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Published: August 18th 2008
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After travelling around South America for 4 months, we will miss so much... the craziness, the colourful people, trying to communicate in Spanish! Back at home we only hear the bad things about the continent and how dangerous it is but we didn't have any problems and every country we visited was absolutely amazing.
We head to the US for the final part of our trip and our plan is to travel all the way across the country, visiting as many of the spectacular national parks along the way. Having said that, we start the trip in Las Vegas! A couple of friends from our South American travels were there and we all thought it would be great to catch up in Vegas. But what a difference a couple of days can make, one day seeing Blue Footed Booby chicks, to the next being in the bright lights of The Strip in Vegas!
We actually arrived in Los Angeles, so we picked up a hire car and drove to Vegas. It took pretty much most of the day, and diving out of LA was an experience in itself... driving on the wrong side of the car, and the road,
The Stratosphere hotel
.. the tallest building for miles. for the first time as well as battling our way through the traffic on the 10 lane freeways, but somehow we made it with only one wrong turn!!
The first thing we noticed about Vegas is the temperature, getting out of the car we were hit by a wall of heat, it must have been well over 100F and not what we were used to. We weren't complaining though! We stayed at the Stratosphere, in a huge room with a separate living room, what luxury for a couple of backpackers! The best thing about Las Vegas is that the hotels are so cheap because they want you to spend all your money in the casinos... we even had to walk all the way across the casino floor just to check in, then had to do the same with our big backpacks on as well! Probably not the usual sight in the casino...
We always try to settle into the culture of the place we are visiting, so we played on some slot machines and ate donuts for breakfast!! One of the best things was just to walk around looking at the huge hotels on The Strip. They were
all so massive, and you could easily get lost... which I guess is the idea. They all have casinos and restaurants, but some, like the New York New York hotel, have a huge roller-coaster and the Mirage had a small zoo with Dolphins and White Tiger Cubs... we didn't visit these as we're not to keen on this type of zoo, but it gives an idea on how big these places are. The Venetian was lovely with a river built into the hotel and inside they have painted the ceiling to look like the sky, could almost be Venice. There are so many hotels we didn't get round to looking at them all. Caesars Palace had to be the biggest with lots of different buildings with a replica of the Coliseum for the shows. Each evening some hotels put on a display, the Bellagio has the water display and Treasure Island hotel, which is themed to Pirates of the Caribbean, have a pirate fight between 2 boats on the river outside of the hotel ending in fireworks, all pretty spectacular.
One evening we headed to the downtown area where we found the older side of Vegas, and spent the
evening walking up the famous Fremont Street, lined with tourist shops and of course, casinos. Above the street is a huge TV screen and every hour they turn off all the lights on the casinos and play music and videos above the entire street.
Whilst we were there the NBA Summer League was on, and as Simon loves NBA we took a trip to the Arena to see the rookies and players coming back from injury play in a tournament, so we got to see rookies of the Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons and Dallas Mavericks amongst others... shame the NBA season won't start until after we leave but hopefully we will get to see more sport along the way, including an NFL game somewhere.
Just about every hotel has a show each evening. We really wanted to see Cirque du Soleil and found out that in the Mirage hotel they had a performance to The Beatles songs so we just had to go and see it. The show was fantastic... of course the music was great, but how the performers did the stunts from the ropes and ladders across the theatre was incredible!
We leave Vegas about
$100 up between us, mainly won on the Roulette Wheel, which wasn't bad going! So we say goodbye to the fantasy world and neon signs and start our journey to the quieter side of the United States, starting with the canyons of Utah.
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