Of all the places we have traveled in the U.S., we have been to Las Vegas more than any other city except for Washington, D.C. People who have known us for most of our lives will not be surprised by this fact. We LOVE Vegas. It has something for everyone. For us, it has mostly really, really fabulous restaurants.
Chris and I love food and we love really nice hotel rooms and we love one really nice hotel in particular, the Venetian. We also love that in just a few pulls of the slots, the whole trip to Vegas might be paid in full! It’s the hope, not the reality of this possibility, that keeps us coming back to Vegas year after year. The cold hard truth is, the pulling of the slots has only paid for 1 of the more than 20 trips we have ever taken there. So far.
In my twenties, I thought Vegas was a cheap imitation of European treasures. A shrunken Eiffel Tower, gondolas on pool blue waters, glass and metal pyramids, perfect unruined Roman statues each backlit by neon and excess. All I wanted was to see the real thing, to shrug off my American inheritance for something more beautiful and more romantic. At the time, I was teaching high school English with a focus on World Literature, and I was steeped in the stories of Guy de Maupassant, Paul Coelho, Chinua Achebe, Homer, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Every day, I talked with students about faraway places and exclaimed the achievements of writers and thinkers from ancient lands and bygone eras. We strolled continent by continent through the literary canon avoiding British and American Literature for lesser known locales and people.
The hope was that as students studied World History alongside the literature, they would engage with the authentic texts of the time period and a character’s life would be illuminated. For me, that meant studying maps for context and sharing photographs of streets and villages in European cities, African countries and South American coastlines. Studying those maps awakened wanderlust and seemed to turn my American landscape to a dull shade of strip mall brown and cinder block gray.
These international authors evoked other worlds for me as I fell deeply into a routine of work and family; teaching all day and parenting all night in a five mile radius of cul-de-sacs, fast food drive-thrus and home improvement stores. I dreamed of Parisian shops and Parisian fashion, the glamour of the Champs-Elysees, and of course, a fancy dress ball while reading and teaching Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace.” The Greek Islands of the Mediterranean beckoned to me as my class read the wanderings of Odysseus, and home seemed a fitting place to leave for adventure, a place to long for with remembered glory and sentimental perfection. If I traveled to faraway places, I could spend the rest of my life trying to return to these familiar streets.
Reading Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” I longed to live in a seaside fishing village with a community of people willing to be transformed and renewed. The treasured possibilities of Northern Africa came to life in The Alchemist, and I longed for a little mystery and uncertainty in my own life. The villages of Nigeria in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart took me and my students even further from home to a place rich in vibrant tribal traditions and rituals. Just outside my door, across the ocean, another life of mine, different from the routine rich one I was currently living while raising two small children, seemed to be waiting for me.
It is a greedy, modern view to believe in all these possibilities and versions of my life in different settings but it’s a product of what books have always provided for me: hope and distance and safe escapes.
I still wonder today if new scenery can really alter a life. Sometimes it feels like you can’t be anybody but who you have always been when you stay in one place. A new backdrop alight with possibility will have you believing you can feel new parts of your soul.
If any place has that power, it’s Las Vegas, an All-American city with its brash uprising in the desert damming resources and demolishing and rebuilding itself every 20 years. Altered lives are certainly on display up and down the Las Vegas Strip. Auras of sorrow compete vigorously with the bright possibilities of neon lights.
Walking along the glamorous hotel fronts, you can pass a bold sign-holder asking for money to buy weed, a mentally ill man muttering to the walls and the sidewalk, a wounded warrior looking for delayed payment, sleazy men handing out invites to strip clubs and someone’s daughter splayed on trading cards littering the street. You can also see the infinite possibilities of fun, romance, fine dining, extravagant shows, designer clothes, and fast cars from every corner of the Earth with every step you take along Las Vegas Boulevard.
Many people would not include Vegas on their dream family cross country trip, but we never really hesitated in part because we always had free hotel rooms “earned” from previous trips. No doubt, Vegas means many things to many different people, and you can certainly see some sights in Vegas you probably would never want to see again. Luckily for us, Vegas has always meant absolute relaxation, comfortable beds, wonderfully oversized bathrooms, and expensively luxurious room service.
Now that I have actually travelled in my life to some of the European cities and South American coasts I used to only dream of and read about with my students, I feel differently about Vegas and the splendor it offers to visitors. From the luxurious hotel suites and amazing meals to the daily hope of winning big and the OMG distraction of all the spectacle, Vegas’ charms and comforts can challenge, for me, with its old world competitors.
The imitation it is built on has evolved into a unique offering to travelers that is audaciously American. Yes, it’s gaudy and over the top. Yes, it’s bold and brash. And for us, it is most definitely a place to stay for only a few days. Vegas is a great escape and unlike many places we have traveled, I can never imagine living there permanently.
We are always ready to leave Las Vegas and within a few months, we are always ready to return.