Raid in Nevada

LAS VEGAS ON THE WAY THERE

Having arrived in Nevada from California with three travel companions aboard a car rented in Los Angeles during a long Tour of the U.S.A. To get here we crossed a desert region made of stones and few scrubby bushes, and in Nevada too the situation doesn't change. On the border between the two states, however, there is a large shopping center that with big signs informs you that here it's possible to gamble. Gambling is in fact Nevada's main business, and slot machines of every shape and size are truly everywhere, even in places where you would never expect them. You enter a gas station and find a slot machine, you go into a grocery store and find another little gambling machine, in short, wherever you turn you can try your luck.

In the shopping center where we stop to refuel there's even a roller coaster!! We continue along the desert road until, as if in a mirage, Las Vegas appears, a city built out of nothing like a big amusement park for adults. We arrive with the sun and settle into one of the enormous 5,000-room hotels, the Excalibur, which at a decidedly reasonable price lets you live for a day in an environment of great luxury. After all, this is the city of sequins, neon signs, dazzling shows, futuristic buildings. Our hotel is in a kitsch-medieval style in the sense that it does reconstruct a fairy-tale castle, but the way a child would do it using Lego bricks. The interior is furnished in that style too: chandeliers, little balconies, lace, bow-window courtyards.

The room where the four of us sleep is spacious and has two large double beds, which is fairly rare in America, where you generally sleep in one-and-a-half-size beds. We have dinner in one of the many restaurants of the Excalibur, where for a few dollars you can help yourself at a buffet and eat everything, from American specialties to international cuisine, from Italian to Chinese. Even the pastry section offers a great assortment, though it focuses more on quantity and appearance than on quality. The drink dispensers are completely at your disposal and you can help yourself at will, even tasting absurd things like cherry-flavored water. Night falls and the thousand lights of Las Vegas come on, so we take the opportunity to walk the Strip, the long avenue where the main hotels face.

Starting from the pyramid of the Luxor, from whose apex a beam of light is projected toward the sky, we continue, passing in front of our hotel, then cross the Strip to enter the hotel of the film company Metro Goldwyn Mayer, whose symbol is the lion, and indeed the entrance is preceded by the mighty golden statue of this animal. In the lobby, a glass cage where the forest has been reconstructed houses some lions, much less mighty than the statue outside; in fact, heedless of the tourists, they have dozed off. Our long walk continues as we observe the New York New York from the outside, a hotel whose facade reproduces the skyline of the Big Apple, complete with a faithful reproduction of the Statue of Liberty and the insertion of a roller coaster that winds around the skyscrapers.

Among the thousand lights of the Strip emerges the bulk of the scale reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, half the size of the original, the symbol of the Hotel Paris, which also reproduces other French architecture such as the Opera House and the Louvre. In front of the Paris, the bulk of the luxurious Hotel Bellagio frames an artificial lake where a spectacular dance of illuminated fountains is regularly presented, beautiful! We enter the Bellagio because we would like to see its famous indoor gardens, but they are being set up, so we limit ourselves to seeing the splendid colored glass flowers placed on the ceiling of the lobby. We then enter the nearby hotel in the style of Rome of the Caesars, with reconstructions of period settings such as Nero's Domus Aurea.

The exterior style of the facades is too approximate and the Colosseum appears too stylized, while the reproduction of the Trevi Fountain is very beautiful, even if it has little to do with ancient Rome. We run to Treasure Island to see the pirate show but it's already over, so we limit ourselves to seeing the reproduction of the sailing ship and the gaming room inside. The most beautiful hotel in Las Vegas, however, is the Venetian; the facade reconstructs some of the main Venetian monuments such as the Doge's Palace, the Clock Tower, the bell tower of St. Mark and the Rialto Bridge. It's strange to see cars passing under the Bridge or advertising billboards on the Bell Tower, but this is Las Vegas! The Venetian doesn't disappoint inside either, extremely luxurious with small lakes and waterfalls, but the real jewel is, on the second floor, the reconstruction of part of St.

Mark's Square, complete with canals, gondolas and a daylight sky. You go up here with an escalator, and when you arrive in the "Square" it feels like broad daylight, because the lights are studied so well as to give this optical effect, which is produced not only by the fake sky but also by the tiles that seem wet. The Venetian satisfied us, and so with a long walk we return to the Excalibur, our hotel. The following morning we continue the tour on the road to the Hoover Dam, a powerful dam whose construction, damming the course of the Colorado, allowed the development of Las Vegas in such a desert area. You get there through a road of arid hills, and after crossing the dam you enter Arizona.

LAS VEGAS ON THE WAY BACK

Coming back from the great Parks of Arizona and Utah, the road, if you are headed to Death Valley, passes again through Las Vegas. Back in Nevada from Arizona, we stop at the large shopping area on the border between the two states for a snack, and so here we are again in Las Vegas, which welcomes us under the sunlight. It's Saturday and hotel prices have more than doubled. This time we find accommodation at the Luxor, and our room is right inside the great pyramid, so much so that the ceiling follows its angle. We have dinner as last time at the all-inclusive of the Excalibur, since at the Luxor it's more expensive, tasting a bit of everything but filling our eyes more than our stomachs. On this second occasion too, the Strip awaits us with its grand hotels, and this time we start at the New York New York, visiting it inside, where a part of the "Big Apple" has been reconstructed.

We continue to see again the wonderful dance of the fountains at the Bellagio, and since we're there, we go back inside the hotel to see if the floral display is finished. Our persistence was rewarded by a spectacular garden with automatons on a train theme. On the way out, after seeing the fountain dance yet again, my travel companions went back to the hotel tired while I continued the visit, entering the Imperial Palace again and managing to see at least the finale of the pirate show at Treasure Island, which, by the way, at least from what I saw, was nothing exceptional. I continued almost to the end of the Strip, entering the Circus Circus, also not excellent, then turned back, stopping at the aforementioned Venetian, too beautiful not to do twice.

I also entered the Paris, whose lobby has the "legs" of the reproduction of the Eiffel Tower penetrating it and where characteristic Parisian views are reconstructed between one gaming table and another, and even a subway station. On Saturdays the Strip is more crowded than usual, and late at night some strange people circulate too, like a guy who, with a dry-powder fire extinguisher from who knows where, amuses himself by spraying people. The Strip is long and I have walked a lot of it and I'm tired; I stop, curious, in front of an outdoor bar where a lot of people have gathered; there's a bartender-juggler who tosses bottles in the air like bowling pins and makes cocktails. At the Excalibur I take the free monorail to the Mandalay and from there I walk to the Luxor, where with difficulty I manage to reach the room: I don't have the key card and without it I can't take the elevator.

Finally, taking advantage of other hotel guests staying on my same floor, I manage to get to the door of the room and have it opened for me. The following day, after an abundant all-inclusive breakfast at the Excalibur, we leave Las Vegas and after not many kilometers of desert we leave Nevada and enter California.