I have heard that the easiest person to fool is one’s self, and I certainly live up to this saying. By this I mean that I continually forget how much I hate the act of travelling, and somehow imagine against hope that it will be different this time, and it will be easy. So I had convinced myself to go to California (and being there was, in fact, great fun) and then came the bit where I returned home. Because my town is located near a big city there are limited options for direct flights and I chose the “budget” airline. And this was where I ended up.

There were lots of palm trees in California, but here in the desert there is limited water, so the palm trees tend to be of the artificial type.

This place is also famous for lots of neon, but in this case they were saving electricity by not spelling out the entire word.

This portrait made up of tiles shows one of the famous residents of the city. In place of the usual sort of background music there was music from the residents in the 50’s and 60’s who originally made the place famous.

This place is a mecca of legalized gambling and there were noisy electronic games on every concourse. I did notice that there are lots of international flights to here, and that some of the games seemed to be aimed at the Asian market. (I certainly hope that this dragon is lucky).

I know that you were wondering where I had ended up, well this was it. I spent 4 hours that seemed like lifetimes at this airport because due to a delay I had missed my connection. Among the many attractions that were touted, there is a museum of crime in this town and the airport is named for a senator, so I suppose that is fitting. And now I have yet another piece of evidence that travel is over-rated (but I am already planning the next trip). 😉