USA Part 1 - Viva Las Vegas (for one night only)

The day after I arrived in the US (28 August) my brother, his girlfriend and I took off for Las Vegas. We were only staying there one night since our real mission was to get to Zion National Park, Utah and start the first serious part of the journey. Nonetheless one night in Vegas deserves at least a drive up and down the strip.

I can't confess to being fully awake at the time, or more accurately I can confess to being mostly asleep but I do have strange recollections of feeling like I was somewhere in Italy (the Venetian), then France (Paris Las Vegas), then lost in a sort of Disney-ish version of the Arthurian legend (The Excalibur) and of course lets not forget Egypt (The Luxor) where we stayed. All in all I think if it were possible to drown in Casinos then the Las Vegas strip is where one would snuff it.

Special thanks go to TED (United Airlines low cost division) for getting us to Vegas 2 hours late, but undeterred I at least thought I should walk along the strip and see a few places up close and impersonal. Check out the pics of the Luxor, Excalibur and the MGM Grand. See if you can figure out which is which ...

It's a good thing that Vegas never sleeps since we ended up checking in to our hotel at about 2am and shortly after dumping my bags in my room it was time to stroll down the strip in the balmy evening air. By about 3am I had managed to exhaust my tolerance for late night photography and decided to call it a night. The really exciting part of the trip was yet to come.

Dear Diary - It's 08:00 and I'm knackered, but it's time to get going for Zion National Park. Goodbye, we're Leaving Las Vegas.

Zion is only about three hours drive from Las Vegas and so we took off, with high hopes that the coming days would yield great chances to wear out our cameras. As you'll see in the next instalment, we were not disappointed at all.