After having written about the Cisco Networkers 2007 show, I thought I'd go back and finally finish editing and uploading pictures from the year before, when the convention was in Las Vegas.

Naturally a shot of the Chocolate Fountains was in order:

Other than the catering debauchery, however, what I remember most about last year was walking on foot (shocking, I know) through the city one evening with Sándor's Canon S400, taking pictures along the way. I can't really figure out what this herd of chairs was doing outside the Riviera Convention Center, but the scale of the rear wall gives a sense of how monolithic these buildings would be without their strip-side decorations:

In fact, wandering just a block or two off the strip is a good way to get a sense of just how enormous these disguised warehouses are that house casinos and ballrooms:

Off-strip also affords strange views of some relics of earlier architectural eras, such as the Guardian Angle Cathedral:

In contrast, the spaces that you're supposed to see are expertly designed and landscaped to make you forget exactly where you are. The most recent big casino to go up, the Wynn, takes this to an extreme with a small artificial lake hidden inside what appears to be an alpine hill from the strip. Walk inside the casino, and into the Bartolotta seafood restaurant, and a mixture of pine trees, plantings and an enormous earthen berm shields you from the traffic of the streets just a few dozen yards away from your dinner table:

The rest of the photos from 2006 are online here.