Las Vegas and the Parks of the West

Las Vegas

Las Vegas - Day 4

After a 3-hour flight here we are in the capital of gambling; arriving from above you can already glimpse the city's potential: a long road with very distinctive buildings, a pyramid, an Eiffel Tower, gigantic blocks. Thanks to the time zone we have almost the whole afternoon free, so, after picking up the hire car at the airport, we reach our hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton, near the main road, Las Vegas Boulevard. The feeling this city gave me is of pure adrenaline, a desire to discover it at once, to go out immediately to see what it offers. The hotel is fantastic, luxurious, and to think it's one of the cheapest among the "luxury" ones. We get back in the car and reach the "centre", which is practically 20 km long; we park at:

the MIRAGE HOTEL

and go to visit it. In fact, the only thing to do in this city is to visit these mega-hotels unique in the world, with their attractions. The Mirage is one of the most important. We go in and find ourselves in a jungle, with palms, streams, waterfalls and even two white tigers: behind reception a coral reef about twenty metres long, then, the inevitable casino. But the hotel's greatest attraction is outside: in fact, at dusk, the enormous fountain with waterfalls that faces the street transforms into a savage volcano, with fire and flames rising into the sky: a breathtaking spectacle. Opposite the Mirage, another surprise appears:

the VENETIAN HOTEL

I don't know if it's actually the most beautiful hotel in the world, but I certainly think the money needed for its construction has no rivals. From Las Vegas Boulevard, the most extravagant street on the planet, amid lights, sounds, fake erupting volcanoes, Eiffel Towers, Pyramids and castles, a "mirage" appears that you can hardly believe: St Mark's Square, complete with campanile, Doge's Palace surrounded by the Grand Canal with the famous Rialto bridge... astounding. But what you see from outside represents the smallest part of the surprise you get when you go inside. The entrance recalls the great European museums, with enormous frescoes.

Inside the hotel an area of shops faithfully reproduces St Mark's Square and the painted sky seems to move; in a little canal you can take a gondola ride passing under typical Venetian bridges!!!!!! naturally all life-size; anyone who doesn't want to throw away a good many dollars on a gondola ride, which we leave to the unwary Americans who probably will never come to Italy, can happily stroll along the little streets of Venice, cross the bridges, and admire all this spectacle from above. The atmosphere is typically Italian, with famous arias warming the environment, and Italian restaurants with outdoor tables (which to tell the truth are indoors because we're inside a hotel). The only difference from the "real Venice", beyond the fact that one is original while the other is only a copy, lies in the fact that here the canals are crystal clear and blue...

And to think this is only the 2nd floor of the hotel; by escalator you reach in fact the enormous casino on the 1st floor; imagine placing a bet at roulette, and while the ball spins awaiting the lucky number, looking up and thinking that above the ceiling, who knows how many cubic metres of water are flowing (let's hope the ceiling holds!!!). Built in 1999, the hotel offers 3036 rooms over 36 floors, the largest and most luxurious in all Las Vegas. The Venetian Resort is one of the four enormous hotels that have opened in Las Vegas in recent years, adding 13,000 new hotel rooms and a touch of refinement to the cathedral of gambling in the desert, at the modest cost of 5-6 billion dollars. To reproduce the city's characteristics, the hotel relied on a company specialising in period architectural details.

The builders went to Venice and spent three weeks there, taking three thousand photographs of what they were interested in replicating. But obviously they couldn't make reproductions in marble and stone: the Venetians had 600 years to do it, and they only two". They therefore resorted to prefabricated and lightweight materials. The sculpture of the archangel Gabriel, for example, is made of foam and polyurethane, and covered in 22-carat gold. For many it's the classic "American over-the-top spectacle", but seeing it is certainly very impressive.

We dine at the Mirage, and for about $12 each you can stuff yourself at the classic "all you can eat" places; practically you can really eat everything, endlessly and with no time limit, from pasta to fish to desserts. TRULY A CITY UNIQUE IN THE WORLD!!!

National Parks

Zion Park - Day 5

We leave Las Vegas, a bit traffic-clogged in the early morning, heading for the parks of the West. Just outside the city we're in the middle of the desert; wide, half-empty roads, driving is a real pleasure, and the stress of Milanese traffic is a distant memory. After about an hour of travel the landscape changes, becomes mountainous, tending to red, and recalls the famous American western films. We thus arrive at our first destination, Zion National Park. The location is enchanting, the visitor centre is situated in the middle of a valley surrounded by red rocky mountains, almost Dolomite in shape. We take the road that runs through the valley, stopping now and then to admire the landscape and take photographs; unfortunately the sun is disappearing behind the clouds and the colours lose a little.

The peaks are beautiful and exceed 2000 m, with fanciful names like Court of the Patriarchs (a very short path leads to a viewpoint), Altar of Sacrifice, The Great White Throne. Along the valley flows a river, the Virgin. So we take a walk of about 1 hour there and back, a nice path (Emerald Pools Trail) that first crosses the river, then reaches a little lake where there should be a small waterfall, but the season is dry and only a trickle of water remains; then the path climbs among gigantic rocks, until it reaches a plateau from where you enjoy a beautiful view over the valley and all the peaks. An immense sense of peace. The day is almost over, we reach our motel at the park entrance and take a nice swim in the pool, surrounded by this supreme landscape.

