26th January: Las Vegas! 

I had felt sick the whole night and when I woke up on the morning of our 14th day in the US, I had diarrhea. I won’t go into detail, but just imagine how annoying it was to carry this around Las Vegas, when the day finally came where I got to properly see the city.

From Needles, it was only a 2-hour drive to our final destination, where Enrique showed me around the city. One of the most famous buildings is the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip. Like most resorts there, it has a hotel and casino. As its name suggests, it has an entire area inside that looks like Venice. A canal flows through the shopping area and the sky looks almost real. It’s truly a beautiful and magical place.

Naturally, we couldn’t leave Las Vegas without having lost some money in a casino. Luckily, on my flight to Las Vegas I received some vouchers, including twince 25$ to spend on the slot machines in Venetian casino. To be honest, we found the playing itself wasn’t that exciting, because we were too lazy to read the rules and just pushed the buttons randomly. The machines also didn’t seem to do a great job in communicating what the outcome of each turn was clearly. At least, we quickly realized what it looks like when you win some money and instead of spending it on the next turns we pushed the “Cash out” button. That way we earned a grand total of just over 7$! I was happily joking that it’s quite an achievement that we managed to make the casino lose some money.

When the sun set, we went to the old part of the town, to Fremont street. At the entrance of the popular Fremont Experience, we spotted a burger place, the “Heart Attack Grill”, where not only waitresses were dressed as nurses, but customers have to wear a patient’s gown. Promising a heart attack, the restaurant also advertises how damaging the food is to one’s health.

We walked through the Fremont Experience, which is a tunnel with bars and casinos on each side and a screen as a ceiling. Loud music and matching screen images dominated the scene. There were people in outfits from movies, people wearing hardly any clothes and drunk folks running around the whole place. Enrique told me how uncomfortable he was when he was there the first time. He felt very blue, the sense of life taken away from him, given the sight of this party place, where all that counts is fun and abundance of all that is infamous. It was definitely not a place where I would normally fancy hanging out but, knowing I was experiencing a side of Las Vegas, I still enjoyed our 15-minute walk through the tunnel.

We then went to the Strip again, to also experience it by night. We walked from the Venetian to the Eiffel Tower, where Enrique wanted to get some Chicago-style pizza: 5 centimeters deep, full of cheese, sauce and toppings. On our way from the pizza place we bumped into Idriss and Khalid. It was hilarious how in a crowded city like Las Vegas we managed to coincidentally find each other and  that the alley they were enjoying their dinner was completely empty. 

My favourite place in Las Vegas was not the canal in the Venetian but the waterfall at the Mirage. Despite knowing that building that beautiful oasis in the middle of a desert town was clearly not the best for the environment, I wished I could take out my bikini and just dive into the beautiful waters. 

Late in the evening, we had to pack our overweight suitcases. Most of us had bought a lot of clothes, but in my case I wanted to take home about 10kg. Our suitcases’ weight caused us a headache in the hours to come, but in the end they passed the check-in with no problems.

27th January: Departure Day

I said Good Bye to Las Vegas from the balcony of our Airbnb:

Even though my flight departed 5.5h ours after the others’, I went to the airport with them. Although Las Vegas is definitely a unique and exciting city, it isn’t really my cup of tea and I didn’t feel like walking around by myself. I felt very sad though knowing Enrique would depart soon and that I would have hours before my long flight would take me back home. In the end, I managed to talk to one of my best friends, Sandra, for 2 hours, despite the time difference of 9 hours. That made me feel better about my departure!

Before taking the flight I used my remaining 4$ in cash to play at the slot machines at the airport. In Las Vegas, slot machines are everywhere, even in supermarkets.

Written by Julia Heuritsch | Uploaded on 7th February 2019