Tuesday 10th April

The approach into Vegas does not present you with the image of the city that we have been indoctrinated with from its representation within TV and film, that being that Vegas is a city of sin and corruption. English presenter, actor and writer Stephen Fry wrote in his 2008 travel book ‘Stephen Fry in America’, that Las Vegas was “a symbol of human kind’s perverse and remorseless will, a symbol of cupidity exploiting stupidity, of capitalism taken to its furthest limits, of gullibility, fallibility, optimism, cruelty, vulgarity and greed." In fact the first thing that was apparent to me, was the sheer vastness of Nevada’s deserts, truly awesome mountains and beautiful blue rivers, not the strip itself. I was told by people who had previously visited America to expect everything to be far bigger than it is in England, but still I was not prepared for the scale of the landscape. Although amongst this hostile environment I could make out winding roads and the occasional car which then gave way to the perfectly planned suburban homes. This was very surprising because Las Vegas is often thought of as a tourist destination, not a place to raise a family but statistics back this up with the city having a high number of schools and still needing more to be built as well as the planned community, Summerlin and the recent addition of Town Square which is calm and serene in comparison to the strip. Journalist J.R Moehringer said that “Vegas discourages everything prized by book people" however, in addition to the growing number of permanent residents filling the local school, Vegas is also home to its own University implying that it is not just flashing lights and a good time that attract people to the city. Suburban Vegas then gave way to the more traditional picture of the Las Vegas strip where the buildings are all unique in architecture to one another, all competing to be bigger and better than the previous with their neon signs visible from the plane. McCarran airport proved itself to be no different to the hotels with billboards and adverts on every wall and the ceiling being made up of reflective silver squares, making it glaringly obvious that you could not possibly be in any other city.

The perfectly planned suburbs of Las Vegas.