We then have dinner in a little open-air restaurant, based on grilled meat ($40 for two) and admiring a beautiful sunset, with the mountains turning vivid red. The atmosphere is pure Far West.

Bryce Canyon - Day 6

The road leaving Zion towards Bryce Canyon is spectacular; it's a road with red asphalt that climbs up to a pass, almost grazing the peaks. Here you can admire the Mesas, cone-shaped heights smoothed by the wind. Along the road you cross the Red Canyon, just a foretaste of what Bryce will later offer. Another half hour and here we are in what will be the most unforgettable park of our trip: B.C. is a natural amphitheatre going from 2400 metres to 2800 metres, entirely flanked by a scenic road through the forest; and you can't imagine the marvellous panorama that awaits you beyond those pines. In fact, as we approach the edge of the canyon, we see enormous amphitheatres of spires intricately carved in the rock rising from the ground. In an instant, the vivid colours of the park appear to us in all their splendour.

There are very many trails that from the various viewpoints lead down into the canyon, but unmissable is the Navajo Loop Trail, a circular route of about an hour and a half that starts from Sunset Point and allows you to enter the furnace of red spires; incredible the contrast between the colour of the rocks and the blue of the sky, it gives the impression of being on another planet. If the descent is easy, the climb back up is more tiring, but the effort is amply repaid. We drive the whole scenic road of about 50 km, stopping at all the viewpoints: Sunrise and Sunset, Inspiration and Bryce Point, before settling in at the beautiful Bryce Canyon Lodge, the only possibility of overnight stay inside the park. For dinner we decide instead to leave the park to go to the buffet at Ruby's Inn, a decent choice at modest prices.

Lake Powell, Page - Day 7

We reluctantly leave Bryce, in search of another natural beauty: Lake Powell. Arriving near the lake, we look for the Wahweap Lodge, from where the boats leave for the most spectacular point of the lake, the Rainbow Bridge. It's an almost perfect natural rock arch, 100 metres high and as many in diameter. The cruise is fairly long (about 5 hours round trip) and fairly expensive ($80 per person), but the landscape is fantastic; in fact it skirts the most marginal part of Monument Valley, with the classic rock formations appearing here and there on the shores of the lake. The water is an intense blue, and the natural bridge is truly a spectacle that leaves you open-mouthed; the boat stops for an hour, you can get off and with a short walk you reach right under the bridge. This projects a kind of rainbow-shaped reflection into the green water below.

There are two tours a day that leave from Wahweap, one early in the morning and one in the early afternoon. Tickets can be bought directly at the hotel reception. Watch out for the time zone, because arriving from Bryce Canyon you have to put the clock back an hour. For the overnight stay we went to Page, a little town full of western-style restaurants; we ate in an Italian restaurant spending little, good pasta and excellent bruschetta.

Grand Canyon - Day 8

We take the road towards the Grand Canyon, crossing the lands still inhabited by the Indians; we enter the South Rim from the East, and a road of about 50 km with many viewpoints awaits us. We're at over 2000 m but it doesn't seem like it at all, because the road crosses a dense forest, and the canyon can't even be seen from the road. You have to park in the first rest area and walk to the edge to see this unique spectacle; a sensation of infinite space, of grandeur and immensity. The North Rim seems so close, and yet it takes hours and hours by car to reach it. At the bottom you can see the Colorado, which with its impetuous force has carved out these mountains over the centuries. It's hard to describe the Grand Canyon, it's certainly one of the most imposing natural spectacles in the world.

Driving along the road we stop at the various viewpoints (Desert View, Yaki Point, Grand View and Yavapai Point), and as you go along the Canyon takes on different appearances and colours. We arrive at the Visitor Center, and the peace encountered during the visit of the Canyon along the scenic road is abruptly interrupted by a great bustle of tourists, cars and coaches. Luckily it's May: I imagine that visiting these places in July and August with big crowds the atmosphere loses a little. My advice is to drive the whole scenic road eastwards, precisely for this reason. After dinner at a self-service place, we go to enjoy the sunset at the rim; the colours, however, aren't as marvellous as I'd imagined and as soon as the sun sets, an incredible cold hits us

Las Vegas - Day 9

Our adventure in the parks has unfortunately come to an end but an indelible memory will certainly stay with us; a long return towards Las Vegas awaits us; along the way we encounter Lake Mead and its enormous dam. Finally we arrive at Las Vegas and this time we stay directly on Las Vegas Boulevard, at the MGM, where 4 enormous luxury hotels are connected directly to one another by walkways and the Sky Train. The MGM is the largest hotel in the world and in fact you see it right away; it takes us about twenty minutes to reach our room from reception.

In the afternoon we visit other hotels, among them the Luxor (shaped like a pyramid with a sphinx at the entrance), the Excalibur (reconstruction of Merlin the magician's castle, with an evening show of dragons emerging from the water), and the New York, a perfect reconstruction of the metropolis with the Statue of Liberty, skyscrapers and a roller coaster outside, while inside, along with the enormous Casino, the various areas of the city have been faithfully reconstructed, such as Central Park, Wall Street, China Town, etc. But by now nothing surprises us any more...