all that going on, the ideas for crime fiction came thick and fast. People being stuck at home. Lots of premises empty. Dogs were relocated away from the eye of the storm. No electricity. No internet. And, maybe easy access to property with holes being made here, there and everywhere.

The first question the insurance company asked was 'Was anybody hurt?' And the answer to that is thankfully no. 

And it's pronounced ay  oh win. Seemingly.

Snippets from Wikipedia -

"Storm Éowyn was an extremely powerful and record-breaking extratropical cyclone which hit Ireland, the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom on 24 January 2025 and Norway on the night of 24 January into 25 January 2025. Eowyn was named by the UK Met Office on 21 January 2025.

Widespread red weather warnings were issued across Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, whilst amber and yellow warnings were issued around Wales, England and Norway ahead of the rapidly strengthening storm. It was the most powerful and severe to hit Ireland since Hurricane Debbie in 1961, with wind records breaking an 80-year-old record for the country.

On 21 January 2025, the UK Met Office and associated organisations in Europe used the name "Éowyn" for the fifth storm of the 2024–2025 season. Éowyn is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings and the name was taken from a list based on suggestions by the public.

The storm was fuelled by a strong jet stream and energy from the January 20–22, 2025 Gulf Coast blizzard, which brought significant snow to the Gulf Coast of the United States."

For now? Bitter cold, blue skies and no rain.

Which is just as well as we do have a hole in the roof!  And we are looking into it.

C

A Big Hand for the Spirits - Interview with Jen Stern

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Jen Stern is one of South Africa's best known travel writers, but she takes on a wide variety of topics - food, culture, you name it. A Big Hand for the Spirits is her first foray into fiction. Not surprisingly, it draws heavily on her travel experiences, and she's visited every place mentioned in the narrative, and partaken of most of the activities – white-water rafting at Victoria Falls, game viewing in Luangwa, diving in Lake Malawi, driving the Great East Road, catching local buses in Malawi, and walking long distances between tiny towns. That provides an exciting backdrop to an adventure thriller involving a murder. Here's our chat about her novel.

Lake Malawi National Park

Jen, you’re well known as a travel writer in South Africa. A Big Hand for the Spirits is your first excursion into fiction. What persuaded you to write a novel?

Watching a performance of the Gule Wamkulu dancers at a hotel in Malawi, I was intrigued by the way they were introduced. The MC claimed that they were not actors, but were real spirits. And then he continued to say that, if an uninitiated person were to see the spirits, even to see one on the road – dramatic pause – they would DIE! So then he went through a quick pseudo-initiation so that we could all safely watch the dancers. I turned to my friend and said, ‘So what would happen if someone were to see the spirits on the road?’ And it sort of just took on a life of its own from there.

A Big Hand for the Spirits has been described as a “genre-blender” and that’s spot on. It’s a southern Africa adventure story, there’s a philosophical as well as a metaphysical side to it, and it has some pretty violent deaths and bad guys thrown in. Did you set out to write something like that, or did it all develop from the characters and the story?

I didn’t have a genre in mind when I wrote it, so – yes – it just developed. I knew the ending, so I had to work it out from there. Once I had my characters and had set them off on their journey, they sort of took over and started having really interesting conversations about life, the universe and everything. And then the story ended up taking on new life to mirror the concepts about life, quantum physics, magic, religion, and the nature of truth. If I had to label it, I’d call it African magical realism. One book seller in Cape Town has called it literary fiction, but I think that might be a tad pretentious.

White water rafting at Vic Falls

Would you tell us about the characters in the book, where they came from, and what roles you wanted each one to play?

