Las Vegas; Friday, 07 April, 2023

I was feeling lazy so I headed down to the coffee shop in the hotel to grab some breakfast, and shortly after vowed never to do that again as a coffee, juice and a particularly unpleasant sausage and egg breakfast muffin cost $33. With my unsatisfactory breakfast completed I headed out of the hotel and went for a wander along the strip.

My first stop of the morning was to wander down the LINQ Promenade which houses a number of shops and non-hotel restaurants which appeared to have much better pricing than those in the resorts so I stored that information away for later.

I then headed down the strip a bit further to the Venetian hotel and Grand Canal Shoppes. The whole resort is designed around the concept of Venice, though with little though given to the actual geography of the city with the Doge’s Palace connected to St Marks Tower by the Rialto Bridge (complete with travelators). The shopping centre was mostly made up of very high end shops, with a recreation of the grand canal wandering its way through it with gondola rides available to take on the waters. In this respect the resort has managed to exactly match the extortionate pricing of a gondola ride in the real Venice.

After spending quite a bit of time wandering around the Venetian I used the footbridge to cross over the road to The Mirage to take in the statue to Siegfried and Roy who performed at the venue for a number of years (until one of them was mauled by their tiger). I then wandered past the currently dormant volcano and then headed back over the road to grab a late lunch at the In n Out burger place that I’d spotted on the LINQ promenade.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the casinos and resorts on this side of the strip including taking in the small animal park in the Flamingo, which, naturally, included flamingos along with turtles and fish as well as spending quite a bit of time exploring Paris which was directly connected to my own resort and features, like the Venetian, a very compacted sense of geography (the Eiffel Tower sitting above the Musée d'Orsay which is also the Palais Garnier Opera House located right next to the Arc de Triomphe).

After exploring Paris I headed back to my own hotel to freshen up for a little while before popping out a bit before sunset to take in another of the Bellagio’s fountain shows, this time from the walkways by the Casino itself so I had Paris as a backdrop. I then had a wander through The Bellagio before heading over the road to Caesars Palace to have a quick look around the Trevi Fountain and then the Forum shops, complete with their very weird spiral escalators.

I headed a bit further beyond the Forum to the Mirage and was there in time for one of the volcano shows of the evening, where the volcano out the front of the hotel erupts for about 6 minutes at the top of each hour during the night – it’s a pretty impressive show, particularly as it was now dark.

Having taken in the volcano show I grabbed a bite to eat and headed back towards my hotel, stopping off at a convenience store close to it to grab some things for breakfast in the morning – managing to put together a much more substantial offering for barely $10