Greetings from Sin City! I am just sitting down to write this at 12:37 AM - clearly we are infected with the Vegas spirit already. I am really enjoying my first visit to Vegas so far - my eyes have been like saucers all night. There is so much to look at everywhere I turn!
The Bellagio during a fountain show (lasts for about 2 minutes every 15 minutes until midnight). The show is amazing - beautifully choreographed with lights and music, like watching a ballet.
We are staying at the Bellagio, and although check-in wasn't that great (long lines, crowds, not very helpful checker-inner), we got an amazing room and are thrilled. The Bellagio is right on the Strip and is famous for its "lake" and fountain show. Like most Vegas hotels, its lower level is a city unto itself: in addition to the huge casino, there are six restaurants, countless shops, and even the Cirque de Soleil.
I asked for a fountain view (amazingly, our room costs the same whether you face the mountains in back or the fountain/Strip in front) and we ended up with a wonderful corner room. Not only is it a great room, it has amazing views out of three big windows - two out of three walls in the bedroom plus one in the bathroom (which you can enjoy from the tub)! The best view is through the window at the end of the room, which looks right over the fountain and the Strip. It is possibly the most awesome view I've had from a hotel.
Our room is on this end, right side (view from the roof of the parking garage, where we parked - so we can see the car from our room too!)
The room, including the window with the best view. We turned the chairs towards the window and turned all the lights off to watch several fountain shows tonight. So fun! The room is beautiful, too - I'll have to take a daytime photo to show the colors better. It was just remodeled this year, so everything is new and fresh, and it has a very cool purple-and-green color scheme.
View from our window
Better view with the camera on the glass: fountain show, Flamingo (left), Bally (center left), and Paris Las Vegas (can't miss it).
After arriving in Vegas around 6:00 and finally getting checked in, we headed down to the Strip to look around and find dinner. (The Bellagio buffet - every hotel has a buffet, of course - was lined up like you would not believe, and most of the other restaurants were fancier than we wanted.) We were whisked away from the hotel on an elevated moving walkway - SUPER COOL. We ended up at an Italian restaurant in the Paris hotel, which was good but not worth writing home about, so I won't. The Paris hotel is so weird - a mini, indoor, fake France, complete with painted-on blue sky above.
After dinner we walked through the Flamingo, which is scented with coconut and was the first major hotel on the Strip (in 1945; Bugsy Siegel was the main founder), and Caesar's Palace, which features replicas of the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain and more painted-on sky. Out on the Strip, we were offered girls (delivered to your room within 20 minutes) and God (who will send you to hell if you don't repent) within the space of 10 steps. What a weird, wacky, and utterly unique place Vegas is. Looking forward to exploring more tomorrow.