City of superlatives and contradictions

After we caught up on sleep yesterday during the day, we were ready to hit the Las Vegas nightlife last night.

And what a city it is! So much here just doesn’t make any sense and somehow it still does somehow “fit”, because it is “Vegas”. It feels a bit like some crazy architects and city planners came together for a brainstorming on “what would be the craziest thing I’d love to build” and then got the go-ahead to turn their ideas into reality.

Because why would you...

...build such a city in the middle of nowhere (in the desert),

...create the largest man-made lake (Lake Mead) right next to it,

...construct many of the world’s largest hotels more or less on one street,

...hardly see any people during the day, but at night be hardly able to cross the road because of the sheer number of people,

...hand out the most explicit strip-club flyers right outside the M&M superstore (i.e. one of the highlights for the smallest in the family)

and

...have Barry Manilow and Cher still on stage with 100 years of age (or something like that)?

Answer: Because it is Las Vegas. (And perhaps also: If we don’t do it here, then Dubai will do it.)

We were back in our hotel around midnight – somewhat tired, overloaded with impressions, but also fascinated by what this city has to offer. Lucy and Fiona thought that they had dreamed it all, but, ...hey, where would this photo with the Elvis Brothers then come from...?!

This afternoon we will pick up our RV / motorhome / campmobile (i.e. our home for the next 10 days). And then we are off to the National Parks of the American West. I suspect, we won’t have regular internet access in the days to come; but we’ll see...