Vegas

Vegas has some activities for everyone and millions of people come to this wonderland from different parts of the world. I have visited Vegas 7 years back with family and not much has changed with respect to the street ambience. Of course there are new hotels with stunning looks and one of them that caught my attention was Aria Resort. Aria is supposedly one of the luxury resorts and have heard great reviews about this place. We did not have time to visit Aria especially their cuisine options which was the most advertised everywhere even inside a taxi through videos.

This was a very casual 2 day trip with my friend Gayathri. We have been thinking for awhile to take a break from our regular routine at work & home. It has been a practice to do a Girls day out for few hours within the city mainly on weekends so the guys can take care of the kids. This time we wanted to do slightly different and the guys were supportive of that :-). Vegas is probably the first place that I didn’t spend much time on planning as you have access to most of the resources pretty much everywhere on the Strip.

We stayed in the Signature at MGM Grand which is more of a condo style furnished rooms. The Signature does not have a Casino but has access to the MGM Grand Hotel’s casino through their tower passage. Gayathri & I were not interested in Casino and our activities were more towards tasting some good food & watching shows. As we had to pass through the Casino almost everytime to get out of the hotel, we used to say to each other – “Lets try atleast once to get the experience”. It was so funny that we indeed tried to play in one of the machines by inserting a dollar bill and had no idea of how to play the game.

The best highlight of our trip was watching the “O” show by Cirque du Soleil in Bellagio Theatre. This show is an aquatic masterpiece and theme revolves around Water. I read in Wikipedia that this show uses 1.5 million gallons of water and absolutely mind-blowing to watch the artists perform on the stage. It’s a 90 min show and I didn’t feel bored nor tired at any point of time while watching this show. There were so many acrobats & divers with stunning performances that u’ll not be able to takes ur eyes off from them. If I go to Vegas I’ll definitely watch this one more time. This is one of the expensive shows but worth watching it and I would recommend choosing a premium seat that is closer to the stage to enjoy the experience.

Food was awesome at the places we explored this time. Tao Asian Bistro and Café Bellagio were my favorites. MGM Grand buffet was average when compared to other two.
Tao Asian Bistro/ was really very high quality food with great ambience located within the Venetian Hotel. I loved the Bamboo dumpling and Vegetable Fried Brown rice. Tea was served in a huge soup bowl and it was the Indian Chai mixed with spices – awesome taste !

Most of my US friends will be familiar about the places to stay & see in Vegas – Sharing some of the tips & my insights for my non-US friends if you do plan to visit Vegas.

Transportation
Shuttle service is available outside the airport that you can use for most of the hotels in the strip. It costs
15$ roundtrip.

Monorail is another service accessible inside most of the hotels and is pretty comfortable when the weather is bad. The only downside is on the walking stretch from the station to the hotel as u’ll have to pass through the casino and its pretty long walk.

Hotels
All the hotels in the strip are good and it depends on how much you want to spend & the amenities that ur looking for. There are lot of budget hotels available but you need to watch out for your security as well.

Some of the high end hotels in the Strip:

• Bellagio – There is a musical fountain show every 30 mins that is very spectacular to watch both during day & night time. During our Eiffel tower ride in Paris hotel, we learnt that the fountain is set on a manmade lake that is 8 acres
• Caesars Palace – Another luxury hotel where u’ll see the palace depicting the Roman architecture
• Venetian – This place will take you to Venice and has Rialto kind of a bridge with a Gondala ride as one of the highlights. There is a wax museum inside this building which is a popular day time attraction
• Paris – This hotel is right opposite to Bellagio and has great views of the musical fountain from the top of the Eiffel tower. The Eiffel tower ride is located within this hotel and there is a restaurant similar to the one in Paris, France.
• Aria

Top Shows to Visit

• O show by Cirque Du Soleil – Pricing between 120$ – 160 $
• David Copperfield Illusion Show – Pricing between 95 $ – 135 $
• Chris Angels Show
• Zakarna