"Earthly Xanadu: Las Vegas" a Las Vegas Travel Page by mabelyn

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Vegas.
The City of Lights: a 24-hour adrenaline-driven menagerie of madness where slot-machine euphoria mixes at 115 degrees and gives birth to a desert Disneyland? Yes, I said Disneyland.

Only downtown can you find the weary, scarred change lady too quick to let you sit idly by the slot machine, the weathered veterans in their well worn suits from another era pulling those unfaithful levers, holding on to their cards suspiciously as a 20 pound golden nugget mocks them through the bullet proof glass beckoning them to spend another quarter, dollar, twenty, fifty, a hundred...as much as their pockets and their egos can afford. Vegas, a desert empire reminiscent of the tales of Marco Polo, an oasis of exaggeration where every whim can me made possible; a virtual Xanadu of reflective delights that seduces like no other...belly dancers, white tigers, thrill rides, liquor, more liquor, pirates, fountains, gondolas, the Eiffle Tower, the Statue of Liberty, every variety of food imaginable, Mediaval jousting, lights, dolphins, palm trees, pools the size of entire city blocks, Elvis, acrobats, singers, pyramids, the David, gardens and Mardi Gras. Go twenty miles in any direction and you are in a different world, a primitive world that speaks of days when the earth was young...a desolate landscape that reminds you of the Voyager photos of Mars. Las Vegas is a fantasy, a place that shouldn't exist but in spite of that thrives. It's been carved out by greed, by the love of money and by the losses of millions. It's a place filled to the brim with stories and anecdotes, tears, joy, scandal, riches and highrollers. Four days is never long enough to scratch the glossy surface, to see what's really beneath all that glitz and glamour but alas these were my four days.

To read my journal go to: http://www.mabelyn.com