Las Vegas is a city of dazzling lights and faded shadows. And it's like that with everything. Sparkling lights sit side-by-side with unsightly buildings, strip club signs next to children's clothing stores, and a bustling nightlife with exhausted midday desolation. Getting to know it started with a view of the night city from the mountain at the entrance. The huge plain pulses with the straight lines of avenues, hotel lights, giant signs, and space-age towers, merging in the distance into a blinding horizontal line. Las Vegas trembles with the electric tension of the thoughts and desires of hundreds of thousands of people. And you involuntarily begin to feel this wild, inevitable rhythm, realizing that before you is a legendary city... It was about 4 a.m., so the rest was just checking into the hotel in a half-daze and sleeping.) In the morning, it turned out the car had broken down; repairs took about 4 hours, and after that, we set off to explore the city. Our girls had spent a couple of days there before the Grand Canyon, so they knew exactly where to go. And so we went) To my deep disappointment (and perhaps not just mine), Vegas turned out not to be what you imagine. From the inside, it's not full of lights and luxury, but a rather deserted city with only one main street where everything is located. And it's not laid out in a way that makes you gasp at what catches your eye, but rather at a decent distance from each other. Expecting to drown in the light of lamps and neon signs at night, I found the night lighting frankly lacking. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. In the morning (meaning during the day), we went to look at the hotels, which are also casinos and shopping centers. To gamble, they asked for our passports, so fake IDs apparently don't work here. I wasn't 21, so I sat by the broken-down wreck (the car=)) and flipped through flyers for prostitutes, which the Mexicans hand out here because prostitution is legal)) Moreover, when handing them out, they slap the flyer against their hand to attract attention, and that's why in some places the city center turns into a continuous competition of performers on plucked instruments))) In general, the whole point of Vegas is the hotels, specifically that they all have different themes and each has its own casinos and shows; you just walk around, look at the interiors, and pick any one. There's a pirate hotel, a Venice one, a Disney one, an Arabian East one, and so on. Roughly speaking, there are about 15-20 decent ones. First, we go to the Treasure Island hotel - tropical theme, vegetation everywhere, a pool, and a nude bath. If you're lucky, you can get into the VIP pool by pretending you live there. The girls managed it the day before, in several hotels at once; they say the one at Treasure is the coolest. But it didn't work for us - six Russians were asked for their room keys))) Also, every hour from 6 o'clock, they put on a water show about pirates. The show is so-so; you can see that the people are clearly slacking off, so the crowd disperses in some bewilderment, but that's understandable - it's free, after all)) The next hotel is Caesar's, with Roman mosaics, vases, a bunch of shops, etc. Then Sahara - Arabian style and an excellent buffet for $12.) After lunch, Venice. It's cool because of its appearance (an almost exact copy of the Doge's Palace in Venice, you can take a photo so you can't even tell the difference=))) and the fact that you can take a gondola ride, inside and outside the palace, but it costs something like $20. The girls had ridden it the day before and said that riding inside isn't great, so if you go, try the outside. Inside, there are again shops and roulette machines. The sun began to set, and people drifted from their cool, cozy hotel rooms toward entertainment. It's the perfect time to go to the Stratosphere tower!!! The observation deck at a height of almost 300 meters and the crazy carousel there will leave impressions for a long time (
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