-- Las Vegas --

Hi how's all of ya ~

I just came back from vegas and wanna share some photos with yall .

Vegas is not merely a place full of casinos . It is a place full with Entertainments. You never know what entertainment fully means before you witness Las Vegas. It is a sophisticated , romantic , highly entertaining megacity. To be honest , I spent less than 10% of my time in vegas loitering and losing my money in casinos .

LAs vegas is a very big city , but if you are looking for the most happening place in Vegas , the Las Vegas Strip is the one for you. Las Vegas Strip is one long long street , about 4 KM from one end to the other . along the street are many 5 stars hotel and casinos. To explore all of the hotels , I spent 3 full days and nights. Every hotel/casino has their own themes. Each of them has their own featured shows too.

On the way to vegas . Las Vegas is sitting right in a desert. It took me 5 hours to reach LV from Grand Canyon. We passed thru deserts along the way. LV is super hot .. 40 degrees at noon , and 38 at night. It gets even hotter when the wind blows .

I went LV with 4 of my friends. We "lompang" a tour bus from canyon to LV. It is night when we reached LV. Its pretty amazing , almost unbelievable when we saw LV from afar. Just imagine you see sea of lights in the middle of a desert. The hotel we staying is called " Excalibur " . It 's theme is "castle and knights " .

We then starts exploring the LV strip from one end to the other.

Next we saw is Bellagio hotel . It has a 8 acre lake infront of it. Bellagio hotel's theme is Water and luxury. The special thing about bellagio hotel is its fountain show which starts in noon till midnight . IT shows every 15 minutes and changes songs everytime.

Next hotel we see is the "Paris" hotel. The theme of the hotel , obviously , is Paris. It has all the statue , carved wall , fountains that can be found in france , and of coz , the Eifel tower. This replica of Eiffel tower is of the exact thing , but 1/2 the size . Anyway it looks beautiful and tall enough even in its halved size.

Next up is Caesar's Palace . It 's building is themed on Old Roman's culture. There are lots of sculpture of the God and Goddess in Roman time.

This is the shopping complex attached to the hotel , it is called "the forum shops". There are lots of clubs , bars and restaurants inside too. The sculptures looks pretty stunning at nights. Sure they kill lots of camera memory from the tourist.

This is the lobby of the hotel. A big round hall with very beautiful wall paintings and lightings.

The 3 goddess that overlook the whole hotel lobby. Cool ~

The next hotel/casino is one of my favourite. It is called " Venetian" . The hotel is built to resembles Venice . It kinda looks like a floating city . Venetian is the host of the " phantom of the opera" show. It has a 40 million dollar custom made theather just for showing phantom of the opera. Too bad i didn't have time to watch the show here ....

The walkway in the hotel .

This is the "Luxor " hotel . With the theme of egypt . The big pyramid is really a hotel . It is really big inside with all the writtings and paintings of ancient egypt . See the half lion man ( dunno what the name lar ) ? The tip of the pyramid will shoots off very strong green laser light at night , and the whole pyramid will shines at night.

NExt is MGM . Dont be fooled by this photo. MGM Grand is a very Grand hotel . The bronze lion sculpture is the biggest bronze sculpture in north america. This hotel has 30 something real lions .. there is a big human-make garden where they will let those trained lions show themselves during the day.

THis is the "New York New York" hotel. As you can see ... it is a manhattan city in small scale. I watched its show .. It is called "Zumanity " by circque du soleil . I will write more on that ... Anyway , notice the roller coastal tracks surrounding the whole hotel ? It's awesome !

More to come ...

Xu Shen , atlantiz0 .