photos of the weirdest place on earth

At least the weirdest place I’ve seen so far – Las Vegas! I’m finally getting over the shock of being back home. I could have stayed much longer, although I’m sure I’d be totally sick of it after a week or so. The surrealism really appealed to me. As did all the shiny things.

These are nearly ALL Lomos, thanks to the aforementioned Camera Tragedy. They also look a little grainy to me so I hope it’s just my monitor. The original photos were amazingly good. Who knows – yet another reason to go digital, no more scanning and getting poor results! Oh, and speaking of digital cameras, thanks very much for all the helpful notes – it gives me an excellent reference frame to start my searching.

Okay – first of all, the place that intrigued me most from the outside:

New York New York!! Yes, apparently you do have to say it twice. You could see New York New York from all over the strip, and I was just fascinated by it. The first night we were there I took off by myself for a little bit, and tried to walk down there. I discovered it was WAY farther than it looked – we were at Treasure Island (or “TI” as it seems to be called now, in an effort to shed the family-friendly atmosphere it once cultivated) and I walked for like half an hour and was still only to Paris. SO the day I opted out of the Hoover Dam visit and spent the day alone, I rode the monorail to New York New York first thing. Much better, and still plenty of exercise as the monorail stations are way back behind the hotels so you have to walk about ten miles just to get to the station.

Sadly, though, New York New York was way cooler on the outside than on the inside. Inside it’s little miniature New York streets and shops, with (of course) slot machines EVERYWHERE. Which would probably have been tremendously impressive had I not been inside the Venetian and Caesar’s Palace before I went inside New York New York. The Venetian and Caesar’s Palace not only have very realistic streetscapes and shops, they also have painted-on skies that are so surreal that they verge on being frightening.

The Venetian – complete with singing gondoliers. Yes, the canal runs through the hotel.

And Caesar’s Palace – this is just a corner of an enormous fountain in the middle of the Forum shops. Not-Terribly-Clingy-Roomie and I ate at a very nice Italian restaurant right beside this fountain. In fact, I think this photo is from my seat. You can see the shops behind, and the weird pretend sky. Which gets even weirder, as the light changes periodically:

Example. This is also from our table at the Italian restaurant. You can’t really tell from this picture, but the statues are all stark naked, which is a little disconcerting as you’re eating dinner. Especially from this angle. They were much closer to us than they appear – the Lomo has a very wide lens and things look further away than they are. The bizarre sky did serve as a very effective distraction from the statues, though.

And the most surreal of all – the moon comes up! And goes away, and comes back! I think Caesar’s Palace was my favorite place. It was just unimaginably bizarre.

WELL, since I have, oh, a thousand more photos and anyone with Evil Dialup will be cursing me for all these pictures, I think I’ll continue this later. I certainly can’t whine that I have nothing to write about.