Around the World in 80 uhmm Minutes??

---

The idea would be preposterous unless you had the fortune of being one of the crewmembers onboard a space shuttle, which can actually go around the World in about sixty minutes as it travels in low Earth orbit at speeds ranging from 18,000 to 26,000 miles per hour. But aside from the unique experience of space travel in itself and the incredible views of Earth from space, what would be the point of doing such a thing?

My friend, colleague, and mentor Jack Jacquet used to tell me that most Americans like Las Vegas because it allows them to see the “World” without having to exert much effort to do it. Jack, as a quintessential French national who has traveled the World extensively and lived in the Southwestern US for a while, used to make fun of the typical US tourist who travels outside his or her land and sees 20 countries in 20 days, eats everyday at the local McDonald’s restaurant and returns home with a ton of pictures, a suitcase full of souvenirs, credit cards with no more credit, plenty of exhaustion, and little else.

I had to agree with Jack that for this kind of person going to Las Vegas and walking leisurely along the Strip would give him or her approximately the equivalent experience. You can visit “atmospheric re-creations” of Southeast Asia, Luxor and other sites in Egypt, the movie studios in Hollywood California, New York City, Paris, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Venice and other sites in Italy, etc… And you don’t even need a passport!

As I was looking forward to returning home after an exhausting workweek, I was forced to extend my stay in Las Vegas one additional day to take care of a few outstanding items related to my company’s participation at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. I ended up finishing everything I needed to do by the middle of the afternoon and was left with just a couple of free daylight hours. Jack’s comments came to mind as I was observing the hordes of people walking the Strip with either a bottle of beer, a glass of wine, or any other conceivable kind of drink in their hands.

I decided to give myself a photo assignment for my last eighty minutes of daylight in Las Vegas: I was going to go out, walk the Strip and capture the most pure synthesis of World mimicry that I could find in that time. If I could not synthesize a location within a few minutes, I was going to move on to the next location without further delay. To make justice to this assignment, I knew that I would have needed more time than just eighty minutes. Walking the entire length of the Strip (without taking any pictures) would have taken several hours because of the traffic, the huge crowds, and people’s tendency to shuffle their flip-flop-attired feet as they roam leisurely from one place to the next.

I started at Mandalay Bay Hotel and moved northbound from there. The assignment yielded a few interesting images (some of which I am including in this blog entry), but by far the best part of the assignment was the set of experiences that I collected taking the photos. One of these priceless moments occurred when I was asked by a very aggressive tourist at the Luxor hotel to step aside so that he could snap a picture of his buddy in front of one of the statues there. Though the two of them arrived in the area a few minutes after I got there, they noticed that I was only taking a photo of the statue and considered that I was just wasting their time… Priceless!

---

Photos

Temple Detail in Luxor
Luxor Hotel that is...

Pharaoh's Statue
Outside Luxor Hotel

Lake Como Villa Detail
at Bellagio Hotel

Lady Liberty
at New York Hotel

Ramses Likeness
Inside the pyramid at Luxor Hotel

The Pyramid
at Luxor Hotel

Comments

[David Daniel]

You found it!
Luis, you are amazing! You can find "something" in the middle of the largest "nothing" on the planet! I was working there for 2 weeks last year and the best thing I found about Vegas was the fact that it was down the road from Zion and Bryce... I avoided "The Strip" like the plague! You have an amazing ability to separate the "wheat from the chaff"... I certainly couldn't do it! :-)

[Yasu]

Just something
As formar Producer for Natural History Program , I can say, even in here Vegas, you can find amazing wild life. A bird, just around Luxsor this morning, they singed just like a signal of mobile phone call. Pi Pi Pi, PI, Pi, Pi, PI-PI-Pi. I was loooked for my mobile phone.