Thursday, August 20, 2020

Las Vegas - The Strip (part 2)

 In Las Vegas the primary attraction is obviously the strip. There are three sections in the strip: North, South and Mid. While each one of the casinos are unique in their own rights, the Mid strip is probably the part that pulls most of the visitors due to its vicinity to the city center. It is possible to walk the full strip, a four mile stretch. However, we had only an evening to cover the strip and didn't want to walk at night. So we drove to the Mid Strip and parked at Venetian, one of the casinos that do not charge a parking fee.   

Venetian


                                                                              


    Caesars Place


    Forum Shop (Caesars Place)










Sidewalk next to Bellagio

The man with the dog mask got a bit upset when I didn't show too much interest in taking his picture (I wasn't sure if that would be okay). I quickly corrected that mistake. 



 
The famous Bellagio fountain water show

One of the free public shows in Las Vegas and it is truly spectacular. Nobody should miss it.  




   A tree decorated in colorful lights











  
Flamingo          
                                                 

The Mirage - Volcano show

This is another free show that is offered to public. I wasn't sure how good it would be. But once I saw it my opinion changed. It was a pretty good show. 



Las Vegas - Getting there (part 1)

 Going to Las Vegas had been a long-time wish for me. I am not a gambler by any means and wasn’t looking forward to gamble away anything more than twenty dollars. One of my goal was to see the strip in Las Vegas consisting the highly publicized casinos some of which are replicas of well-known world-famous structures. But my primary intention was to visit some of the most unique and beautiful natural places on earth located within a few hours of driving from Las Vegas, like Grand Canyon, the Death Valley, Mojave Preserve, La Jolla Cove, Sedona Red Rocks etc. Of course, I wasn’t going to miss the famous Hoover dam. In the next series of blogs, I am going to describe, mostly in pictures, about my trips in each one of those destinations.

Let's start with Las Vegas. The view from the plane as we approached Las Vegas was simply breathtaking. 




The airport was neat. I specifically loved the mural and the gambling slots. Coming from Canada, this (the slots) was something new (to see them in the airport lobby).

A sculpture of a bunny somewhere in the airport was also interesting. 


We stayed in Sahara, slightly out of the popular part of the strip, primarily because we got a better deal there. But the hotel was pretty good. The view from our room was nice. 

Among everything else, palm trees were what instantly captured my attention. Originally from Bangladesh, palm trees always bring up some fondest memories from my childhood.