Some Americans think that they need no longer cross the Atlantic Ocean to experience Europe. The main sights, and other world attractions have been recreated in Las Vegas.

Explore the Las Vegas Boulevard and you find that The Eiffel Tower and the 
Arc d' Triomphe have been being constructed next to the, thirty four story
Paris Casino Resort. 
The two thousand room project also has two thousand-five hundred slot machines and a hundred gaming tables. 

Adding their own atmosphere are the themed restaurants. One of which is a hundred feet above ‘The Las Vegas Strip’ on the Eiffel Tower. From there you get the best view of the magnificent fountains on a lake built to symbolise Lake Como. 

This is  in front of the  Bellagio Hotel. It cost $1.6 Billion to build. Somewhat at odds with the Las Vegas showgirl image, the billboards outside advertise paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir and Cézanne. They reside in a treasure box of a gallery in the core of the hotel.

And as if to confuse the identity of Las Vegas even further, Twenty-five hundred construction workers were employed in  building an hotel called The Venetian. 

When I was there ‘Venice’ was arising before my eyes. The Doges Palace was already magnificently recreated. It now houses a massive casino, which is connected to the rest of the 
six thousand-suite hotel by a copy of 
‘The Bridge of Sighs.’
(Quite appropriate for the gamblers whom ‘lady luck’ has deserted.)

To give you some idea of the scale of this huge resort, go up one floor and you will find a recreation of a Venetian canal. It runs for quarter of a mile and is three foot deep. Gondoliers  poll along a fleet of twenty-two gondolas. 
They are unlikely to loose their way, as the boats are guided along by an underwater cable, leaving them free to concentrate on singing or exchanging banter with ‘streetmosphere characters’ like Marco polo and jugglers or traders.

The whole thing has an authentic touch, from the worn stone under foot in San Marco Square to the aged columns at the Doges Palace. This has been faced with stone from the same quarry as the original city.

Anyone who has been to Venice will find bits of it convincing. It might not smell in summer or flood in winter, but you can be sure, like the real thing, it is swarming with American tourists.

Further up the road the Manhattan Skyline is already there, and fountains of water sparkled in the sun as they spurted from fire department boats below a massive recreation of the Statue of Liberty.  

This was outside the hotel, New York, New York. Which included The Empire State Building as one of its towers. 

Across the busy four-lane highway the fanciful turrets of ‘Merrie England’ sprouted from the 'Excalibar' resort where the nightly attractions included, amid the usual maze of slot machines, ‘jousting tournaments’ set in the times of King Arthur.

 Ancient Egypt is just down the street in the pyramid-shaped Luxor Hotel. Guests are transported to their bedrooms on "inclinators," elevators that travel up the interior slope of the three hundred and fifty foot pyramid at a 39-degree angle.

The Las Vegas Boulevard is a ‘mind blowing’ place and a stroll down the sidewalk will have you reaching for your camera.
 The images to snap include the café with the giant Coca-Cola bottle that’s three stories high, and the enormous signs for the headline entertainers in Vegas’s many shows.  

As a tourist destination Las Vegas is unique.  It has a powerful effect on most peoples views on architecture and it  proves that if you can dream it you can build it.!