Viva Last Vegas ….. Number One Destination ...... The Bellagio

The Bellagio was on the top of our list of hotels to visit ….. so we made it our first port of call …… OMG …… it DID NOT disappoint!

We have never seen anything like it ….. it was absolutely wondrous,  it very nearly consumed all of our awe and wonder quota for the day ……

Above: an ordinary corridor in The Bellagio and the world’s largest chocolate fountain!!

…… Can you believe that in the middle of the hotel they have a Conservatory and a Botanical Gardens, with greenhouses, a windmill, a lighthouse ….. giant birds, snails and flowers ….. it took our breath away!

The Bellagio is so posh we are almost tempted to “suggest” that it may even be posher than our own beloved Queen’s residence;  Buckingham Palace ….. minus the world’s largest chocolate fountain!

The ceiling in the lobby is decorated with hundreds and hundreds of huge glass flowers, it was sooooooooo beautiful …. if we may quote from the website,  as we cannot find words to describe it ……..

“The lobby is, in a word, grand, both in scale and in design. Above the 18-foot ceiling is a coffer filled with the most extraordinary glass sculpture, a chandelier called Fiori di Como by glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, whose work has been exhibited in every major museum in the world. This stunning piece is comprised of 2,000 hand-blown glass blossoms.”

We looked in the shops to see if we could perhaps make a considered purchase ….. but it was a case of,  if you had to ask the price,  you couldn’t afford it …..

….. as was the case with this very lovely and romantic chaise lounge….. which afforded me a very sumptuous,  if brief Last Vegas Lounging Experience in the most salubrious of surroundings.

The Bellagio is famed for it’s fountains which are choreographed to light and music and our exit from the hotel was timed to perfection for the first show of the day. We had saved some copper coins that we think were scents cents, especially to throw into the fountains to make a wish for all the special people in our lives …… Marc and Hugh, Mr D, Dianne, Tom and The Lovely Laura and Jan the Fan ……

…… and we got shivers down our spines when the music they started to play was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, which is the song Andy named “our” Lucy after …… AND a rainbow appeared …… we all got very emotional in a Last Vegas, holiday of a lifetime holiday type way

Our pictures do no justice at all to the spectacle unveiled before us ….. and seeing them in the daytime, we are told,  is nothing compared seeing to the show in the evening when it is dark ….. so we promised ourselves that we “would return” ………. to embrace the whole Bellagio experience again ……..but under the stars and neon lights.

Viva Last Vegas ….. Catching The Bus And Nigel’s First American Cuisine Experience.

Yesterday we ventured onto “The Strip” for the first time via the Last Vegas Deuce Bus which was soooooo unbelievably exciting.  For eight dollars we can travel anywhere on  the strip for 24 hours, so we had planned LOTS of getting on and offs, however we hadn’t anticipated the heat! OMG, it’s HOT, HOT,  HOT ….. even when there is a breeze .….  as Darrell described so succinctly, it’s like being blown by a giant hairdryer on full heat! We have never experienced heat like it ….. and now Darrell is worrying that the dryness will play havoc with his complexion!

The bus stop, which is very romantic,  is right opposite our hotel ….. however we can’t just cross over the road to get to it, we have to walk quite a way up the road to cross at a proper crossing, …. if we had attempted to cross it willy nilly, (which would be impossible anyway as it is sooooo mahoooosiveley wide and busy ), we would have been charged with a “felony” and “incarcerated”  for something called “jay walking” and we didn’t want that on our first proper day out and about.  However,  it took us quite a while to do all this because of the aforementioned heat …. as we had to make frequent stops to “take on water” and wipe brows.

However once on board the bus we were greeted by the wonderful air con and our dehydrated systems had a chance to recover.

The best seats on the bus are upstairs, right at the front where you get the best view ….. we became a sort of free commentary service for all the other passengers as we squealed out the names of all the famous hotels and casinos we had read about ….. although quite a few did ask us if we were Australian??!!

We decided to stay on the bus right to the very end, getting off at Fremont Street ….. which is now Old Las Vegas …. I’m afraid by this time I’d had to change my shirt due to my embarrassingly robust perspiration ….. however I felt much better for it.

We decided to have a drink at the world famous 4 Queens Casino, which was on the front of our guide book,  it gave us such a tingle to think we were really there, in real life,  after looking at it’s picture for almost a year …..  We quenched our mahooosive thirsts and watched, our eyes on stalks, three Elvis’s,  ….. just casually going about their daily business …..

And then …..

…… Nigel spotted a restaurant …..

…… specialising in American cuisine ….

….. and then there was no doing with him ……

…… until he had “experienced” his first “proper” hot dog with EVERYTHING…….. it was just like watching the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar …….

I think we may have to watch Nigel’s calorific consumption very carefully while we are in Last Vegas ….. there are way too many temptations!  We managed, somehow to dissuade him from attempting a deep fried Oreo, promising that we would return to Fremont Street at night, later in our holiday of a lifetime holiday to see the famous Fremont Street Experience with its 12.5 million lights and 550,000 watts of sound ……… and perhaps a deep fried Twinkie or Oreo or two!!!!

Viva Last Vegas–Our Bijou And Quaint Hotel –The Luxor

Where do I start?  Well, we are in Room 20138 on the 20th floor of the Luxor Hotel near the end of the “Vegas Strip” …… and when we look out of our room window we are directly behind the Sphincters Sphinx's head……

The Luxor is mahooooooooooooooosive! We just can’t describe just how mahooooooooooooooosive it is.  There is even another mahooooooooooooooosive pyramid inside, plus giant Egyptian statues and other stuff of an Egyptian type nature plus other buildings, which in normal life would be huge, but in the Luxor they are just dwarfed. It is almost too out of our norm to get our heads round, it’s all totally out of perspective, but somehow it also feels normal!

We tried to put a towel on the ledge outside our room to show where our room is ….. but in all the mahooooooooooooooooooosiveness it just disappeared, so we have had to put an arrow instead to say “we are here”.  When we look down from outside our room people just look like  little ants ….. Darrell is usually a martyr to his vertigo, but in all his excitement he seems to have undergone a miraculous cure!

…. Also inside the Luxor there are lots of shops, lots of bars, lots of restaurants, a night club, a Titanic exhibition of Titanic artefacts, plus “proper” shows in the proper theatre …… as well as a mahooooooooooosive casino …… the reception area alone must be the size of a football pitch!!!  

AND ….. there is even a 24 hour McDonald’s in the mahoooooosive Food Court, so we have all resolved to have a Big Mac in bed one night …..…… just because we can!!

  It is JUST TOO EXCITING ……. everything we dreamed of but a million billion times more …….

And our room …….. ? That’s mahooooooooooooooosive too …… our beds are so huge Darrell has lost Nigel several times already!

There are even ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the wardrobes and bedheads which Darrell is determined to decipher before we leave!

The tele is also mahooooooooooooooosive, we can watch all of our favourite American programmes like America’s Got Talent BUT really in America and at exactly the same time as real Americans are watching it  ………  PLUS …….  we can watch it from the comfort our aforementioned  mahooooooooooooooosive beds ….. how BRILLIANT is that?

……. AND we have hardly been outside yet, only popping out to see the famous Last Vegas sign ……. I have a spooky Derek Acorah/Tutankhamen type feeling that the overwhelming awe and wonder of our hotel will just be the tiniest tip of our Last Vegas Holiday of a Lifetime Holiday experience  …… and I need to prepare Darrell and Nigel to have their minds blown and their socks blown off!!!