You are a writer, Michael, so you know that almost all your characters reflect a bit of yourself and/or someone you know, but that they also somehow get a life of their own and sometimes just refuse to stay in the box you put them in. I don’t really remember how they happened – they were conceived in my head, then they were born, and then they dictated their own lives.
I knew where I wanted to go, and Casey and Wuthering were there from the beginning. Casey is slightly ADHD and – since the inciting incident – somewhat PTSD but her paranoia is well-founded because there is a hitman tailing her. She was initially based on a friend called Tracey but her name morphed into Casey for reasons that are obvious in the book. Also the real Tracey is not nearly as bad-tempered as Casey.
Wuthering is quite a gentle soul despite being intellectually formidable. Culturally, he is a bit of an enigma. In the novel, he refers to himself once as ‘a simple village boy’, which he was until about 12, but thereafter his life took an interesting trajectory. He was awarded a scholarship to an elite, boarding school where he was educated like an upper-class Brit, and he’s lived in California since leaving school. Initially, the only thing I was sure about was that he was tall, Black, and dreadlocked because the plot demanded that. The rest just happened.
Rachel is probably the only remotely normal person in the group of five, and she had to be there as a foil for Casey, and to bring another perspective into the discussions.
While writing the first draft, I woke up one morning and went straight to my desk and wrote ‘There are only 3,000 people in the world’, and created a whole (almost certainly not true) hypothesis. I liked it, and wanted to include it so Jeremy had to be born. I also needed a drug addict.
I’ve no idea how I ended up including Vic Falls but, once I’d decided on the rafting, Gavin just sort of developed. Here’s a confession: Many years ago in Vic Falls, a tall, muscular man with a blond ponytail overtook me walking down the road. I followed him into a shop, and got chatting but he turned out to be not nearly as interesting as he looked. Gavin is also loosely inspired by a person I once knew who was physically impressive and worked in an outdoor adventure industry (not river rafting) but could somehow never stand up for himself.
The two baddies are quite fun, too. Claudia I just made up – she’s your classic beautiful, heartless bitch – but Marco is based on a real person who once ripped me off. So – while in real life I am totally against violence of any sort – it’s kind of satisfying to give him a horrible death in fiction. It’s not obvious but, if and when he reads this, he’ll know it’s him.

Staying dry is not in the job description...

The story ranges across southern Africa, and much of the enjoyment of the book is in learning about adventures in places like the Victoria Falls. However, the climax takes place in Malawi. Is Lake Malawi a favourite destination for you?

I love Malawi. It is such a beautiful country and the lake is spectacular. Sadly, though, like many beautiful places, it is struggling with poverty, drought, and famine.
But I also love Vic Falls and Luangwa. Readers who’ve visited the places featured in the book will recognise them with fond memories and – I’m willing to bet – those who haven’t yet visited will be looking up flights to Vic Falls or Malawi.

South Luangwa National Park, Zambia

As part of the plot you invent a new recreational drug – Sweet Sixteen. Where did that come from?

The plot needed a baddie, and they needed to be a drug dealer. And I don’t really have much experience with drugs, so I figured if I make one up, I will know as much about it as anyone else. It also gave me the freedom to invent a whole theory about there only being 3,000 people in the world.

Who is doing the chasing?

There are some pretty mind-bending discussions of life and the universe along the way. How did that integrate with the novel?

The book can be read just as a rollicking adventure with lots of drugs, sex and whitewater rafting, but you can – if you want – dig deeper. The discussions about life, the universe, and the nature of truth happened because those are the sorts of conversations I tend to get into – and did even more when I was a student.
What I like about fiction, of course, is that I can create a world that mirrors the discussions. And some of the discussions are about how we create our own reality – the world isn’t just sitting out there waiting for us to perceive it, it’s created as we perceive it – a bit like we don’t know if sub-atomic particles exist until we observe them. But then we don’t know whether they only exist because we observed them. So, our lives unfold because we think about them. It’s the way that spells and curses work, and the way that high-powered achievers ‘visualise’ success and victory and thereby manifest that success.

I can’t see a sequel to A Big Hand for the Spirits, but I can easily see you writing another fiction adventure. Anything on the drawing board?

Yup. I’m gestating a vampire detective story and a creative non-fiction book about the history of the world. Let’s see which is born first.

Hmm. African vampires...?

