At the end of the Utah trip, we spent the night in Las Vegas. We stayed at the Venetian – well, the Palazzo, the equally fancy and lavish massive hotel next door that’s an extension of the Venetian. It was very very nice. Our room was on the 45th floor, the hotels in Vegas can be pretty enormous. Our window overlooked one of Vegas’s newest curios, The Sphere, an absolutely massive ball covered in a wraparound LED screen, displaying all sorts of animations and advertisements. There’s a big concert venue inside, I know U2 were playing there last year. I had to draw it. There was a giant animated emoji that would come up, that was easier to sketch than the goldfish bowl. Sometimes it would turn into a big basketball. Honestly, it’s really made to be turned into a Death Star isn’t it. There’s a lot of Vegas behind it, with an airplane landing way below us. Strange being so high up. It’s been a little while since I was last in Vegas, actually I think it was the layover I had in 2019, when I stayed at the seriously aging Luxor. It’s twenty years this year since my wife and I got married in Las Vegas! Before our wedding we stayed at the Luxor, and for the wedding itself we were at the Rio. For our honeymoon, we went to the Venetian, which was our favourite of the big themed resorts. It’s brilliant. That shop Michael Jackson used to buy his tacky junk in is still there. Back then in 2004 we had a nice dinner at a restaurant called the Canaletto, on the indoor St Marks Square; we went back all these years later for a lovely meal. This time was our son’s first trip to Vegas, and we were going to see the Beatles ‘Love’ show by Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage. My wife and I last saw that show in 2011! It’s a brilliant performance, and my son loved it. And a few weeks later, we learned after 16 years the show is closing. What a shame! I’m glad I got to see it (twice). Anyway, before the show we walked down the Strip a bit, and it was pretty packed, bit too busy for me. After our Utah trip and the long journey across the desert, and dinner and shops and the show, we slept well that night. Of course, I was a little nervous about scorpions; I’d heard that a man last year had been stung on his (ahems) in his bed at the Venetian by a scorpion in his sheets. I triple-checked the sheets that night!

When I got up I went out sketching on the Strip, which was a little less busy than the night before, but not without the lads carrying around those long plastic margarita containers and those ladies dressed as showgirls getting people to take photos with them for tips. I stood in the shade underneath the bridge next to the traffic and sketched the Strip, until I got a bit bored of standing there, and left it at that. We didn’t do too much more in Vegas, except we drove down the Strip towards the older downtown, looking for the place we got married, Cupid’s Wedding Chapel. It’s a little rougher down there, and one block just off the Strip was cordoned off by the cops. We looked for the chapel, with its distinctive red heart-shaped sign, but unfortunately, it’s gone. That was a shame! Nothing sits still for too long in Vegas…