Las Vegas by the way,
incandescent and delirious
Las Vegas, scorching literally and figuratively, glowing at 40 ° C during the day.
A choice had been to be made : where to arrive and leave from this little American journey in the Utah region and its surroundings. From Paris it was Las Vegas (Nevada), on the way via San Fransisco (stressful transfer, the time to go through customs, collect our suitcases and re-inject them) and back via Chicago.
The delirious city rises in a sort of heat haze, huge and resplendant scar, in the uniformity of the desert when you come back to it by road 15 from the plateaus which dominate it.
After two nights (one on the way out, the other on the way back) spent there, we will only have seen the most visible, the most traditional parts. ; and neglected an endless number of other frenzied, bizarre or unspeakable possibilities.
Here it is, monstrous with its skyscraper hotels, its gleaming giant signs, and its reconstructions of the most famous monuments in the world, neat but often cramped (the main ones date from 1999).
The heterogeneous juxtapositions are inevitably concentrated towards the center of the city, where they can be seen happily on either side of the Strip like a more diligent Disneyland whose resources would be inexhaustible.
City closed on its incredible mazes when you rise to the first level above the street. To avoid the open-air furnace, we could almost completely cross it in an air-conditioned atmosphere, as we cross Montreal in winter in its underground mazes sheltered from the cold.
Even in these vast spaces, it was not possible to replicate to scale the Eiffel Tower as desired by the designers, who had to resolve to do less because of the proximity to the airport.
And as long as you do less, you might as well put everything in it : Arc de Triomphe, Opéra Garnier, perhaps a part of the Grand Palais, and even the hot-air balloon of the first human flight in the sky of Paris in 1783.
However, pyramid of Giza and Sphinx would be to scale, even if the latter's profile is that of a Jake Gyllenhaal with the tormented eyebrow rather than the hieratic head of the mighty Egyptian pharaoh.
Extravagance is everywhere, in the astonishing gondola canals that wind through the very interior of the first floor of the buildings, pass under a few small bridges that are too neat, run along walls of sanitized tiles, clean and free of the beautiful decrepitude of the Serenissima.
true sky
true sky
false sky
Yet the short-lived reconstruction of St Mark's Square under a high ceiling imitating a twilight Venetian sky manages to create an illusion for a few seconds.
false sky
Elsewhere in the Vuitton district, which is necessarily that of luxury, superb and colossal works of wood, careful copies of vast Florentine corridors, a large interior fountain which is not that of Trevi.
Cirque du Soleil at its zenith displays its various avatars, and the entrance to the skyscraper of the New York New York hotel is adorned with a flamboyant Art Deco
The city also expresses the most explicit invitations to show reviews, often of an erotic nature. with these young girls' duets like leaders of well-feathered shows, buttocks often badly chosen, which are an advertisement on the sidewalk, but that only.
Because, no question of photographing them .... as long as we follow them ; they who ignore that one of the most famous leading showgirl was our national monument, Line Renaud.
The ghost of Joël Robuchon (who died on August 6) comes to haunt the workshop that he too had opened in this temple of excesses and disproportions that man has created here, and to which he had not resisted.
The game, omnipresent, ubiquitous, frenetic, sneaks into every nook and cranny of gas stations or groceries, but above all gives free rein in the huge volumes of hotels, in galleries, under arcades, 24 hours a day.
Nearly $ 400 million in revenue for the city in August 2018, but down despite the inventiveness of investors. However, the impact on attendance of the very deadly attack of October 1, 2017 from a window of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino is fading.
In the early hours of the morning, a few slumped regulars still cling to their seats, their emaciated faces turning pale. or glows to the rhythm of the objects scrolling across the screen, even falling asleep in front of the slab, almost coiling in its concavity, home virtual, tactile and impassive who absorbs his dollars without ever returning them.
Outside, the long Strip (real name "Las Vegas Boulevard"), is the main axis of the city oriented north-south, which doubles a little away to the west of highway 15.
The Strip and other boulevards, vast and very wide ribbons of asphalt, - which here is designed not to melt under the blazing sun -, intersect, fly away, cut other avenues under the vivid colors of gigantic buildings which are adorned with garish or sumptuous colors when night comes.
In a vast basin at the end of which a corniche boulevard would perhaps tries to imitate Monte Carlo, at regular intervals a rather beautiful and original spectacle of water jets takes place, just in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Cadenced in music, voluptuously playing with the synchronous movements of its water spears, it is an almost oriental visual festival when the soon setting sun transparently dazzles the arcs and mists of water.
Yet all this water that plays with falls and generous cataracts comes mainly only from the largest reservoir in the USA, Lake Mead, a little upstream in the middle of the desert at about thirty kilometers to the east.
The bed of the Colorado River that continues south from this lake marks the border between Nevada and northern Arizona.
The vast avenue is so wide that it takes more than 30 seconds to cross it in a hurry, after waiting more than two long minutes at the edge of the sidewalk. Outside the pedestrian crossing, there is no salvation, and the threatening horn of taxis who know their rights quickly reminds us.
A Mac Laren plays in barely controlled skidding ; gleaming fire engines that make you wonder who's spending the time polishing up them head toward the place to be rescued, with screaming sirens.
To the north, the Down Town, a huge McDonalds as it is impossible to see in France, perfectly clean, not sticking to the soles in the toilets (performance !!).
He welcomes, without obvious rejection on the part of the employees, a few homeless people rather clean, facing a wall blinded by the sun, arid and functional, far from the decor of the center.
We also remember that Las Vegas is the world capital of "fast-wedding", as evidenced by this "chapel of flowers".
On the plane from San Francisco a not so young woman and seeminh happy, short tight skirt, false diadem on the forehead and false bunch flowers in the arms, comes marry her robust Mexican gigolo there.
Later on a sidewalk we cross a noisy and tipsy group from another wedding on a binge, between a fake Elvis in a white suit with a "trumpesque" banana, almost as "fat" as the King in his decline, and his fake Marylin sweetheart. flange in her dress.