Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, the city of sin in the middle of the desert and mountains. One main street, the Strip, where all the major hotels are located—replicas of famous world cities. A hotel with Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Venice, something Greek, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, and dozens of others.
What I remember most are the dancing fountains near the Bellagio hotel. Unrealistically high and different every 15 or 30 minutes. When you watch the water, it seems like you are truly seeing a dance of living people. It's indescribable! The best shows in the world are here.
When you arrive in Vegas, everything seems amazing: the hotels are luxurious, the streets are lively, the restaurants are cheap, palm trees, tourists, heat. During the day, only those who have just arrived walk the streets. Everyone else is sleeping off last night's drinking in their cozy, air-conditioned rooms until evening, only to emerge at night.
Everything here is built so that you can't walk down the street straight, let alone cross it, without going inside some casino. And in general, a hotel here is much more than just a place to sleep.
Since it's hot year-round, everything is indoors. On the ground floors are casinos, restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops, clubs, pools, concert halls, bars, and above that are the rooms.
In short, by walking the Strip from north to south, you end up in almost all the famous casinos and hotels in the city, even if you didn't plan to :)
It's easy to find cheap accommodation here. A room that we paid $100 a night for in Los Angeles, and even more in San Francisco, we rented in Vegas for $30. Prices in bars are much lower than in Manhattan. In short, everything is done so that the tourist is satisfied, fed, and drunk, and leaves all their money in the casino. "When leaving Vegas, no one should have more than 10 dollars in their pocket" is the motto of this city: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!!!
To be honest, you get tired of all this pretty quickly. By morning, the tourists go to sleep, and only lonely elderly ladies sit at the slot machines. Every day is the same; the hellish money-sucking machine never stops working, neither on weekdays nor on holidays. Bands with pomaded 70s-style hairstyles play in the bars, and Elvis Presleys wander the streets.
Groundhog Day in a 24-hour format.
There is no real life here.
It's a fake city, a myth, a mirage, it's the bubbling melody of a slot machine that you can't beat.
There are no parks here, you don't see local residents, there's nothing to do here for longer than a couple of days.
It's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
But evening comes, and you go to a bar again, and think about how much fun you're having in this city today.
This is Sin City, try to escape.
