Sunday At The Trop Pool With Jamie

It was much too hot Sunday to do anything other than swim, but where to go? My 16-y/o Little Brother Jamie and I weren't in the mood to rub elbows with the neighbors in the unremarkable pools at either of our complexes, what with the Las Vegas Strip just up the way. And thanks to one of our most celebrated past journalistic collaborations, we know the ins and outs of every pool of any importance in Vegas, and the Tropicana is the best unguarded option. The Flamingo is also pretty good and usually easy to enter, but they do occasionally have guards asking for ID and we just weren't in the mood, the high being 108 and all, to do battle.

Amusingly (see pic above right), the Trop now has a sign we hadn't ever noticed before warning us to "be prepared to show Hotel I.D." We never saw a suspicious soul again. What's more, they provided towels!

Tropicana, why do we love thee? Well, for starters, unlike most pools on the Strip, it's more than three feet deep. The crowds tend to be lighter, especially on hot Sunday afternoons, and that pounding 20-foot waterfall (see beyond Jamie's shoulder) always feels so nice. The Trop also seemed to have a fair mix of young hotties and unappealing oldsters rather than one or the other, which always makes people like us feel out of place. (...since crashing the pool of a hotel we're not staying at never bothers us much for some reason.) I will say, however, that the guy to Jamie's left in the waterfall shot had piercings in both nipples and a colorful Speedo, both inappropriate for someone on the far side of his flabby forties.

I was a little surprised by one thing: The swim-up blackjack tables indicated you can't play unless you're a hotel guest. That seemed to fly in the face of recent information we'd heard that the very presence of gaming means that the pool must be in some way open to at least the gambling public. On the other hand, I wonder how they could handle people's money in the pool, so I wonder if I had gone inside the casino and gotten some chips, would that have covered me? But what is the policy, that's what I need to find out.

OK. I was surprised by two things, actually. Wi-Fi at the pool is a good idea. Wi-Fi for $14.95 is extortionist. I wonder if this is a separate fee from what a hotel guest would be charged in the rooms. Or maybe there isn't any Wi-Fi in the rooms at the Trop? Entirely possible. But still. That's probably the highest Wi-Fi fee I've ever seen anywhere.

Also, why does it look like an egg? And read that sign carefully, please. Check E-Mail! Chat With Friends! Keep In Touch With Associates! Does anyone who would possibly wish to be online by a pool really need an explanation of the thrilling benefits of the Internet! I'm a little stunned it doesn't also say, "Find a sex partner for tonight!"