I am back from my trip to Las Vegas. Actually, I already arrived home yesterday morning and used the day to rest and recover. Unfortunately not from any crazy Vegas experience, but from my night flight. Although I usually sleep everywhere without any problems, I can’t when there is a small kid screaming for the whole duration of the flight, i.e. for five hours. That’s some perseverance I must say. But it broke my sleep. There were also several dogs on the flight and they didn’t make any noise. No offense.
Anyway, so I spent three days in Las Vegas. I will show and tell you more about it soon, but here are my first impressions for now:
Las Vegas is like a huge playground for adults. It feels you can do whatever you want to at whatever time you want to. I am not sure if kids have much fun in Vegas, but for grown-ups it is a wonderful place. There are slot machines, thrill rides like the rollercoaster on top of the New York New York hotel, shows, bars, etc.
Las Vegas is not the place to watch every penny. This is not the place to go to when you are on a tight budget. I wanted to see and try as many things as possible, and esp. in Vegas nothing is for free. Well, sure, you can walk into every hotel on the Strip for free and have a look. But unless you only want to have coffee from Starbucks (or McDonald’s, I think their coffee is cheaper) and some rubbish snacks from Walgreens, and then take a walk to see all the cool attractions from the outside, you need to dip into your purse. I won’t check my credit card balance for another few days (out of pure fear), but I know it’s been totally worth it. Things like the High Roller, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, coast $20 or more, but I loved the ride.
I felt like in a big bubble. As long as I was on the street level of the Strip, I could only see the famous hotels, huge neon signs and many cars. When in a hotel I even lost my sense of time because the huge halls don’t have windows. It doesn’t really seem to matter in Vegas though. The casinos are open 24/7. I only had to check my watch in order to be on time for the shows I went to. Las Vegas is actually in a basin of the desert, surrounded by mountains, which I noticed once I went up in the air, i.e. riding the High Roller. And the Strip is a small road where hotels manage to distract people from the real world.
Las Vegas is many places in one. You can travel from Egypt to New York City, to Italy, specifically Venice and Rome, to Paris, and of course the US within a matter of minutes. Oh, and staying in the Excalibur, I also found myself in medieval times. I found it impressive how detailed the imitations of all those places are. The ceiling frescos in Caesar’s Palace for instance are amazing. I also stood at the Trevi Fountain and Venice Canals.
It is too much. Everything is a little too exaggerated, too kitschy, too artificial. But since I live in Puritan Boston now, it is a wonderful change! I said it on Instagram before: Vegas is like me wearing both my leopard patterned coat and high heels in Boston – and so I find it obviously very exciting.
It is not like in the movies. I expected more craziness to be honest. You know like in “Hangover”. Maybe mid-December also isn’t the peak travel time for Las Vegas, but I didn’t see anything absolutely mad. Thanks to a stupid jetlag, which I really hadn’t thought of before, I didn’t go to any night club, but my general impression was that most tourists visiting Vegas are very normal people. There were some bachelerotte parties, but the women walked around in tracksuits in broad daylight. I certainly have to go to Las Vegas again to verify if people always behave that normally.
© janavar