More amazing hotels

One of my favorite hotels to visit in Las Vegas is the Venetian which brings a taste of that most unique city to the Strip. It's an all-suites hotel (4,024 rooms) with a Venetian lagoon out front facing the street.
You can see the gondolas tied up in the photo below. The tower is a replica of Venice's Campanile in St Mark's Square and the Rialto bridge is also on view.

 Inside there is a painted ceiling to give the illusion that we are still outdoors and singing gondoliers take passengers for a ride (for a fee of course). It's all good fun!

In the shopping area is a waterfall

The pumpkins and autumn colors in the photo above would tell me that we took this in the Fall-basically the whole month of October in the USA. When it comes to indoor gardens though the Bellagio has all the other hotels beat as I'll show you at some point in the future.

Of course there's a casino...

And restaurants owned by celebrity chefs- in this case the renowned Italian chef Mario Batali (and his savvy business partner Joe Bastianich)

Nearby the Venetian is a more normal looking hotel which bears the name of the entrepreneur Steve Winn who among other things is responsible for the Mirage Hotel and Bellagio. The Wynn doesn't have an obvious theme like some of the others but offers elegant rooms and grounds and of course a plethora of restaurants-15 or so, some very highly regarded and winners of a Michelin Star.  The interior decorations in the public walkways are the work of his wife and of dubious taste (too ornate and fussy-calm down lady!)

The Wynn has 2700 rooms and those at the rear overlook a lake and the hotel's own18 hole golf course. Rooms range in size from 640 sq.ft to 7,000 sq.ft. villas (yikes!!!)There are 10 villas.
It's sister hotel the Encore sits close behind.
Of course it has a big casino too (111,000 sq.ft). You can see some of the high end shops.

After the Wynn and Encore the famous and stunning hotels thin out. Downtown Las Vegas is a 15 minute walk away but it has a more down-market feel and look to it, although some of the oldest casinos are there and they do put on a neon- light show over the  partly covered main street, Fremont Street each night.

The luxury and pizzaz ends here, for me, so I turn and walk back down the Strip....

and come upon the Mirage-the first themed hotel built on the Strip in 1989. At night a volcano erupts close to the street and inside the hotel lobby it looks like a tropical rain forest (I am not making this up!)

 There is a must-see show for Beatles fans (guilty!) which is Cirque du Soleil acrobatics set to some great Beatles music-the original tapes remastered by George Martin and the sound is incredible high-fidelity for those who originally heard them through 1960's vinyl records, TV sets and cheap radios.

Inside the hotel, once you hack your way through the tropical forest the reception desk features a remarkable 53 feet by 8 feet glass aquarium behind the check-in desk. Try and concentrate while the lady is asking for your information!

The hotel also has dolphins and a white tiger on display and they are real...we saw Siegfried and Roy here many years ago before their trained tiger mauled Roy and ended his fabulous career.

It looks like Caesar's Palace will be coming up next if I keep walking...

Caesar's is a hotel that has kept growing over the years. It speaks of Italy, hence the cypress trees and the fountains and statuary.

The hotel has added more buildings since this photo was taken on one of our first visits. The hotel was built in 1966 and so has had almost 50 years of morphing going on. It now has 3,960 rooms and 166,000 sq. ft devoted to gambling.

 Just peeking into the right side of the frame in this next shot is the round 4300 seat theater called the Colosseum, which was built to house Celine Dion's first 3 year residency at Caesar's back in I think 2003(?). Whenever it was we got front row seats for one of her shows at a then record for Las Vegas $220 each, which is about what the best seats in an Opera house would cost. She is back there again for a contract that will take her through 2017 but in the meantime Bette Middler, Elton John and Cher have all done long residencies at Caesar's. Even President Obama has performed in a show there (a fund raiser)

You will NOT be bored in las Vegas!!

A last look at one of the many gardens at Caesar's

Right, I'm walking back home to the Bellagio now as my feet are killing me!