Saturday, October 08, 2016

Give Me The Real Deal

Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas 
Venice Italy, the real deal 
I can remember being awed by the World Showcase at EPCOT, then I started traveling to Europe and realized that the Disney version was an idealized, sanitized - well really a fake.  A few years ago I was in Las Vegas and I had dinner at Mario Batali's restaurant in the Venetian hotel (great imaginative food.)  I saw the gondolas on the simulated grand canal, really an elongated swimming pool. Then this last year I had the opportunity to see Venice, to see the real deal.  Water you wouldn't want to swim in, crowds, history, smells and sounds.  

 The American fakes, are far to perfect, to contrived, to controlled. EPCOT is kind of like a plastic pizza, you really wouldn't know what a pizza is from looking at a plastic model of one. To know a pizza, you have to smell the yeastiness of the freshly baked dough and the anchovies, you have to burn yourself on the melted cheese. To know Paris, or an English Village or Venice, you need to see, hear, smell the real deal.  Get out and go - there is a big world out there to see and only a finite number of years to see it.   
at

4 comments:

  1. anne marie in philly10/08/2016

    "simulated culture like disney world" - an old MST3K line.

    paris in vegas ain't the same as paris in france.

    ReplyDelete
  2. WARPed10/08/2016

    I stayed at the Venetian for a week for a business conference, a few year back...very expensive, IMHO.

    I thought Vegas basically sucked, though I did get to visit Zion Nat'l Park in Utah, and Valley of Fire State Pk in Neveda.

    Nice place to visit, bit wouldn't want to live there.

    :-)

    -Andy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ur-spo10/09/2016

    I wonder if travel suffers from virtual reality, on-line posts, and youtube we can go/see just about anywhere without having to go there.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ron10/09/2016

    David,
    I haven't traveled that many places but the places I have visited have impressed me. Among them Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cape Cod, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Quebec, Montreal the South, and yes, even New York City. I probably will never another foreign country. Running out of time. But I'm happy that I was able to visit the places I have visited in my lifetime.
    Ron

    ReplyDelete