One of my very favorite things to do when I come to Las Vegas is to take a very brisk walk along the Strip, walking through hotels and their shopping areas. I start at one end — normally Mandalay Bay or Luxor — and walk along the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard northbound. If I’m feeling very energetic, I can usually get up to Treasure Island. Then I cross the street and I take an equally brisk walk down the other side. This is not a straight line walk; sometimes I’m on the sidewalk, sometimes I’m on a casino floor, sometimes I’m in a shopping area. I zigzag my way north and then south. I do this early in the day, always before noon, and I usually start around 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning. That’s when Las Vegas is just starting to wake up but not yet fully engaged.
I did that walk today, although I only got as far as Caesars Palace. I like Caesars, although I’ve never stayed there. I always visit it when I come to town. It was kind of neat to see sashes over the statuary proclaiming Caesars 50th anniversary. It’s really an historic hotel casino, mostly because it’s one of the first on the strip. It used to be a very classy joint inside, but now not quite as much. Everything gets tacky over time in Las Vegas.
One of the reasons I didn’t get any further than Caesars is because of time constraints — I was supposed to meet some friends for lunch. The other reason is that I’m simply out of shape and couldn’t keep up that brisk pace for more than what turned out to be a total of 5 miles. Who says hiking needs to be done in the woods?
I did do some shopping in Caesars Forum Shops. I bought a couple of pairs of jeans and a sweater. I also bought dark chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the Hershey’s store in another casino. As I mentioned on Twitter, it was a real pleasure to be able to walk through a shopping area without having to stop at every single watch shop or men’s shoe store. That’s one thing about my wasband that I don’t miss it all.
Anyway, these are some of the photos I took along the walk. One of the things I love about Las Vegas is how surreal it is; I think some of these photos illustrate that.
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Las Vegas is wonderfully bonkers, like a 3D hallucination you can touch. In the space of a mile or two you can move from Ancient Rome to Venice (with perfectly clear water in a tiny canal) to Paris, with a half scale Eiffel Tower, complete with buildings running through its base.
I particularly like your shot of the fibreglass Corinthian column complete with undisguised moulding seam and lights in the base of the architrave! Straight from a redundant Hollywood studio set, I suppose.
Is it shameless mockery or mad adoration?
We met a couple on honeymoon. The bride’s dad had offered to pay for a trip to Paris (the real one) but the groom said “I asked him to give us the money and told him we could see it more easily in Vegas”.
(They were from West Virginia).
I agree that Las Vegas is bonkers. That’s why I like it so much. Nothing is real and nothing pretends to be real. It’s all eye candy of the most insane kind. As for Caesar’s Palace — a lot of the original stonework and statuary is real stone. Like that statue of David — it’s real stone and it’s been there for at least as long as I’ve been going to Vegas — 30 years?
I’d rather go to Europe than Las Vegas if offered a free trip. But the real Paris? Give me a wine and food tour throughout the country instead. You can keep the tourist attractions and photo opportunities.
I agree about Paris. It looks stunning but the locals tend to be rather snooty and pretend not to understand my awful French, which seems good enough in the rest of France.
Like you, I much prefer ‘La France profonde’. Fresh bread and pate and/or cheese, with a nice bottle of Burgundy in some sleepy village in Provence beats the Louvre every time.