Las Vegas is a huge sprawling glitzy city situated in the middle of the high desert surrounded by stark high desert mountains. Words such as surreal, fast-paced and hyper-reality quickly come to mind when describing Las Vegas. Words such as subtle and quiet are not often associated with this city!
Las Vegas used to be known as a gambling casino town. To those who
haven't visited in 20-30 years you would be absolutely shocked to see
what Las Vegas looks like now. Today, it is truly a town of
entertainment and the gambling part of this town is just one of its many
facets.
Where else in the world can you "visit" Paris, Venice, and New York all in the same city?! At last check the answer is no where but Las Vegas. This is a city that lives in the present and lives all day and all night. Things don't close here at night like normal towns. On a recent night, lines for the sports
betting in some of the major casinos were backed up 5 to 6 deep at 3am in the morning. The events of the "moment" are plastered around town on all of the billboards. If you drive a car in this city, you would have to be blind not to know "who" is coming to Vegas on such and such a date.
It seems like there is always an old casino being demolished to make way for the latest 'hot spot' casino or night club. Bigger is better, and new casinos try to outdo the old casinos in terms of glitz and attractions. Some casinos have resorted to creating imitations of well-known cities or famous world wide attractions. If you have never visited some of the "real" places, these imitations will leave you with a false sense of
expectation. For example, try visiting the Grand Canal in the Venetian Casino -
Gondoliers dressed in nicely pressed black pants and clean black and white striped shirts row their gondolas down the pristine Venetian canals (ho, that IS the bottom of the canal I can see!) to the tunes of Bocchelli playing softly somewhere in the background. The painted sky containing romantised clouds and stylistic lighting always gives an appearance of dusk, an opera singer might be singing on top of a raised Roman rotunda in "St. Mark's Square" and if you are lucky she will come up to you and shake your hand. It is all so wistful and dreamlike - just like being on your very own movie set.
The hospitality industry which is tied into gambling of course absolutely drives this town. It is hard not to find a business somehow tied into the hospitality industry.
Las Vegas is in a stage of incredible growth - new homes and shopping centers are exploding at a huge pace sprawling to the outskirts of the city. The Unions
have even held talks at times to slow down the growth as they cannot even keep up with the explosion.
You know what happens when you throw a rock into a still pond. Ripple
after ripple is formed. This is Las Vegas - except the ripples of growth
are not in water, rather they are rippling across the desert.
Read on to find out more about this unique and entertaining city as well as some of the attractions the author visited during his stay.
