Las Vegas Part 2

Gambling, that's the word. The word that's probably the most used in Las Vegas and only in Las Vegas. You are surely wondering why I took so much time to write the follow up to my last post. No it isn't because I was searching for my words to describe how I lost all my money, clothe and physical integrity. It didn't happened, I'm sorry to fail in fulfilling your kinky dreams.
The only excuse is just laziness !

So what happened in Vegas ? I admit, I tried a slot machine... I don't remember if it was in Ceasar's palace or in the Bellagio (Picture on the right). Las Vegas 1 - Clement 0. That's the final gambling result, yes I put on dollar in that damned machine, pulled the stick... The cylinders rotated... ...Nothing.
Not fun at all ! So after that hard loss of one dollar I decided that my gambling days were over. Finished the excitement of loosing money, the thrill of the bankrupt, the shameful sin of pointless investment. That was the first dollar I played and the last one.

Now you are probably wondering, "So what have you been doing in Vegas ??". Yeah that seems weird, the city is more or less only known for it's casinos. Well in fact you can do a lot of stuff in Vegas besides gambling. Each casinos/hotel has its nightly shows, it's shopping areas, restaurants of any kind (We had a pretty good Sushi !), clubs and bars. The city is constantly pulsing with a crazy party life. There are lots of show running around, there was even Celine Dion in town ! I don't know why we missed her show... There are also some events happening in the streets for free, the Bellagio has a giant water show, shooting some water very very high, believe me quite impressive. There is a full pirate battle in front of the Treasure Island everyday.

As the trip was organized by ITE in a study purpose, we spent most of our day time visiting civil engineering companies based in LV. The companies kindly paid for our lunches and some of our dinners.We visited also the Hoover Dam, built in the 30's, which is a really impressive construction built to calm down the waters of the Colorado river. In the middle of the bridge you could cross the state border between Arizona and Nevada (where Las Vegas is, remember).

Here is a picture of a part of the Las Vegas trip group. Heading to the Hoover dam.
The last night we bought a cheap 10$ suit to go boozing in the casinos. It's a kind of traditional thing here, you can't go to Vegas and leave without your cheap second hand costume, not really your size, and pants not really matching the vest.

Note the sign in the picture "More than you bargained for!", pretty funny, I just noticed it.

That night we went out to the "Coyote Ugly" bar (from the movie, yeah guys !!) in the New York - New York Casino. Pretty cool ambiance with women dancing on the tables getting free shooters. But the drinks otherwise were ridiculously expensive and the music way too loud. Heh that's not good for the ears !

Allright that's all I can think of right now, maybe I'll come with some other stuff from Vegas but later.
Thanks for reading "Montana Clem"

See ya later !

Las Vegas trippin'

Hi There! I'm back from Las Vegas, the crazy city of gambling, cheap drunken marriage and prostitution. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Thanks to Sarah I was able to join her student chapter (ITE) educational trip to Vegas. Student chapters seems to be a bit like our student clubs in France (remember iWeek?) but with only students from the same study background and with the purpose to make contact easier between today's students and former ones, that have interesting positions in companies. Well that's what I understood, I may be wrong, maybe they usually play golf together. ITE, I don't know exactly what it stands for but it's a student chapter for Transportation Engineering folks, cool guys that I've been hanging around with for almost a week.

We departed from Bozeman last Wednesday (7th of February 2007) at about 6am with two vans containing about 10 persons each. We had a long car ride, as you can see on the maps underneath, we've been in Idaho, Utah, Arizona and finally Nevada.

Pretty long trip eh ? Yes it was about a 14 hours drive with the pit stops, the Burger Kings and other junk food, but it's so good when you're hungry enough!
There was snow about everywhere in the Rocky mountains until we reached the desert of Nevada and it's 20 degrees Celsius (Quite warm for the beginning of February!) . The mountains are truly beautiful, they reminded me a bit of the Alps, less High but still impressive.

We arrived in Las Vegas by night, from miles away we could see the light of the city, illuminating the sky with an orange glow and lasers piercing the clouds randomly like in a kind of epic SF battle. The first casinos started to appear with their flashy signs, golden windows and their skyscrapers hostels, temples built to sacrifice your money to the $Dollar God$. Soon we were absorbed in the city, it's busy groove, limousines, rich looking women warped in their fur coats, huge men in black guarding entrances and fat tony smocking his Havana premium cigar. Humm well, that wasn't that much cliché, but you could feel the Vegas spirit that we see in the movies. The what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, the feeling that you could step in some trouble if you're fooling too much, the money spent foolishly, the artificial oasis in the middle of the desert, all of that really makes a weird impression.

Stay connected to the blog, tomorrow the Vegas story continues !
Thanks for reading. We appreciate your business :)

Welcome to Montana !

Yeah let me introduce myself, I'm Clement Della Monica, brand new Bozemanite ! In this blog I will regularly keep you guys, up to date with delicious tales from Montana. Yes the blog is in English, sorry French fellows but you'll have to answer in English too.

Let's see... So on Saturday, February the 3rd I got up in this good old Frejus, France, at 4am. I got done with some last errands, eat breakfast, cleaned up and took the highway to Nice where my flight departed at 7am. Then it's been a very very long journey, I had to wait 5 hours in Frankfurt for my flight to Denver. This flight lasted 10 long hours, I've been served two meals and two movies were shown. "A good year" and "The magician", pretty good ones, too bad I had to concentrate that much to hear the dialogs because the plane was full of Germans speaking really loud. That's strange that's the second time it happens. I didn't knew that about Germans. When I arrived in Denver I had a nice interview with an immigration officer because the last time I left USA I forgot to notice that I was leaving by giving back the little peace of green paper the had put in my passport. Well nobody asked for it when I got in the plane to go back to France. How was I supposed to guess? Anyway that went OK, but really freaked me on the moment. Then followed 7 long hours to wait for my Bozeman plane, delayed two hours, nobody knows why. I had to keep awake because I didn't want to miss the connection. After a two hours flight I finally landed in Bozeman BZM airport which is located at Belgrade (USA) 20 minutes far from Bozeman by road. There Sarah was waiting for me. How wonderful it is to finally see a friendly face and especially her, of course !

More about Sarah and I in Bozeman pretty soon !
Keep connected.

Yours, Clement.