2012 is the year both my wife and I both reach the milestone of turning 40 years old. Time flies when you are having fun – first day at school, childhood birthdays and Christmases, family holidays, hot summers and ‘knee deep in snow’ winters are all distance memories. Modern life becomes all consuming, so it is good every once in a while to take some time out. To quote Ferris Bueller – “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
So the best place to stop and look around…Las Vegas !
Sin City is never a placed I have considered visiting, simply because I saw it is a neon lit artificial town filled with beer drinking gamblers on stag weekends. Lots of noise, lots of people, and lots of money down the drain. But my wife has always wanted to visit, and saw our 40th as a great excuse to go, so who was I to argue.
And I loved the place. Full of neon lights and beer drinking gambling stag weekenders, but I loved the place. America as a whole does everything bigger and better than anywhere else I have visited on the planet, and no more so than in Vegas. The hotels, the shopping malls, the roads, the food, the shows – everything is BIG. And the people are friendly, the service outstanding, the weather just perfect. We had a great time.
And I had plenty of photo opportunities during the visit. We had a great view from our lakeside room at the Bellagio. We visited the Eiffel Tower for an amazing view of the strip at night. And we went on a once in a lifetime helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon to get a 180 degree contrast in scenery.
And within two days of returning to the UK I was in the desert in the Middle East. Las Vegas casino to Middle East desert in 48 hours ! I felt like I was in the middle of a James Bond movie. But that is for another day.