Two June days in Las Vegas: gondolas at the Venetian, machine guns before lunch, Excalibur turrets, Bellagio fountains and showgirls under the Fremont lights.
We gave Las Vegas two days in June 2013, and the city used them to impersonate half the planet: Venice before lunch, Paris by dusk, a medieval castle on the walk home.
The Strip, continent by continent
The Strip is best crossed by pedestrian bridge and best believed in small doses.
Crossing the Strip the only sensible way, by bridge, with Treasure Island photobombing.Excalibur, a thousand-room castle that takes itself exactly as seriously as it should.The Venetian runs a canal through a shopping arcade, and honestly, it works.St Mark's Square under a ceiling doing its best impression of dusk.Paris at dusk: half-scale tower, full-scale crowds.The Bellagio fountains mid-routine. You wait for the finale like it is a headline act, because it is.
Guns before lunch
Only in Vegas does the morning plan read: coffee, then machine guns.
Inga on the range at Machine Guns Vegas, taking to it alarmingly well.Dileep behind the scope. The paper target did not survive.
Neon, feathers and one moonwalk
Nights split between the Strip and downtown, where the older Vegas lives under a giant screen.
MJ Live at the Rio. We went in humming and came out moonwalking, badly.Research purposes. The Lady of Spain kept our dollars.Permanent showgirls, permanently mid-kick.Downtown under the Fremont Street canopy, souvenir slush in hand.The showgirls of Fremont Street, who pose with a professionalism we can only admire.One last canal by night, gondolas off duty. June 2013.
We also drove out to Hoover Dam, which deserves its own page, and rolled in from the Grand Canyon still covered in trail dust. Vegas noticed neither.
