Viva Las Vegas!

Viva Las Vegas baby! Today was our day to explore the famous Las Vegas Strip! We caught the free Sun Coast shuttle at 10am which dropped us off outside Bill’s Gambling Hall. It was another perfect day in the USA and although it was only mid morning, already it was boiling hot!

We crossed the road to check out our first casino for the day - Caesar’s Palace! This ancient roman themed casino had a forum, statues of Augustus Caesar and even the famous rape of the Sabines, lavishly decorated interior, and even a set of Spanish steps! Albeit the imitations weren’t anywhere near as good as the originals, one could not help but feel amazed at the amount of detail of the re-creation!

We checked out the Forum shops which housed all the luxury brands! Then we caught the free Lost City of Atlantis water fountain show at 11am! It told the story of the two children of the king of Atlantis were fighting over the throne to such a degree that the Gods decided to sink the city! It used fire, water, and animatronic effects!

Next we headed over to the Bellagio next door and walked by the famous water fountains. We caught a show around 11:30am with the fountains dancing in sync to some American song. It was amazing how some jets of water shot maybe 10 stories or more high into the sky!

We continued walking south along the Strip until we came to the New York New York casino. This casino recreated some streets of New York within the casino, and even Times Square! Outside there was a statue of liberty and a façade of the New York cityscape!

We didn’t spend long there and instead headed across the road to the MGM Grand to find some lunch! We ended up in the chain restaurant called the Rainforest Café. This jungle themed restaurant featured animatronic animals and lightning and thunder effects with waterfalls! We shared an entrée of buffalo wings and BBQ ribs - yum!

We headed off to the Dirk Arthur magic show at the Tropicana Hotel. We watched as Dirk made tigers, ligers (half lion, half tiger) and other wild cats appear on stage. It was pretty cool, although a little cheesy sometimes when Dirk stood at the front and smiled at the audience. The dancers were alright, but I noticed that they were sometimes out of time… But it was pretty cool and I still can’t figure out how he did a lot of his tricks!

We returned to the MGM grand after this to check out the lions in their artificial habitat within the casino. Our first thoughts were that it seemed kind of cruel that the lions be kept in such a small area. There were 2 men inside the habitat. One was throwing a ball and some other dumbbell looking object around for the male lion. Meanwhile the other was sitting on the ledge watching. Later on the lioness joined him and decided to lay next to him. For the sake of conscience though we were told that the lions have their own groomers, vet and keeper so we are to assume they’re well looked after. The enclosure was fairly spacious so I suppose it isn’t too bad that they’re in there.

Our next stop was M&M world where we were surrounded by M&M merchandise. On the 3rd floor there was a 3D movie where red lost his M on one of the craps tables in the casino! The rest of the movie was about him getting his M back. It was 3D and very cute. After dropping off into the coke store we headed for the northern side of the strip.

The Venetian is a huge casino with a canal running through it and its own gondola’s. We made our way through the streets until we arrived at St Mark’s square where there was a show of jesters and opera singers in Venetian costume. This was more than anything we saw in the real St Marks square! And, important to note, the Venice in the casino is much cleaner than the real Venice! No pigeons for a start!

However, the prices are similar, we found a shoe store that had a sale where shoes could be purchased for a humble $300!

The Wynn casino has a Lake of Dreams which is a light and fountain show. We headed over and found a nice viewing spot. To our dismay, due to daylight saving the show didn’t start until 8pm. We had reached our great viewpoint at 6:45pm! At 7:05pm when we had discovered that the show wasn’t happening until 8pm we left to catch the evening show of the Bellagio fountain. On the way, Ben picked up a fish burger meal from Macca’s.

After our pretty long walk we arrived at Bellagio only to discover that they weren’t running the show tonight! Due to high wind conditions! We felt pretty ripped off as we had missed 2 fountain shows!

We caught the shuttle back to our hotel and at the same time discovered our drive to Yosemite will be 7 hours! Got to sleep now!

Night!