Pics: Vegas and the trip home.

[foreigner]

Sunday night, we arrived in Vegas. This is inside the Paris casino. The whole of downtown Las Vegas was a constructed, surreal fairytale world where the word authentic lost its meaning; everything was something else than what it seemed. They had a medieval castle, an antique Rome, a Paris, a New York... It was unnerving and hilarious at the same time. We ate and drank and gambled and enjoyed the atmosphere for two days and then were only glad to leave for the real world again.







Slot machines inside a casino; all of the casinos have this dusk-type lighting inside them all day and night long, so that you don't remember where you are and what time it is.







Paris from the outside; the Eiffel tower is exactly half the size of the original.







Juuso and a fountain at Caesar's Palace, one of the casino / shopping mall / hotel / restaurant / theme park complexes.

I'm afraid my pictures of Las Vegas are pretty bad and there are not many of them. Maybe it's impossible to capture the Vegas experience in pictures; we were too busy to live it to photograph it. I'll leave it for Juuso to describe Vegas in more detail if he wishes.







On Wednesday the 30th, we hit the open road again, for the last time.







It got pretty hot someshere in New Mexico. I'm glad our car had a thermometer! (114 °F = 45.6 °C!)







Factory.







One of these hugely long Southwestern trains.







It was a relief to see the green hills of California again.

Then on Thrsday, Juuso had his flight, and I spent the day in Los Angeles, wandering around and doing some last-minute shopping. I took a terribly uncomfortable night bus to SF the next night, spent the day in SF doing some more last-minute shopping and then in the evening went out with a couple of girls from the hostel. I didn't seem to have much in common with any of them, so I went to bed rather early.

My flight, on Saturday (and extending well into Sunday) was uneventful. I watched movies and read papers and didn't feel like sleeping. I can, anyhow, recommend KLM over Air France, which I took on my way to America; the seats were comfier, the staff friendlier, you got salt and pepper with your tomato juice (something I always have on planes and almost never anywhere else), and you got to choose which films to watch.

Finland is green and relatively cool, and it's nice to talk to somebody else then Juuso for a change. I'm seemingly having a week-long jetlag but otherwise I'm happy and satisfied. This was a great trip.

Stay tuned, I'll probably blog some lists and thoughts still, and Juuso promised to write something as well.