The Sun Also Rises

Sujata Massey 

Sunrise in Coorg, India

I'd planned to write in detail about my travels in India, but it's been a hard day for me to concentrate. In Washington D.C. , the new administration appears to want to shut down many of the services the Federal Government provides to the people. An erasure of historical achievements by women and people of color; an attempt to rewrite the rules of who can be a citizen. All of it too staggering to follow. I wonder if you feel the same? ,

So my desire to write turned into a wish to share few moments of peace and beauty that I found on my trip. I found myself close to the founts of life on earth, the sun and the water.  

Greeters of the sunrise on Marine Drive, Mumbai

In a city as busy as Mumbai, hundreds of people turn out every morning to watch the sun rise over the Arabian Sea.  

View from the train between Karnataka and Goa

This view of agricultural fields and water, seen from the train as I traveled along the Konkan Coast, had no people around. 

The train journey from Mumbai to Margao, Goa, continued with hundreds of miles of tranquil views. Watching the landscape was so mesmerizing that a 9 hour journey felt much shorter.

Every color in the rainbow melted into this melange at Benaulim Beach in South Goa. And it feels good to know that sunrise and sunset are daily events that cannot be made redundant.

Writing at the SpaceBar and Old Chang Kee

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

Happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year Everybody!

This is going to be a quick, short post because of all the Chinese New Year prep (cleaning/ visiting/ coordinating) going on right now, but I really liked the tongue in cheek (I think) slant the Central Library took on this--recommending reading based on your zodiac signs!

I was at the library for the first Space Bar Write In last Sunday.

The library heard that writers were looking for writing spaces so, in a year long experiment that kicked off last Sunday, the Space Bar will be open to writers and wannabe writers from noon till 5pm the last Sunday of every month.

The Space Bar (known the rest of the month as Programme Room 1 in Basement 1 of the Victoria Street Central Library) provides an air conditioned space with tables, power supply, canned drinks (limited, Singapore style, to one each!) and of course access to the drinking fountains and toilets of the library.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought, why not try it?

This is my table set up.

Instead of working on an ongoing project (of which there are three at the moment) which would entail notes and coordinating and the risk of losing material, I decided to use the time to brainstorm a new idea for a fantasy middle grade book that's been floating around in my head for a while.

One thing I Really liked about the writing session was the organiser Christabelle (not sure of the spelling but that's what it sounded like) suggested we start by writing down on post-its (which she provided) what we hoped to do in this session; then at the end, write down what we'd actually done.

Usually when I sit down at the computer I'm shuffling notes I need to process, looking at word count targets etc. But that post-it made me think about what I would be happy with--

I decided just to do a brain dump/ vomit draft and targeted 2000 words...
...and ended up getting almost 3000!

Even though I didn't stay the full 5 hours.

What I really liked was getting to share space, for a while, with all these other people who were also trying to write. Some were collaborating in groups, but I had a table to myself--totally my comfort zone of being able to work alone without feeling isolated.

It also felt really good to be located inside the library, because when I got up to walk around and stretch I was walking around bookshelves, and it felt like being surrounded by encouragement.

And it also helps that there's an Old Chang Kee just outside--

Old Chang Kee curry puffs are (I've been told) the sign you've reached a stable relationship. When you're first trying to impress someone, you share fancy meals and fine wines and worry about the impression you're making. But when you're comfortable enough to buy each other an old Chang Kee curry puff, like the one your mum bought your dad after hearing he didn't get that promotion or that your big brother brought home for you the night before your big exam, you know that you're sharing a safe space.

And no, I'm not doing a curry puff promotion here, but I must say it makes a good reward for an afternoon's writing.

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!
May you be blessed with Health, Happiness and Hope in this coming year!

Victim of a Crime

Annamaria on Monday

Years ago, MWA-NY had regularly scheduled, monthly dinner meetings.  They felt to me like a gathering of my tribe.  After cocktails, munchies, and lots of conversation, we all sat down to dinner.  The night's planned program began just as desert was served.

On one memorable occasion...

