When you think of Vegas, you think of this view right here... the front of the
Bellagio. These are pics I took waiting for the fountains show to start. The
left pic is the classic Bellagio photo and the two on the right show Caesar's Palace with
the Bellagio pool in front. Caesar's is actually across the street so the shops you
see in front are actually the entrance passageway to Bellagio.
    
 
Ah... the fountains at Bellagio. I tell you what... I've seen pics of this 1000
times on TV, but nothing does it justice... you just have to be there to really experience
it properly. The shows are fairly short - 3-4 minutes long each - and play
sporadically throughout the day and night. Each is done to a different musical
number and the shows vary widely in style. The first one I saw was done to the
Hallelujah chorus and featured lots of huge blasts of water while later ones featured more
dancing water. The fountains are arranged in one really, really long arc (probably a
quarter mile wide) along with 3-4 different circular patterns. Plus every water
spout can move in any direction so the variety of possible shows is limitless. I saw
4 different ones and I'd happily watch 20 more... it was that good.
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These pics of the fountains are taken from the Balcony of the Fontana Lounge right at the
front of the Bellagio. There was a WPT Poker tournament going on in the Fontana
Lounge and they let spectators in... so I wandered out to the balcony and watched the
fountains from there, so this is essentially the exact opposite perspective of the first
set of pictures. As you can see, Paris is directly across from Bellagio and makes a
real good backdrop for these pics. There's a club on the lower levels of the Eiffel
Tower and I'd imagine with a good view of the fountains, that would be a pretty awesome
place to hang out.
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These pics of the Paris Hotel were taken from the sidewalk in front of Bellagio. The
first one is from right in front of the door to enter Bellagio. The last one shows
the entrance to Paris but the hotel in the background is actually the Aladdin.
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These are more pictures taken from the balcony of the Fontana lounge in front of Bellagio.
The first two are pics of the hotel we stayed at - The Flamingo. As you can
see, the location of the Flamingo is absolutely perfect. The pic on the far right is
the Aladdin which also a stone's throw away from Bellagio.
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Here's a few kewl Bellagio pics... the first two are Bellagio with the sun over its
shoulder. The last two are pics of the huge pool where the fountains show takes
place... you can see just how huge an area it covers.
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Pics of a nighttime version of the fountains show from directly in front of Bellagio.
Here you can really see the variety of effects they can pull off leading to a
thunderous finish. Awe inspiring stuff.
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These pics were taken from the far south end of the Bellagio pool with Caesar's Palace in
the background. This helps you get a sense of how wide the main arc of fountains is.
This show was done to the music of Elton John's Your Song. I still can't get
enough... hehe.
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There are actually the last pics I took in Vegas. They are from the far south side
of Bellagio and the left two are Paris, then Aladdin, then looking south at Monte Carlo.
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The world famous lobby at Bellagio. The pic on the far right is an indoor portion of
the conservatory that they had decorated for Christmas. The red area is actually a
ton of cranberries all floating in a pool of water. It wasn't as lavish as I thought
it might be, but still awfully nice.
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The poker room at Bellagio. I played some $4-$8 Limit Hold em there on Sunday and
was up $115 so I enjoyed myself immensely. The Bellagio poker room is pretty kewl.
Even though the room was totally packed, I got a seat in less than 5 minutes.
They accomodated low limit players like me in the main area. There's an
elevated area for "High Stakes" where it's $400-$800 and the like. There's
also an enclosed room where the serious high stakes games are going on - the $4000-$8000
variety... a mere 1000 times what I was playing. On top of all that, they have
another area, the Fontana Lounge, where they have tournament play. Bellagio is
certainly the capital of poker in Vegas.
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The Fontana Lounge which was hosting a WPT event at the time. This was the only
picture I got off before they told me "No pictures in this room sir".
Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics of famous players, but I did see Joe Hachem (current
WSOP champ), Men "The Master", TJ Cloutier, Layne Flack and many other
recognizable faces.
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A very quick and horribly out of focus peek at the famous "big game" table in
the enclosed area in the Bellagio Poker room. Sitting at the table, you can see
Jennifer Harmon and Chip Reese. We say David Skalnsky, Ming Ly, Joe Awada and other
famous players in there from time to time.
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The Venetian - viewed from right in front. The outside of the Venetian is
spectacular. It's so huge that it's almost impossible to photograph it all, but this
is a good taste.
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The outside of the Venetian at night. Awesome. |
The Venetian viewed from down the street at the Wynn. |
    
   
   
