November 26, 2007
New Buffalo casino & new luxury resort in Costa Rica connected by a weak transition
This article says that staying in a casino / hotel is like experiencing a foreign culture. I remember a professor from my university days who hated this sort of thinking. Going to Disney's Epcot to expereince 24 different countries or whatever they have and Las Vegas's street where everything is enclosed and the lights make it seem to be day or night absolutely infuriated him.
When I was in university his thinking was pretty influential but these days i find myself agreeing (with some hesitation) with the author. I would like to spend a weekend in Vegas and another in Disney to experience whatever that is. I won't equate it with experiencing a foreign culture - living in Korea the past 6.5 years has been experiencing a foreign culture so a weekend in a hotel doesn't really compare.
Anyway, the article is about a new casino in New Buffalo, Michigan. Supposedly this is a beautiful casino that "resembles nothing of the gaudy glam of Vegas." I'm still pretty sure that my old English professor would disapprove.
One of the attractions is that it's easy to escape the casino:
But it's also easily escapable. Downtown New Buffalo, which brings a healthy dose of weekender retreat, is a five-minute drive west; the southern tip of the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Trail is a 10-minute drive; Warren Dunes State Park is 15. There is the lake; there are antique stores; there are quaint cafes at which to sip coffee. And none of them is smoky or ringing with slot machines (see 5 More Reasons to Go).That sounds nice, but so do most of these Las Vegas day trips.
I'm going to make a rickety transition to my next article if you'll bear with me. The author of the first article says:
Think about it: Top-notch restaurants, well-appointed hotel suites, luxurious spa services, live entertainment, boutique retail outlets, free-flowing alcohol and, of course, gaming galore -- in most cases, at all hours. Minus the whole "experience nature" thing, casinos essentially provide all the major amenities of a luxury vacation under one neon-clad roof.If you're main interest is experiencing nature, you might be considering Cost Rica (like I was last summer). Enter my second article. This is a luxury resort in Costa Rica that aims to protect the environment and help the local community. Well, probably they mostly want to make money but they say they want to help the environment and the locals. Hopefully, it's true. Supposedly the resort will be integrated with the local communities somehow though it's hard to imagine how that works in practice considering the huge income gaps between the locals and the people living in luxury but it sounds nice:
“There are a lot of walled-off resorts in the world,” Mr. Case said. “There is a better way. What we’re doing here is taking the best property in the hottest market, and designing a resort community that integrates with the neighboring communities in an environmentally sustainable way. That is the future standard of luxury resorts."
By the way, funny story about living in Korea. I was playing World of Warcraft online the other day with a fellow American. When I told him I was living in Korea he asked what state that was in. I said, “Korea the country.” He said he’d never heard of the place before. It seems a little hard to have not heard of Korea considering the political turmoil of the past few years with North Korea and how so many products are imported to the US from South Korea. Then there was that war most people should have studied in school at some point... Posted by James Trotta at November 26, 2007 10:31 AM | TrackBack
