Las Vegas Strip, Nevada, United States
Las Vegas – what a place! It’s as gaudy and trashy as ever.
Some things never change. Actually, Las Vegas is a place that has undergone great
change over several decades of being one of America’s fastest growing cities.
My visits to Vegas have always been short. It is a place I just can’t see
spending an entire vacation. My main visits were in 1992, 2009, and even more
briefly in 2010 and 2020. While Las Vegas changed greatly between 1992 and
2009, since then there don’t seem to have been too many big changes. The huge
casino hotels along the Strip are pretty much the same ones that were there in
2009. I’m not such a connoisseur that I can say for certain none are new, but our
walk along the Strip with forays into New York New York, MGM Grand, Planet
Hollywood, Paris, Flamingo, Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, and the Venetian was
just about the same experience I had back in 2009. I guess there are some new
attractions like the Las Vegas Observation Wheel and the Las Vegas Sphere, but
these are ridiculously overpriced for the experience.
Why is everything so
expensive in Las Vegas? Why do people seem so eager to part with their money,
and I’m not just talking about one-armed bandits and blackjack tables. There
are a few free crowd pleasers like the indoor gardens and the fountain show at
Bellagio, but they are quite far between.
Walking the Strip is kind of like going on safari, with some
of the weirdest and trashiest examples of humanity you’ll find anywhere. I made
sure to be good and drunk for it, having filled up on Mimosas at Champagne Brunch
at Excalibur beforehand. Actually, I found the strip to be somewhat less trashy
that the Fremont Street Experience I went to in downtown Las Vegas once about
five years ago. The heart of things nowadays seems to be centered on a mile or
so stretch from Luxor to the Venetian, where the hotels exude a kind of faux
luxury that is actually just more gaudy Sensory overload and a total of more
that ten miles of walking over the course of the day.
2025-05-22