AMERICA The 1st

HALLOWEEN in VEGAS Wow! Not only are we spending a night in Vegas, but Sherry pulled the cool suprise of booking us into the Bellagio - Made famous by the movie Ocean's Eleven. The Bellhop was a bit loco. I don't know whether it was because we are Australian or he was just on some high grade but yeah. It's dumb that we had to tip him. He didn't deserve it. I didn't really understand that all of these casinos played to a specific theme and made it as authentic a mimic as possible. As we explored Vegas i found out more about this. The front foyer of Bellagio was pretty impressive. The colours were weird, i thought conisdering it was one of the world's most famous casinos that it would just be the bee's knees. But it is the Bellagio, and the Bellagio is the Italian casino based on Lake Como. On the ceiling where we checked in the ceiling was covered in large coloured flowers. The main colours were blue, orange, yellow and i just dont think they looked good. It must be an Italian thing. The hotel rooms are a bit of a walk through the gambling pits. A good idea I guess because yuo are staying at a Casino - not a hotel. The tables and pits were pretty typical of any casino, I mean what can you really do? put roulette tables on the celing? Play poker with on the floor with sushi. The games are universally standard. You have to show your room pass to get into the hotel elevator lobby. This lobby is done amazingly well as it is split into four sections for different allotments of floors (9 floor allotments). Each of these sections then has six elevators. This is awesome because it minimises waiting time for a lift. Just imagine hundreds of punters waiting for one elevator? haha. The Bellagio have done well here to keep the patrons happy. Our hotel room was 19118 - Floor 19 Room 118. Room 118 was a massive walk from the elevators, pretyt much down an entire wing. It was like walking down a ship's living quarters. Just down a narrow corridor passing rom after room after room. Considering the price, and the hotel brand, I wsa mroe than happy with our room. It was pretty much the equivalent for what you would get if you paid a similar price to stay at a ncie Hotel around any of Australia's cities. Directly bellow our room we could see the Bellagio Pool Area. Our room was facing the New York New York and Mandalay Bay casinos. I think it was Tele Servalis on the tv as the 'host' of the casino. The new massive casino/retail.appartment complex they are building on the next block does actually cast a shadow over the Pool area. Just like Al Pacino's Bank Casino in Ocean's 13. There is actually a 'Bank' - but it's a nightclub in the Bellagio. We dotter ourselves up appropriately and headed out to see what this Las Vegas Strip thing was all about. First thing we checked out after leaving our room was the Halloween display. The best way to describe it 'An elaborate Pumpkjn patch'. There was a huge garden, a water mill and other suprises.

After checking out the cabbage patch, we walked out the Casino foyer back out to where we dropped our car off for the Vallet. Out the fron here you can see the archicectural detail.

Just behind me, from where I took this shot was a little garden area in front of the large lake. This replica of Lake Como in Italy is where the famous fountain shots for Ocean's 11 are shown, but from the side. We walked through the garden which was nice, to watch one of the Dancing fountain shows. You could hear the music and we could see heaps of people watching it from the street side.

After watching one of the shows, we walked around to the right which took us past the Casino carpark. We couldn't believe what we saw. Our two old friends from Los Angeles. The Diablos. Not only are they cool cars to get a photo of, but they are exactly the same ones that we ran us off the road in the outer L.A limits. Had to take a photo.

We then walked out onto the street and headed to the right. Out on the street it was like being at the Melbourne Show. People everywhere, all dressed up with everywhere to go. Every ten metres you pass annoying promoters flicking their promo cards and waving them in yuor face. Generally there wearing bright coloured T-shirts - doing all the marketing basics to try and get some promo out for their strip clubs. It was part of the atmosphere of the Las Vegas streets. Thwack! flick! Snap!

The Paris Casino is on the other side of the road, directly opposite the Bellagio, but we decided to walk down the street on the Bellagio side. This took us past the construction zone for the new mega casino. We first stopped at a convenience store and bought some smokes and cans of red bull. We walked outside, cracked the cans, lit the smokes and said something like 'Welcome to Vegas, let the dirty weekend begin.' Welcome to Sin City.

Just past this area was the New York New York casino. Out the front they had a massive Haunted house display setup across the Brooklyn Birdge replica. It looked crap on the oustide, but sounded terrifying. Chansaws, chains and wind were all par for the course and from the screams eminating from the structure it sounded like people were getting a damn good fright.

It was $20 bucks each so we decided not to go in, I think Sherry would have though if I had agreed. But I'm a bit of a baby when it comes to scary stuff. We shared a bag of popcorn as we walked around the oustide of the New York New York Casino. You could see how they trid to replicate all the buildings. They had the mini statue of liberty, and each of the hotels as part of the Casino were mini versions of the Chrysler building, Empire State building etc.

