I came to Las Vegas in the very end of my 6-month-long American journey.

In a way, I liked the place for its boisterous and unadulterated kitsch (Las Vegas' euphemism for culture, spelt with a capital 'K') and for its total lack of pretence, as if the city was constantly taking the mickey out of itself.

Mechanic on duty. Free aspirin and tender sympathy ran a sign on top of a city garage.

One did need a lot of aspirin and even more tender sympathy to cope with Las Vegas.

One evening I was walking along Las Vegas Boulevard, locally known as the Strip, on the way to New York-New York Casino.

Not to gamble, but simply curious as to how Las Vegas city fathers could seriously claim to have recreated the seemingly inimitable Big Apple inside it.

"We have saved you a lot of airfare," I heard one of them saying earlier on local radio.

I never made it to 'New York'

Blinded by the Strip's epileptic lights (anything without moving lights has no right to be there) and deafened by the din of traffic, I felt in a desperate need of an aspirin, when my attention was distracted by a brightly lit and somewhat downsized Eiffel Tower in the middle of a sidewalk.

Squeaky 'Victorian' lifts were taking tourists to the top and back down – straight to the entrance of the famous Paris opera house - Le Grand Opera.

I deduced it was but the façade of the new Las Vegas-Paris hotel-casino. After many months in the States my nostalgia for Europe was such that I decided to pop in.

A whole Paris quarter

I dived underneath duly replicated L'Arc De Triomphe and, having passed through a huge and windowless gambling hall, found myself … in an old Paris street.

In fact, it was not just one street, but a whole Paris quarter, with cobbled narrow lanes, al fresco cafes, shops (Le Tabac, Le Patisserie, Le Boulangerie).

Platans and even Parisians (!) themselves sitting on benches, queuing for baguettes and kissing forgetfully under the trees.

A street busker, sporting a traditional French beret cap of the early 1960s, stood on the corner with his accordion.

The power of illusion

The power of illusion was so strong that it took me a while to realise that everything in that fake Paris quarter: the shops, the cobbles, the houses, the trees, the street signs (Les Toilettes) and even the mannequins of the Parisians were made of plastic.

The sultry blue sky above my head was but a vast painted canvas (or was it tarpaulin?), and the recorded whingeing sounds of the plastic busker's plastic accordion were mixing with the non-stop hungry bleating of the voracious fruit machines from a gambling hall behind the wall.

I popped into La Boulangerie, attracted by appetizing displays of freshly baked baguettes and croissants in its window.

I hadn't had proper "European" bread, as opposed to its cotton-wool-like American variety, for many weeks.

Inside, they were selling nothing but muffins and waffles, and all the croissants and baguettes on display were purely "decorative" and made of plastic.

Feeling claustrophobic, I could not wait to get out of this synthetic world of well-crafted make-believe.

One sign you won't find easily in Las Vegas casinos is Exit

I didn't notice how I got lost in the cobweb of plastic streets. Exhausted and dizzy, I lowered myself on a plastic chair outside a Bistro and ordered "un café noir", which proved to be of a tepid and wishy-washy American type.

Sipping the watery drink and making notes in my memo pad, I was suddenly blinded by a bright camera flash, then – another one, then – yet another.

I looked up. A flock of Japanese tourists on the opposite side of the plastic "street" were aiming the gaping barrels of their Nikons at me. Ready to shoot.

My first thought was that they had mistaken me for some obscure Hollywood star, but it didn't take me long to realise that they simply viewed me as part of the Paris set, a writer scribbling away at a Paris café.

Perhaps they even thought that, like all other mannequins in the quarter, I too was made of plastic.

"Stop it! I am not plastic! I am real!!!" I wanted to scream, but didn't, for a treacherous thought flashed through my aspirin-hungry brain.

What if they were right and I, after six months in the United States, had become PLASTIC INDEED!

I ducked, then jumped up from my seat and, having overturned the plastic table and the chair, took to my heels, not stopping until I was back in the Strip. Until now, I have no idea how I managed to find the exit.

The feverish lights of Las Vegas Boulevard kept blinking tirelessly, as if searching for something they were never meant to find.

Useful links

www.caesars.com/paris-las-vegas