Pardon me while I interrupt myself.  At this point, while drafting this blog, I stopped to look something up, because I wanted to write this:

On one memorable occasion eating dessert while listening to the speaker was a bit strange.  The dessert our venue served was vanilla ice cream with strawberry sauce.  The speaker was...

At the time, he was the Chief Forensic Pathologist for the State of Connecticut, but I could not remember his name. However, I knew how to find it.  All I had to do was google "Dick the Chipper, what the headlines called the infamous case he spoke about - of a man who killed his wife and destroyed the evidence by putting her corpse through a wood chipper.  There was bound to be an article, probably on Wikipedia. It would mention the name of the man I was looking for.  Look what came up at the top of my search:

Wow!  The number one writer on that subject is me???  If you want, you can see that blog from May of 2015 here.

I apologize for the diversion.  Let's get back on track.

The speaker was Dr. Henry Chung-yu Lee, the pathologist, who showed us slides of the chipped remains and explained how he and his staff proved their case.  While we looked up at the slides and, from time to time, down at our plates where our ice cream swam in pools of blood red liquid.  We crime writers, with Dr. Lee's full participation, reacted by peppering the discussion with a lot of increasingly hilarious blood and gore jokes.  I guess, for a forensic pathologist, dark humor is the best way to retain sanity.

Another such MWA-NY speaker was a Forensic Psychologist from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who spoke about his research into how perpetrators of street crime choose their victims.  The participants in his study were men jailed for committing such acts.  In his study, he showed them films of people going about their business and asked them to pick out, from the people in the films, the potential targets.  He said that the convicts chose people who looked distracted, tentative, or confused.  The crimes in question range from pickpocketing to assault. Persons who were decisive in their actions and walked with a strong gait were unlikely to be chosen victims.

After hearing his lecture many years ago, I sometimes have thought about how I myself walked when making my way in the world. I have always been quick paced and intent on where I was going. However, this past Saturday I myself became the victim of a crime.  My wallet was lifted from my backpack, probably while I was walking through a crowded piazza.

Since I arrived in late December, I have not carried a backpack. Yesterday was the first day, since I arrived here, that I carried one. Typically, instead, I jammed the few things I might need into a small purse that hangs in front of me.

But yesterday, since I wanted to do a bunch of errands - one of which would involve a wait - I wanted to take a book along.  So I opted for this purse, one I thought was well designed to keep my stuff safe.

But somehow one of Fagin's modern-day trainees was able to open the right one of the three compartments and snatch out my little red wallet and make off with it, completely unbeknown to me.

Once I got over the shock, and through three hours of struggling through the machinations of totally unhelpful AI to find actual people to cancel my debit and credit cards, I began to wonder how, on the ONLY day I carried the backpack, the thief chose to target me.

Then I realized. After a knee injury in September and a fall at the end of October, I have been teaching myself to walk slower and more carefully.  I am, to be frank, afraid of falling again.  And here, where the sidewalks and the streets are paved with stones, my feet are in greater danger of finding somethings to trip over.  When walking, I am paying more attention to what is under my feet than to what is happening around me.  I have no doubt that this is why that modern-day Artful Dodger noticed me.

I haven't been feeling all that good about myself after being robbed.  When I first thought about writing a blog about it, I didn't much like portraying myself as a victim.  Until I remembered that professor's research on how criminals choose their victims. Once I learned that, according to Google anyway, I am the world's foremost reporter on the conviction of Dick the Chipper, my ego got a much needed boost.

Viva MIE!

We Are Not Alone

Jeff––Saturday

Recently, I decided to take a break from closely following US political developments.  As a mystery writer, it’s discouraging to labor so hard concocting thrilling yet believable fictional twists and turns to our storylines only to see happenings and scenarios once thought unimaginable emerge as the true-to-life lead news of the day.

 

Of course, some exposure to current news is unavoidable. For example, I still (attempt to) listen courteously when my better-half rages about news I don’t want to hear, and I regularly keep up with the news coming out of Greece.

