You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Suite 3716
It’s only the finest hotel room I have ever had the pleasure to be in.
the Palazzo Hotel is a shimmering diamond on the strip.
It’s bright and flashy. Decadence is the design of this magnificent edifice.
In a city where sparkle is common, the Palazzo is extraordinary is a rare jewel.
Like an oasis of opulence, The Palazzo is situated between the Venetian and the Wynn properties. It’s a spectacular place to be, like being a diamond pendant hanging between Dolly Parton’s most visible assets.
After checking into the hotel, I follow the crowd to the elevators.
Unlike the others toting bags and heading into the towers, I follow revelers in bikinis and swim trunks.
The signs say: Pool this way. It feels odd, but that’s the way I’m told to go.
Suite 3716 is a massive conference room with couches, and living space and a bed that folds into the wall. It has a bar a full dining table and chairs.
It’s like a Russian Nesting doll, there are meeting areas within meeting areas inside the capatious room.
“Welcome to the dream,” my buddy says.
He isn’t kidding.
Most of America is happy with a room at a Days Inn and a blanket that doesn’t irradiate under a blue light.
Walking into this room is like walking into a five star airplane hangar.
How big is this suite? A group of gymnasts could spin cartwheels across the floor. You could run 25 yard out patterns over the top of the sofa. You could run wind sprints from wall to wall.
The bathroom is ornate, decorated in glass and marble. It’s a woman’s dream with a make up bench and a glass shower with so many faucets, you have to be a submariner to cleanse.
I took a shower and it took me a few minutes just to turn on the water. there are 8 different metallic contraptions projecting from the wall. The shower head is as big as a plate. It is menacing, with golf spike water jets ready to rip your skin off. There are nozzles and levers and metallic hoses hooked up to ancillary shower heads. You need an engineering degree to bathe.
I’m butt ass naked looking at the wall for operational directions.
I try turning one of the multiple knobs. A sonic jet stream of water explodes out of the frying pan sized nozzle.
The water has been condensed to the molecular level and it cuts into my skin.
“Damn,” I grimace moving back.
Thank God the shower is the size of a Cadillac SUV so I can back against the wall.
I lather the shampoo into my hair and step before the blast.
It’s Niagara Falls. It’s a fire hose. It’s aquatic bb’s being fired at me from the Sin City Department of Water.
I put my head into the liquified frenzy.
In 10 seconds the soap is blasted from my scalp, along with scalp. Each hair follicle is hydraulically cleaned.
I wonder if the shower blasted a hole in my scalp. Am I suddenly a member of the hair club for men?
I step out of the shower and exhale. “Wow!”
How often do you get out of your shower and say “Wow!”
If you have, I’m sure your Wow has little do with water pressure, but I digress.
As I towel off, I wonder what indigent Indians bathing in a stank pond with cattle would think about this mechanism of imperial cleansing.
And while the shower is a big seller in this palatial room, it’s the patio that dominates.
From the front door of the suite to the back wall is a good 20 yards. And even though the patio doors seem to be miles away, they are the first thing I notice walking in.
The patio doors are wide open, and a refreshing dessert breeze is blowing in.
Only in Vegas do you set the air conditioner to 50 degrees and cool a barn sized room with the doors wide open.
I walk onto the patio large enough to host a beach volley ball game.
There are cushioned couches sturdy tables and deep, plush chairs. The ground is carved stone, smooth and cool to the skin.
Beyond the manicured shrubs, and potted floral arrangements, is the Palazzo pool. It is clean and refreshing, surrounded by palm trees and corpulent bellies.
Most people walk down a long hallway to the pool. They are stopped at a podium by a guard and asked to produce a room key. You enter the pool area and then hunt for a lounge chair and a towel.
Me?
I simply hop the low patio wall and within 10 seconds I immerse myself in pool side splendor.
People watch us hopping the wall. At first they think we are gate crashers. Soon they learn we are the luckiest group at the pool.
On one occasion, we entered the pool like everyone else. We walked down the corridor, showed our room key, and entered the main pool entrance. As I entered this garden oasis with the rest of the bathing suit wearing cattle, I felt like a glitzy plebian, a high dollar commoner.
“Wow, that actually sucked,” I said looking at my boys. “So that’s how the other half lives,” one of the guys said.
And that is when I knew how fortunate we are to be living the dream in suite 3716.
People in third world nations live in tin huts.
We are living in a room so spectacular, if it was a drug, it would get you 3-5 in prison.
The ornate abundance is so overwhelming, I should feel embarrassed. Instead, I’m ecstatic. I’m lathering my senses in it.
It’s marble and cushions and high thread counts. It’s losing your breath walking from the patio to the 3rd bathroom in the 2nd room attached to the suite.
Suite 3716 is what America, and more specifically Vegas is about.
As my boys often say “Some people have dreams, we have memories.”
Life’s Crazy™