Frommer's Las Vegas 2009
Chapter One
The Best of Las Vegas
The point about [Las Vegas], which both its critics and its admirers
overlook, is that it's wonderful and awful simultaneously. So one
loves it and detests it at the same time.
-David Spanier, Welcome to the Pleasuredome: Inside Las Vegas
As often as you might have seen it on TV or in a movie, nothing can prepare you for
your first sight of Las Vegas. The skyline is hyper-reality, a melange of the Statue of
Liberty, a giant lion, a pyramid, and a sphinx, and preternaturally glittering buildings.
At night, it's so bright, you can actually get disoriented-and suffer from a sensory
overload that can reduce you to hapless tears or fits of giggles. And that's without setting
foot inside a casino, where the shouts from the craps tables, computer-generated
noise from the slots, and the general roar combine into either the greatest adrenaline
rush of your life or the ninth pit of hell.
Las Vegas is a true original; there is nothing else like it in the world. In other cities,
hotels ... read full excerpt from: Frommer's Las Vegas 2009 (Frommer's Complete #686) ebook