 

It’s the latter experience that prompted me to write this post. Paschos Mandravelis is a journalist writing a daily column on politics, society, and economics for Kathimerini, Greece’s newspaper of record. His column yesterday (Friday) was captioned, “When you don’t take your own advice.” It appeared to be a relatively innocent piece expressing the reporter’s views on the person chosen by Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to serve in the largely ceremonial role of President of the Republic.

 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (left) President Konstantinos Tasoulis (right)

But as I read on, I realized that in addressing Greece’s current challenges he was hitting upon matters that featured prominently in the strategies employed in the recent US election. Specifically, (a) distracting the voters’ attention from the nation’s “big problems--inflation, poor public infrastructure, etc.” by getting them to haggle among themselves over emotion-driven issues, (b) quarreling over “woke culture,” (c) pent up concern over “pension reform” and  “overhauling public education and universities,” and (d) a serious threat to the country’s health care system posed by the “explosion” in “pharmaceutical spending.”

 

Sound familiar?  What follows is the entire article.  As for me, I’m off to binge watch a bit of my friend’s new series on Prime Video, On Call.  For me, it’s the perfect fast-paced escapism remedy for all the reality that may ail ye these days.

 

Paschos Mandravelis

After the constitutional revision of 1985, the selection of candidates for the Presidency of the Greek Republic serves two purposes: One is for people to have something to talk about and bet on in cafes, so that we can forget a little about our big problems – inflation, poor public infrastructure etc.

 

The second has to do with symbolism. Beyond the petty party aspirations, the selection of the candidate for the highest and mostly symbolic office in the country aims at revealing the spirit of those who recommend him or her. Symbolism has long-term political effects. Sometimes these effects are immediate. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis fashioned a reformist profile for himself by voting against Prokopis Pavlopoulos (a former interior minister with the conservatives) for president in 2015, when he was recommended by the then coalition government of SYRIZA and ANEL.

 

The recent choices of candidates for president and parliament speaker have obvious symbolism. The unjustified (for the time being, at least) rejection of Katerina Sakellaropoulou for a second term as president by the prime minister has to do with New Democracy’s inner quarrels over the nonexistent – according to Mitsotakis – issue of “woke culture.”

 

There are also less obvious symbolisms. For example, the choice of Tasos Giannitsis from PASOK, is essentially the party’s self-criticism for the furious reaction to the former labor minister’s proposed and forward-thinking pension reform in 2001; correspondingly, PASOK’s emblematic Diamantopoulou Law overhauling public education and universities was the self-criticism for the well-intentioned Law 1268/1982, which generated many ills in public universities.

 

A key cause of Greece’s bankruptcy was pharmaceutical spending. From 2.4 billion euros in 2004, it exploded to 5.28 billion euros in 2009. The reason for this rally was the abolition of the list of prescribed medicines available to state-insured patients and its replacement by a more “flexible” system in 2004 by the then conservative minister of health, Nikitas Kaklamanis. Thus, the great paradox arises: Mitsotakis voted against Pavlopoulos because “he did not resist the sirens of clientelism” by appointing thousands of contract workers (as he himself stated on February 18, 2015), yet he now recommends Kaklamanis for house speaker, the third highest office in the country, despite the fact that he more than doubled the annual pharmaceutical spending during his term.

 

We should note here that, in November 2013, the late manager of the now-defunct Social Security Foundation (IKA), Yiannis Vartholomaios, had shown the then conservative prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis, two boxes of medicines and told him: “These are two identical medicines and have exactly the same therapeutic effect. The only difference is in their price. One is 10 times more expensive than the other. After the abolition of the list of prescribed medicines by your government, strangely all doctors prescribe the expensive and not the cheap one. And because of this, which has an obvious explanation, I believe that it is only a matter of time before IKA collapses.”

 

––Jeff

 

Vegas, Baby

Wendall -- every other Thursday

I got married in Vegas.

 

Goofing around on my wedding day.

