The Strip

Short Version:
Living high on the hog, we see a bunch of low-lifes and some high-class art and architecture

Long Version:
The transition from living in a van to a luxurious hotel with king bed and unlimited hot water was tough, but we managed. The purple corn chips with chipotle salsa helped, as did the fancypants Gnarly Head Zinfandel we were drinking. Leaving the room was kind of tough, but the madness of Las Vegas Boulevard was calling to us, with voices made of neon and excitement, so we put on our party frocks* and hit the Strip.

Things we saw on the Strip:
- Fat people
- Rappers
- Darth Vader and a TIE pilot
- Drunk people
- Enormous sculptures, of horses and mythological figures
- Elmo from Sesame Street
- Huge blown-glass things
- Spiderman
- Homeless people
- Sunglasses vendors
- People carrying plastic yard-glasses of artificially-coloured frozen margarita
- Batman
- Can-can girls
- Rednecks (aka meshbacks)
- Mexicans handing out business cards for hookers**

The hotel/casino complexes were pretty amazing:
- Paris, Paris and its Arc d'Triumph/Eiffel Tower/balloon adornments
- The Venetian/Palazzo, where the architecture of Venice has been brought to full-sized life, including canals and singing gondoliers, all indoors
- Caesar's Palace, where an entire city block has been transformed into an amalgam of ancient and modern Rome
- The Bellagio, Italian opulence di eccellenza
- The ultra-flash ultra-modern Vdara and Aria hotel/apartment complexes

No wonder Amerikans feel like they don't have to leave Amerika; Las Vegas provides replikas of the good bits of the rest of the world, conveniently packaged and without the inconveniences of international travel: no funny money; the people who can't speak Amerikan properly can be safely ignored; and no intrusive, privates-manipulating airport security searches.

The Treasure Island Hotel and Casino was a bit shit, but we went inside to the Cirque d'Soleil show Mystere, which was pretty excellent. The outdoor Siren's Cove musical performance was very much not so excellent. Indeed, it well and truly sucked. And the crowd was full of weird-looking drunken Russians or Belarussians or Bulgarians or whatever they were, all smoking revolting-smelling cigarettes and talking too loud. We went home to the 34th floor*** of New York New York, to the king bed and the endless shower, where we drank some more delicious wine before sleeping the sleep of the virtuous**** caught in the City of Sin.






* = Not literally

** = We collected hundreds***** and alphabetised them

*** = The floors were numbered 1, 2, 3, 30, 31... and on up from there. Not sure what happened to floors 4 through 29

**** = That's us, in case you were wondering

***** = Of business cards, not Mexicans.