09-12: Las Vegas

Ok, so I arrived on a Tuesday evening at my hotel in Las Vegas. I had the following plan: Stay up during the night and sleep respectively relax in the hotel during the day. This would have some advantages: Las Vegas isn't located in Death Valley, but still, it is in the middle of the desert and temperature easily climbs up to 37°C during the day, even in September. After boiling in the desert during the last few days I just wanted to avoid the heat, at least for one day. And even though they say that Las Vegas never sleeps, the real action starts when the casino billboards lighten up at dusk.

First of all I distributed all my luggage in the whole room and had a long, long shower. Then I ate the rest of the food that was left from my roadtrip with Sophie: marshmallows, an apple, a beer and half a pack of pringles. After checking the internet I decided to head out to the strip although it was already midnight. But as I wrote already, I didn't even consider the possibility that Las Vegas could be dead at any given time, not even at Tuesday night. Not knowing yet that there is a shuttle bus from the hotel to the strip, I waited approximately half an hour for a public bus. I can tell you: some of the people on the bus are really creepy. I can't describe it. Now when I arrived at the strip around 1 am, I overheard a proper Vegas story. A guy that looked like half a bum told another street cleaner, that once he had a car and a credit card etc, and now he owes a casino money. Anyways, I wanted to check out the northern part of the strip including its free shows. The strip is about two or three miles long from end to end and it can be really exhausting to walk the whole distance. Thats why I divided my strip exploration into two parts. And otherwise I wouldn't have anything else to see in the next evenings. So after I took the first bunch of pictures and processed the first impressions I had to notice that there wasn't much action at all at this time. The huge and luxurious malls were closed, there were no shows anymore and most of the people were heading to their hotels or were already there. Despite that it was fascinating. I just bathed in the looks of these huge and completely exaggerated hotels and casinos. There was i.e. Caesars Palace covering an area of probably two or three times the Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Or there was Circus Circus, where artists do tricks above the casino tables while people are gambling. Or there was the Venetian: This one had a copy of a whole venetian canal (filled with water of course), street and market place including typical venetian boats and gondoliers inside it... IN THE 2nd STOREY! That was unbelievable. Additionally, they painted the ceiling like a blue sky with clouds. It was completely surreal (check out the pictures). After two hours of checking out the north strip I felt hungry again. I bought two hot dogs and a drink. This was one of these huge energy drinks they have in the USA where the can already looks like it can't be healthy for you. The black colour of the liquid only sustained my feeling. But I had the plan to stay up a little bit longer and sleep during the day, and this drink should help me with it. In fact, when I finally went to bed at half past five in the morning I still couldn't sleep. I think it took me another hour to doze off. And then the whole plan didn't work out: I couldn't sleep longer than 11 am. This can't be healthy at all I thought. Anyway, I was just hanging out in my room, ate something, went to the pool for a bit, watched cartoons, surfed the internet and tried to organize the part of the trip that would follow Las Vegas. In the afternoon I visited the Atomic Testing Museum. Situated close to Las Vegas is the Nevada Test Site where hundreds of atomic bomb tests have been carried out. In the fifties, you could see the mushroom clouds from Las Vegas. The museum showed the history of nuclear science in Nevada. That was my first visit to a museum since Pearl Harbor. After that I went back home for dinner and then back to the strip to see the shows. The Bellagio has dancing fountains every 15 minutes, the Treasure Island has a whole musical with moving ships, sirens and pirates. The MGM has a lion habitat (unfortunately I couldn't watch my favourite animals because it was closed due to maintenance) and the mirage has a whole erupting volcano (under construction too L). I was a little bit tired, so I went back to my hotel early (1 am) where I gambled for the first time of my life before I went to bed. I tried Black Jack, which is a fairly easy game. I started with 50$ at a minimum 5$ table and 40 minutes later I walked out with 105$ (after giving my dealer a 10$ tip). That improved my mood immensely! I felt really lucky and decided to gamble once again the next day. Before going to bed I triedto find smth to eat in the hotel, but McDonalds and Subway were already closed. Dunkin Donuts provided me with two donuts which I could afford now because of my lucky streak.

I slept a little bit longer this time but it wasn't too much again. I stayed the whole day in the hotel, organizing things, writing a blog post, uploading pictures and videos. In the evening I headed out to the strip again. This time I wanted to see the southern part. This is the part with a replica of the Eiffel tower, a shiny pyramid, a copy of the whole skyline of New York including the Statue of Liberty and an integrated roller-coaster and lots more. I strolled along the strip when suddenly I began to feel light-weighted. From one moment to the other I felt like I was walking on clouds. That can't be good I thought. I had not enough sleep during the last nights plus I had been eating more or less only fast food for two days. I didn't want to collapse in front of one of those bars or casinos, so I tried to find a public toilet. Now that was a mission, but after ten minutes I found a shiny large capacity restroom and sat down for a quarter of an hour. The next objective was to find some food. Unfortunately I was in an area of the strip where there was no cheap cheap food like hot dogs or something like that available. So I just went into the next gift shop, tried to remember which of the chocolate bar brands had the slogan "Und weiter gehts", finally grabbed a Snickers and a bottle of water and walked out again. The Snickers and the water really helped me and soon I was feeling normal again. Awesome. There was nothing worth mentioning the rest of the evening except that I lost 25$ at a Black Jack table.

The next day I checked out at 11 am, grabbed my reserved car from Avis, did big scale grocery shopping at WalMart (the only place where you can get cheap food in the USA it seems) and drove out of Las Vegas towards Arizona.