Las Vegas, Baby

i arrived in vegas before dawn yesterday, i had been sleeping fitfully, aware that we were driving through a pretty much empty desert landscape and i awoke to all this neon ahead of us. the freeway travels alongside the strip which is all stupidly huge so you get an amazing view. (ah i'm writing this sat by the pool - yes hostels in las vegas have pools, i think everywhere in nevada has a pool - and theyve just whacked some reggae on the hi fi, ah thats better). i tried to walk the strip yesterday, its quite far since all the hotels are so huge theyre quite spread out. the first hotel i went to was called stratosphere and is the tallest building west of mississippi unbelieveably. its actually quite scruffy inside and it costs a bomb to go up the tower so i couldnt afford to do it. theres also a mini theme park at the top with the worlds highest rollarcoaster. most hotels in vegas have rollarcoasters inside them, they come as standard. my favourite hotel was the venetian, which is modelled on venice, sort of. venice itself is not very big so the half-size scale of everything is sort of near enough to be oddly familiar and its not quite as tacky as it sounds as its sort of done quite well. tacky is not quite the word for vegas anyway as its tacky on such a grand, impressive scale that even though its lacking in taste, you couldnt quite call it tacky. so yes, there is an indoor grand canal with gondoliers and a fake sky and even during the day is lit so its permanently twilight. there is a st marks square with opera singers and a bridge of sighs with barneys' branding on it. outside there is a ducal palace and 'rialto bridge moving sidewalk' four words that should never go together. the casinos are basically just shopping malls. in vegas they think everything is imporved with the suffix -shop. so there is grand canal shops, caesars palace has forum shoppe including a schwarz branded trojan horse.

my highlight of the day was going to bellagio (one of the poshest hotels on the strip) and having the all you can eat buffet. i ate about 2 days worth of food in one go. i had a plate of sushi and dim sum, then a plate of cold sea food, then all the fish and then a steak. it was the best steak i have ever eaten, it was from one huge steak about 1 1/2 " thick and then they give you a slice widthways so its all pinky goodness. how did i manage to eat so much you may well ask? well i stuck to protein and had no carbs but even so, haldway through the steak i started to have problems. i foolishly was wearing a skirt with a stiff wasteband which i had to undo and then i couldnt do it up again and i was basically a beached whale. oh and i had pudding because you cant not have pudding. i then had a bit of a fear and loathing moment where i staggered around the hotel having halluncinatory palpitations brought on by too many mussels. seriously i was drunk on too much food. in vegas music plays everywhere, even in the street, seemingly from nowhere. i was drawn towards some opera and there was this huge lake doing schycronized fountain shows to music every 15minutes with a half size effiel tower in the background. it was actually awesome. then i had to go back to the hostel and lie down..