The Venetian - Interior. If you thought the outside was nice, the interior of the
Venetian is even better. The first two pics are the huge ceiling painting right as
you enter the front door. I didn't take any pics of the casino floor but the
atmosphere is excellent and they easily won the prize for best cocktail waitresses.
The only downside of the casino is the relatively high limits there. For example,
for craps, the minimum at Venetian was $15, while I found $10 min at Mirage and $5 min at
Flamingo. Otherwise, the Venetian is the place to gamble. The rest of the pics
above are Venetian's phenominal indoor Grand Canal Shops. There's a canal flowing
inside where you can take a gondola ride. The ceilings are all arched and painted to
look like the sky. There' s a big courtyard area in the middle with some performers
- guys on stilts, jugglers and people posing as "statues" holding perfectly
still. We had dinner on Saturday night in the resturant in the courtyard area and it
was really great. We ate from 9:30-11:30 but with the way the area is set up, it
felt like mid afternoon on a beautiful summer day. Pretty awesome.
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The Mirage viewed from the 2nd floor balcony of the Venetian. There's a walkway in
front of the Venetian that overlooks the strip.
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The Mirage from across the street.
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The Mirage at night from right out front. There's a free show at the Mirage called
"Volcanos" which we didn't get to see. Mirage is still pretty impressive
from the outside.
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The Mirage again in daylight. The pools extend across the front of the Mirage
property giving it a really nice look.
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White Tiger exhibit at the Mirage. This particular tiger obviously isn't a White
Tiger but this is where the White Tigers would be if they were on display. Seigfried
and Roy's show is at the Mirage and this exhibit is right off the hallway at the front of
the casino.
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The casino area at the Mirage. To be honest, I wasn't very impressed with the casino
area... the ceilings were fairly low and it had a dark feel to it that didn't seem as
pleasant as the other casinos. Maybe it's just personal taste. One thing I did
like was the lower minimums in the casino. Knowing how much it costs to stay at
Mirage, I'm surprised the limits weren't more like Bellagio and Venetian. The poker
room at Mirage was pretty nice.. I played $3-$6 Hold em and won $100, once getting quad
Aces! Overall, I liked Mirage, but it wasn't nearly as nice as Venetian.
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The outside of Treasure Island. I really liked how TI looked from the outside but I
really didn't like the casino area. Seemed kind of dark and dingy to me somehow and
I just didn't like it very much. I do like the pirate theme of everything though.
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Treasure Island viewed from the entrance to the Wynn. The daytime view is going into
the Wynn... the night time views are coming out after 4 hours of poker. These are
some of my favorite pics from the trip... not that TI is nicer than the other hotels, just
that the composition of the pics with the moon the back came out really well.
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The Sirens show in front of Treasure Island. This is the free show that happens 3-4
times a night right in front of TI. The crowd outside to see it was massive - the
sidewalk was packed. The show itself was kinda corny and not that great, but the
effects were kewl, the ladies were attractive and the price was right so I can't complain
all that much.
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The outside of the Wynn Hotel. This is one of the newest hotels in Vegas and it's a
super nice one. I really liked it a lot.
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The Wynn viewed from the front of Treasure Island.
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The Lobby of Treasure Island decorated for Christmas. Ok... this pic is out of
place... sue me.
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The inside of the Wynn. The third pic is the poker room. Although neither Greg
or myself did very well at the Wynn, I thought the poker room was very well managed and I
enjoyed playing there very much. The one thing I didn't like is that it seemed like
the players here were a bit better than they were elsewhere. I saw a lot less poor
play here than at Bellagio, Mirage or Flamingo (the other three places we played). I
got cold-decked and just could not pick up a hand, ending up down $100. Greg had an
even worse problem - he was actually picking up a lot of good hands and then getting them
beat. The best example is when he picked up quad 5s and got beat by quad 7s.
I've never even seen that bad of a beat online. That's just sick bad luck
there. In any case, it was fun, we just didn't win. The 5th pic is the Ferrari
dealership and museum inside the Wynn. Unfortunately they wanted $10 just to walk
through so we didn't see it but it was kewl anyway.
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Caesar's Palace. Caesar's was right across the street from the Flamingo and was also
really nice. I'm a big fan of ancient architecture so I was really enjoying the
Roman look of everything. The bottom row of pictures is the outside of the Forum
shops - a massive indoor shopping area. There's pics of the inside below.
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The lobby and casino at Caesar's Palace. Roman statues everywhere. I really
liked the way this casino looked but we kind of buzzed in and out so I didn't get to see
much of it.
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The forum shops at Caesar's Palance. These shops are similar to the Canal shops at
Venetian with the sky painted ceiling. Instead of a canal here though, they had 3
large courtyards with fountains as the centerpiece of each. They had some pretty
high end shops in here too... I liked the spot that had Louis Vitton, Versace and
Gucci side by side. Yikes!
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Views from our room at the Flamingo. These are actually the very first pictures I
took the night and morning we arrived. We got a sweet room on the 25th floor facing
north over the strip. As you can see from the pics, the view was mighty nice.
One of my favorite stories from the night we got there is about Greg's friends that also
came to Vegas. We all happened to be on the same flight which left Chicago at 9pm
arriving 11:30 local Vegas time (1:30am Chicago time). When we got off the plane,
they complained about how tired they were and how they were just gonna get some drinks and
crash. Greg and I stayed up until about 5am Vegas time and then slept for 3 hours
and got up. We called Greg's friends at about 1pm and it turns out they were still
awake from the night before and had not slept! A night of Red Bull and Vodka will do
that to you. Be careful when you come to Vegas... that's all I have to
say. ;-)
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Looking out the back of the Flamingo from the 25th floor near the elevators. There
was one window at the elevator bank that looked out the back of the hotel and gave a good
look at the pools and other stuff behind the Flamingo. I'm not sure what the big
building is, other than it's not a part of the Flamingo complex.
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Various views of the outside of the front of The Flamingo Hotel where we stayed.
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The first picture is the buffet at The Flamingo where we ate breakfast both days. It
cost $15 but there was an excellent variety of food and the dining atmosphere was really
great. Right outside a huge set of windows were lots of waterfalls with swans and
flamingos. Made for a really nice breakfast.
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More pictures of the back of the Flamingo. The windows are tinted pink so when you
see the reflection on the windows, it looks bright pink. It's a kewl effect.
The top right pic is of the very pink wedding area. The bottom two rows are the very
impressive pools in back of the Flamingo. It was around 50 degrees outside while we
were there so the pools were empty but they had a small regular pool, and then a
waterslide connecting to about 5 levels of pools with short slides connecting each and
then a massive pool area in the back with a grotto and everything. I can totally see
us staying here in the summer hanging out in the pools in back.
So that's it for our trip to Vegas. I thoroughly loved every minute and there's so
much more I'd love to do and see. We spent a lot of time being tourists and taking
pictures... next time, we'll probably try to see a show, or hit a real nightclub,
and probably stay in a different area of Vegas to experience it a little differently.
Can't wait for the next trip!
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