 

It’s one of the few decisions I’ve made in my life that I have never regretted for one instant. 

 

In Caesar's Palace the day before our wedding.

I actually hit a jackpot on the night before our wedding.

The scene of the crime.

 

James and I joined the ranks of Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Michael Jordan, “Bennifer” and many others in tying the knot in The Little White Wedding Chapel on the “downtown” end of the strip. Here’s the link if you’d like to take a look. https://www.alittlewhitechapel.com/page/famous-couples

 

One of our "professional" photos

We were married in the tiniest chapel (not the drive through!) by the Reverend Roy, with the receptionist as our other witness. When James went to kiss me at the end of the ceremony, he accidentally knocked a column over and the whole backdrop went down. It was perfect. 

 

A series of “professional” photos came with our $200 wedding package.

 

 

That column is about to go down.

 

Sunglasses are a must for a Vegas wedding.

Almost twenty-one years later, as my (same!) husband and I watched a documentary on the history of Sin City, I thought about what the city has meant to me over the years and why I’m not sure I want to go back.

 

The dearly departed Stardust, my old writing haunt.

 

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1986, it took a while for me to make my way to Las Vegas. I had heard about the cheap hotel rooms and buffets, so when I needed to hide in a hotel room to finish my first script, I headed out in my 1965 Ford Galaxie 500, found a room at the Stardust for $19.99/night and settled in.

 

I would get up, work over a huge, cheap breakfast and hole up writing in my room until dusk. Vegas hotel rooms are incredibly quiet during the day. Then I would have a $3.99 prime rib buffet, take a drink to the slots, give myself $20 to lose, then head back up to write for another hour or so, watch cable—which I didn’t have at home—sleep, and start over. When I was stuck, I would walk the strip.

 

When Vegas tried to pull in gamblers with cheap buffets and free drinks.

 

In those late days of the 80s, some of the classic casinos had disappeared, but the Stardust, the Sahara, the Tropicana, Flamingo, Harrah’s, Maxim’s, the Riviera, Excalibur, the Thunderbird, Bally’s, etc. were still around, along with Caesar’s Palace. 

 

Excalibur, astonishingly still around.

 

During the early 90s, a whole new wave of themed casinos opened, as Steve Wynn and others blew up many of the older properties and added Treasure Island, the Luxor, the Stratosphere, the Monte Carlo and in the late 90s, New York-New York, the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, and Paris.

 

Courtyard at the Bellagio.

 

James's "hand eyelashes" in Caesar's.

 

The lobby of the Venetian.

The Venetian outside.

So the strip was an interesting mix of old and new by the time we got married. By then, the Stardust was gone, so we settled on the Sahara as our go-to hotel, with room deals as low as $25, free parking, and a fabulous history. 

 

The entrance to the old Sahara.

 

The free parking garage.

 

Heading in from the pool.

It originally opened in 1952 and, over the years, hosted performances by Sammy Davis, Jr., Liberace, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Cher, Tina Turner, and hosts of other others. Comedian Don Rickles started his career there and performed frequently.

 

It was at the far end of the strip, but we loved to walk, so that was no problem. 

 

Always loved the oversized feel of Vegas. See below as well.

 

We spent our wedding night at the Sahara and went several times a year from 2002 until the hotel closed in 2011. We always, always had fun. Although the property was sold and has been remade three times since, we can’t bear to go back, as it’s unrecognizable.

 

The Mirage before demolition.

 

They blew up the Tropicana not long ago and now the Mirage is just a large hole in the ground. There are no more cheap buffets, no free parking, and not many places for couples on a budget to hit the strip. However, the last time we went, we did visit some of our old favorites in the Neon boneyard, adjacent to downtown. 

 

You can still see the Stardust sign in the Neon Museum.

 

Sob.

So many casinos gone.

We all have to accept change, every day, but there are some experiences that need to be protected, intact.

 

So Vegas is somewhere we’ve decided, for the moment, to keep in our very happy memories, rather than in our itinerary.

 

--Wendall