Loathing in Las Vegas

A miniature Eiffel tower. Blah.

"It's very tacky here."
- my wife on Las Vegas, after approximately 8 minutes in the city.

I didn't like Las Vegas at all. I admit that I had a strong prejudice against it and didn't give the city a fair chance. Actually we only stopped in Las Vegas because it was a convenient place to spend a night driving from California to Grand Canyon. That, and we had to see it once, didn't we?

I am not interested in gambling, and like to drink my alcoholic and other beverages in cozy pubs rather than gigantic nightclubs. A plastic and neon complex, its existence based on Nevada's lax legislation on gambling, alcohol, marriage and divorce, built in a middle of desert, is not an appealing concept to me.

We spent one night in Las Vegas, and the things I best remembe are:

• A casino-hotel-restaurant complex next to our motel. It's name was a colloquial expression for woman's breasts.
• A black hotel modeled after an Egyptian pyramid, shooting a ray of light towards the sky from the top.
• A plastic imitation of Paris, a plastic imitation of New York and a plastic imitation of Venice ("plastic" used figuratively here, I know that they are not actually made of plastic).
• A flyer I was given on Las Vegas Strip. It suggested that we should visit a night club show where scantily clad young women shot heavy machine guns. We didn't.

I found Las Vegas repulsive. However, I understand that this is because of my personal tastes and preferences. Obviously many people enjoy the city, good for them.

Of course, I could have found things in Las Vegas that are interesting to me. There's a wide variety of cultural activities, museums and theaters, that I would probably have enjoyed and I could have spent a nice couple of days in the city. However, the number of days we could spend on our trip was limited, and I chose to spend those days elsewhere. I believe this was the right decision for me. (Sidenote from Marja: It was. For both of us.)

Leaving Las Vegas, we saw a gold-plated hotel, owned by Donald Trump, in the rear mirror. I stepped on the gas pedal to make it disappear.

We stopped in Las Vegas June 11th and 12th 2015.