My stay at the Vegas hotel where Man City star Jack Grealish spent £80,000 partying in one night
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JACK Grealish was papped coming out of the Cosmopolitan hotel as their Marquee summer signing — I was more like a free transfer no-one noticed going in.
Yet you don’t need to be a big name England footballer to lap it up in Las Vegas.
Sure, spending £80,000 on the plush hotel nightclub’s VIP drinks package must be nice. And going by the pictures, the Manchester City star seemingly enjoyed his lavish end-of-season trip with his pals.
Me? I was tucked up in bed in my room way above him on the 35th floor while he was partying into the wee small hours downstairs.
And it’s fair to say my bill was a tad less than Jack the lad’s.
Then at 46 — and more of a seasoned pro when it comes to this magnificent city — that suited me and my wife, Arleen, just fine.
The spacious room we had in the luxury five-star Cosmo — with its huge balcony overlooking the famous fountains at the next-door Bellagio — was stunning.
It used to be that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but it’s the kind of place on the strip you just want to tell people about.
It’s a world away from the constant buzz that’s on the casino floor downstairs and outside too.
Getting to Sin City from Scotland isn’t as easy as it once was.
In the good old days, Virgin Atlantic used to fly direct from Glasgow but you now need to go through either London or Amsterdam to get there from Scotland.
We were up at the crack of dawn for the 6am red-eye to Schiphol before a four hour overlay.
Booking into a lounge definitely helped get away from the madness of the terminal, but it’s still a ten hour flight from the Netherlands to Nevada, so by the time you get there it’s been a long old trek.
The time difference means you arrive mid-afternoon so it’s not like you go straight to your cot when you check into your hotel room.
Well, you could, but the sooner you get onto US-time the better, so staying up is definitely for the best.
The thing about Vegas, though, is that if there’s one thing you don’t really need, it’s a watch.
Whenever you walk into your hotel reception it’s impossible to tell whether it’s five o’clock in the morning or five o’clock at night. There are no windows for anyone to look outside and see whether it’s daylight or darkness.
I woke up at around 7am every single morning and would go down to the lobby cafe for some teas and croissants. And the casino floor would be going like a fair.
The bars would be crammed with folk who’d either been there all night or had just arrived from the airport. The gambling tables were always bustling with the sound of the puggies heard 24 hours a day.
So while folk are heading for the coffee shop for their first brew of the day, there are many more people in full party mode.
Our routine was to get to one of the palatial pools for a few hours sunbathing after breakfast each morning and laze there until lunchtime.
Summer temperatures in Vegas are sky high and even at 9am it can be well over 30°C.
We’d go for a wander in the afternoons before returning to another one of the pools for a couple of hours before sundown.
It was Gin O’Clock around 7pm when we were getting ready to hit the town for dinner. In terms of restaurants, Vegas has it all.
For a quick bite at lunchtime the likes of Shake Shack, In-N-Out Burger and Panda Express are our favourites. For proper meals you can’t go far wrong at places like The Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs or STK.
But there are so many options in each of the hotels, and the Cosmopolitan is no different. We had a phenomenal meal at their Scarpetta.
It’s a really classy Italian in the Cosmo with spectacular third-floor views overlooking the famous Bellagio Fountains, but the place ain’t cheap.
We went for the six-course tasting menu with paired wine and the total bill was over £300. But if you’re celebrating a special occasion — like your wife’s birthday, for instance — then I can highly recommend it.
To be honest, you can’t grab a sandwich in Vegas right now without it costing a bob or two more than you think it should. But the standard of food at the Cosmo is top class.
There’s a magical pizza place on the third floor — if you can find it, as it’s known as the Secret Pizza with no signs showing you where it is — where a single slice of margherita will set you back £6.20.
And there’s a cracking breakfast joint called Eggslut where a sausage, egg and cheese butty will cost you almost £8. The way the pound is against the dollar, these prices are the going rate.
If shopping is your thing, there are two Outlets at either end of the strip where you’ll find brand names like Ralph Lauren, Nike, Burberry, Armani, The North Face and Calvin Klein — and much more.
But our best buy of our trip was two tickets for the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace to see Sting, left, which came to £180.
The former Police frontman’s residency show wasn’t a sell-out but it was quite busy, so much so that I had to say to the guy next to me ‘don’t stand so close to me’.
Which is pretty much what Grealish would have said to those bouncers escorting him out of the Marquee nightclub.
