Page 12 of 12
Las Vegas, Nevada
I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up
The slideshow comes to its thankful, screeching halt in Las Vegas, the last place I visited and, generally, a good place for things to end.
As someone who travels whenever he can, Las Vegas has lots of built in advantages starting with plenty of hotel space, cheap and frequent flights, some marginally interesting things to see and several In-N-Out Burgers (that last one being reason alone to visit just about anywhere). This was my fifth time to Las Vegas in the past ten years and with each visit I have gone to the trouble of staying at a different hotel, although this past hotel was nice enough that such practices may finally change. This time out I stayed at the Venetian, a centrally located hotel with damn nice rooms, suites really. My typical room came with luxuries such as a separate, sunken living room, multiple televisions and a bathroom bigger than some of the other rooms I stayed at just a few night before. All that plus the cheaper, non strip view from my room on the 22nd floor included this amazing collage view of (from left to right) the Venetian, the Palazzo and the Wynn, all lined up and ready to play.
Still at the Venetian, but this time outside in the crazy 110 plus degree heat, although it had probably cooled down a good five degrees or so by dusk. Luckily it was a dry desert heat, meaning that is ever so slightly more manageable than the humid heat I'm used to. And while it is certainly nice to not be sweaty for a change, the whole instant chapped lips and dehydration thing eventually starts to wear down on you as well.
Meanwhile the outside of the Venetian (pictured below) feels somehow authentic, a task the interior has real problems with. Sure you can nitpick about the exterior saying things like the Rialto Bridge is oddly proportioned (and never meant to be seen from a distance like that) or that the real campanile didn't have big banner ads hanging all over it, but overall things still mostly work outside. Inside the storefronts and fake canals are best looked at as something that has as little to do with the real Venice as, well, the Venetian I guess.
The newest casino on the strip, the Palazzo is attached to the upscale Venetian but still tries to act like its even more upscale cousin. Its casino floor feels like a more spacious Bellagio, its expensive restaurant collection can stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone else's and its shopping mall makes the Venetian's fake canals look even more fake. Of course as someone who doesn't really gamble, eat at expensive restaurants or incessantly shop, there's really not all that much for me to do except look up and admire the view.
If those familiar steel forms look, er, um, familiar, then you've probably already guessed that Las Vegas is getting its own Daniel Libeskind building. What you might not notice are the buildings around it, products of an all star architecture team that also includes separate buildings by Helmut Jahn, Rafael Vinoly, Kohn Pederson Fox, Gensler, David Rockwell, Cesar Pelli and (batting cleanup) Lord Norman Foster. Together they are planning a mini city of hotels, casinos and condos in interesting (though sadly unremarkable) towers on the site of the old Boardwalk Hotel, smack dab on the strip between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo. Even though it is only partially finished, the project is jarring to see on the strip, not because of its clean urban design but rather because it looks so incredibly different (and frankly kind of odd) up against the fake Lake Como at the Bellagio and up against the fake New York city skyline just down the strip. Maybe something a bit more fake would have been a more contextual choice.
If the strip is all fantasy and Midwestern tourists, then downtown Las Vegas is a gritty decaying city full of all kinds of addicts plus a few European tourists who didn't have a good guide when they booked their hotel. Saving downtown from itself is the Fremont Street Experience, a canopy that covers the street and hosts coordinated light/sound shows at regular intervals throughout the hot, dark night. When I was there the show was as odd as odd can be, a tribute to Queen featuring 30 year old songs, British flags and flying album covers. What this had to do with Fremont Street or Las Vegas I'll never know.
And while the light show certainly was interesting, Fremont Street and its classic signs beats out of place old Queen music any day.
One last picture, one last fake sunset (it's actually a sunrise but I thought that sunset sounded better), one last view over a darkened desert as yet another slideshow comes to its inevitable end.
