Simulated Romance
by D. Bowden
Photo by D. Bowden
One of the things my husband and I did while in Las Vegas was to take a ride in a real Venetian gondola, piloted by a real gondolier who serenaded us with his beautiful singing as we glided along the shallow canals on the second floor of the Venetian Hotel and Casino complex, under fake skies with their painted puffy white clouds. Simulated daytime and nighttime flew by in one hour increments. The gondolier's singing was wonderful, and made us feel very romantic. During a pause in his arias we got to chat with the young man for a few minutes and found out he was actually from Italy and came all the way to America, to Las Vegas to pilot a gondola on the second floor of a fake Venice in an artificial canal in the middle of a desert. This shows just how bizarre human beings really are.