Las Vegas Strip

Desert , Dreams , and Distraction : A Walk Through Vegas 's Venetian Hotel

At first , my eyes have a hard time adjusting . I 've just stepped outside of The Venetian Hotel - its loud interior crammed with tourists and tapestries - and into the blinding heat . The Las Vegas strip surrounds me from almost every direction . Heat ripples up from the road and I have to loosen my shirt . I don 't know where to look first . The Venetian has already been a barrage to my senses , what with the constant soundtrack of slot machines and fortunes

being lost . I thought going outside might actually help , but the Strip is somehow louder , lived-in and larger than I ever imagined . Las Vegas is more than just a playground it 's filled with so many spectacles and sensations that I have to look at things twice , just to make sure it 's really happening all around me

Across the street from The Venetian , there 's a pirate-ship battle going on at Treasure Island . One pirate is threatening another with a sword one ship is lurching beneath the crew 's feet on unseen mechanical gimbles cannons fire loud blanks at one another . This is all , of course , just a few feet away from the curb and within walking distance of the promise of a live circus in one direction (Circus Circus ) and a series of sixty-foot high fountains doing a hypnotic dance to classical music (The Bellagio . of this should be here , I think to myself of this is supposed to be happening right now

And yet , it is . Artificiality is everywhere I look . Cathedrals are crammed into corner lots fireballs rise up from a faux-tropical waterfall a reduced-size Eiffel Tower , complete with a restaurant at the top , lords over the street . People stumble and run and scream all around me . No one seems fazed by what they see , by the majesty around them . No one 's pointing excitedly at the man-made wonders around them It 's as though all of this is perfectly natural to the herds of people pushing their way down the Strip

To me , it 's anything but

The Las Vegas Strip is a relatively narrow street surrounded by an unforgiving expanse of desert and rock . For all intents and purposes there is absolutely no reason the street , and the resorts that compete with one another , should exist . That said , Las Vegas has gone through a long string of monumental changes that would keep its face changing almost as much as the ever-evolving Strip does . In 1829 , a group of New Mexican fur traders were traveling to Los Angeles . Their leader decided to take a different path and they came upon a green valley with artesian springs . They named the valley las vegas - Spanish for the springs (Ferrari 5

What I 'm witnessing bears no resemblance whatsoever to what the New Mexican traders found . In fact , the closest thing to a hot spring I 've seen are the advertisements for 100...