The Silver State

Apparently, Nevada's nickname dates back to the silver rush of the mid 1800's, when 'silver was literally shoveled off the ground'. The state is pretty far from silver now though, and it should really be named 'the red state' or 'the land that looks a little post-apocalyptic' or 'the hybrid of Mars and Earth'. Anyhow, this is a picture I took today at the Red Rock Canyon. It was surprisingly breezy and cool, which is completely the opposite of what I expected. There were 'Turtle Crossing' signs, which made me think of The Grapes of Wrath.

I arrived in Las Vegas on Tuesday evening. I first visited here about nine years ago, on my first ever trip to the US. Honestly, I don't really remember much other than the fact that everyone ate so much more food than my family and that there were lots of cool hotels. There are still lots of cool hotels, but the first part of that sentence is no longer true.

So far, this family vacation has kind of turned into a food trip; we went to a really good buffet last night for dinner at Caesars Palace, and it was pretty amazing. I was too busy eating to take pictures of the savory food (which involved lots of seafood, good salads, dimsum, and meat from the carving station), but I did take some dessert pictures because they were just too pretty not to.

After visiting the canyon today, we went to another buffet for lunch. It wasn't as fancy as the buffet we went to last night, but there was a lot of food. The dessert here was actually better than last night's buffet and I ended up eating more than I should have. 

I also went to Bouchon Bakery today and bought macarons. They're bigger than the usual macarons, which is cool. 

Earlier tonight, I walked around a number of the hotels here. There were lots of shops, ceilings that look like the sky, lots of slot machines and poker tables, lots of smoking, and some dancers who were dancing in the middle of the casinos. I don't really know what they are because they weren't pole dancing as far as I could tell, but they also weren't strippers either (I think)... so I guess they were just scantily clad dancers. One of the hotels here is based on Paris, and the inside has a rather nice ambience to it. I was amused because the arc de triomph was entirely covered by an advertisement for Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant (he seems to have many new restaurants here, as far as I can tell...). I also got to go on the roller coaster that goes around the outside of the New York New York hotel. There were two large men behind me going 'HOLY SHITTTT' the whole time and that was kind of amusing. 

Tomorrow we'll probably go to another canyon or valley of sorts then walk around the hotels some more until 9:30pm, when we'll go watch a show by Cirque du Soleil. No more buffets though—I'm kind of sick of having so much food around me by now (I never thought that would be possible!). 

:)