I awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing at around 7:00 pm it was my cousin no one in my family has ever met. He said he could meet me at the casino at around 8:00. So I got up, got a cup of coffee at starbucks which happens to the the cheapest coffee I could find in the local area. I will be going to tomorrow to try to find free internet. So my wanderlust kicks in and I start meandering. I ended up walking out into the night where my jaw dropped. The small part of the city that I saw from the view of the side parking lot was impressive.
Thats when I started full into tourist mode and the camera came out. I walked towards a medieval bridge that lead to new york new york. I've never seen the statue of liberty in New York I'm not sure if the one here is the same size but its gargantuan. I wandered through the food court pretzels, hotdogs, I didn't see any pizza however. In this casino there was yet another oxygen bar. Apparently they are all over the place here I'm not sure what kind of population would be interested in that kind of thing. I continued wandering forwards and I found another connection to another casino. The MGM grand lie ahead of me, the walkway led over the highway and holy crap the strip is gorgeous. Lit up in all its glory its completely awe inspiring. Made it into the upper foyer of the MGM grand and expecting my cousin to call I started heading back after I snapped some pictures of a jungle like structure. I don't know what that is I'll go explore more tomorrow. On my way back I made it to the Excalibur bridge and I decided since my cousin hasn't called yet to continue wandering through the area. I went down the other way and I ended up in front of the Tropicana. I wandered back up into this tram that leads between the three casinos I had walked through earlier in the day. It turns out its free which is pretty great because I'd like to explore Mandalay Bay more and I hear they have the best buffet of the area.
My cousin calls and tells me to pick up a “Go-Vegas” magazine and head out to the back entrance. Which I do, although I am slightly nervous because nobody in my family has ever met him. We meet up with a “Hey cuz!” and we start babbling about our family and end up going to a tapas bar for dinner. Feelings of apprehension dissapear and we go to try to catch the last volcano show at the Mirage. I wish I had my camera out because it was stunning and I didn't realize we came there at the end of the show. Which was unfortunate since they managed to mix water and fire into some kind of glorious display of pyrotechnic and water fountain glory. The end of it there was a fireball that shot out of the top of the volcano which you could feel the heat from at least 100 meters away. We then started moving towards Bellagio to catch the next water fountain show. We walked through a maze of casinos and walkways which I would be completely lost in if it was there on my own. I took pictures of the Eiffel Tower as we passed which was spectacular. The bellagio water fountains were synchonized to music and you could hear the compressed air blasting the water into the sky like fireworks. Yet again scale is hard to understand here. This pool was about the size of a pond quite literally. Ceasars palace was a city in and of itself. We actually went through it and I didn't even notice we were off the strip, it's that big. We started heading back and we ended up crossing the street to the other side of the strip there was a night club/bar saying no cover charge just show ID. So we went in we couldn't pass up free stuff. It was the least packed smallest nightclub I've ever been in. It was about the size of my apt but with more smoke machines. There were tire swings that a lady was on hurling herself back and forth. The bartendress almost got annihilated by one of the back swings. We finished our ridiculously overpriced drinks and left. About a minute and a half later we were walking past these people handing out what looked like business cards, which technically they were. They were cards for various strippers and probably escorts. There were so many littering the street that I was having trouble walking without slipping on the multi-thousands of unwanted cards.
Continuing onward we ended up going past the Wynn and the Encore somewhere or other we ended up in the casino floor of some casino I could not recall A google search should amend this next time I get internet. We were walking through following the signs and I just stopped dropped my jaw. There were two meter and a half tall half meter diameter jade casks. Solid jade casks. Dear god, but thats not the best thing. Between these incredible objects was a carved mammoth tusk. I stopped in my path told my cousin I had to take about a thousand pictures of this because not many of them exist. As I was on picture number 778 an old couple came up and started talking to me about how I should go to Taiwan and see the rest of this stuff. To which I responded that I have a friend in china that I might go try to get work with. They started talking about how there is a train filled with artifacts like this taken from the forbidden city in Taiwan. They started talking to me about all sorts of wonders, then things got weird when they started saying I was probably a reincarnated “chinamen.” Whut...
My cousin and I continued our trek back and on our way we passed fashion show mall which has a alien spacecraft landed over the top of it. A giant freaking steel disk that looks like a UFO, which my cousin did not notice till I pointed out. It was astronomical the size of this thing I couldn't get it all in one picture from a third of a mile away.
On the last leg of the journey back my cousin started talking about how the women that just past us are probably prostitutes and how it's illegal in this county but legal in the one right next door. We finally get to the car and start driving back to my hotel. He points out another prostitute in the process of being busted by the cops. The conversation we are having starts to fade out to my thought process inside my head. Looking at the giant video screens playing high resolution images I can't help but think that this is how I imagined the cities of the future. I was reminiscing the cities of blade runner, the fifth element, and how I imagined the sprawl of Neuromancer. Information overload man NAS.
Sleep.
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