We then walked inside the New York New York Casino and found a cool rollercoaster ride which seemed like a good idea at the time to try. We'd heard it was cool because you start off inside the casino but then get taken outside around the building skyline. We got in and we had the 2 seats at the back and as started moving and begun the slow climb to ensuing hell i looked at Sherry and said 'What the hell did we do this for!' From then on it was chaos. The worst hign i hate about riollercoasters is i'm always worried im going to get decapitated around some tight section because i'm tall. I'm sure the designers have made allowances for the Manute Bol's of this world to ride comfortably but when you are getting hurled around the cart thanks to the G Forces you cant help but feel a bit worried. Sherry wasn't worried about the safety bars giving way, she was worried about the kart leaving the tracks.

But yeah, as we climbed higher and higher and saw how far below the ground was it scared the beejesus out of me. You have to get into it though. As we staretd to drop i yelled out 'Here we go!'. Its really only the neckharnesses that stop you from flying outside. Because you are going straight, but the kart is pulling you down. It was a cool rollercoaste track too. They had a loop d loop and a corkscrew too. It was pretty exhilarating too survive. We then walked over and checked out Excalibur - which looks like the Disney castle from outside. The only other good thing about the casino was the massive travulators you could ride to take you in there. Inside we didn't explore too far. The only thing i remember was that it seemed boring and there was a girl dancing on stage throwing out beads to the crowd. Seemed like a pretty ordinary job. We were there all of 5 minutes.

We then kept walking down the street and saw a few more casinos - not the inside, but just the oustides. One Egyptian Hotel had a Sphinx out the front and a massive glass pyramid at the back. We walked up to the foyer becasue we were getting tired and wanted to catch a cab. A Marilyn Monroe look-a-like got out of a car and HE re-adjusted his boobies.

Our Cab drive was pretty high on life and on the way back to the Bellagio he gave another taxi driver directions. Glad we were in our cab. Who knows what their fair would have been. We actually got back onto the Intersate quickly just to avioud the strip which is basically in permanent gridlock. Back inside the Bellagio unfortunately many of the palces we wanted to go were shut. The queue for the 'Buffet' was just massive...and always was. All you can eat for sweet bugger all. How could people resist? We ended up going to The Bellagio Cafe. i ordered a Bloody mary and a choc shake. The shakes had been a winner so far and this one didn't disappoint. The Bloody mary was so spicy. I had to leave it til last and then just skull it. We both had a penne pasta to eat and it tasted as nice as Shanika's.

While eating we discussed whether we should stay in las Vegas the following night too. We wanted to get back to Snata Barbara to watch a college football game, but Las Vegas was so much fun. We decided to stay - and in hindsight it was the best thing we could have done.

1. There was still heaps to see and do here

2. We'd driven roughly 400 miles each of the last 2 days 3. Even if we had driven back we would have missed the game.

By the way - being exposed to NFL all the time really makes me want to play Madden.

After going to recepetion and getting the 'no problem',. We decided to head back out to the street to see another fountain display. But this time from the street side.

Watching these 'bellagio Fountain Dances' were probably my highlight of the trip. Well seeing the NBA and travelling to all the cities was great. But these dances were really uplifiting. Just magicial in fact. Over the 2 days we heard 'Luck me a Lady' , 'Singin' in the Rain', 'Star Spangled Banner', 'God Bless America' and 'My Heart will go on'. We also saw a couple of other by Dean Martin, Frank "ALREADY?!?' Sinatra and Pavarotti. Initially we stood at what we thought was the place where the final Ocean's Eleven scene was shot. I just couldn't figure out how they got rid of the tree for the movie shot. But then as we walked further around you could see the big main alcove where that scene was shot. The shows were best when the wind was minimal. When the wind picked up the show began to incorporate some crowd involvement as water that would previously jsu9t have flown straight up laced the crowd.

After my first night in Las Vegas my impression of the place was: The Melbourne Show - Adults Only style. Harrah's Casino even looked like something that was at the Melbourne show. Whether it's gambling, booze, ladies of the night, nightclubs, restaurants, birght lights, rides, shops, magic, comedy concerts and even circus shows - Las Vegas had it.

There were so many people around dressed up. Halloween is such a big day in America. All the clubs had best dressed compeitions going which led to a lot of people going all out. Not only jsut the plain 'best-costume' award, but 'Best celebrity', 'best-naughty costume' etc. Consequently there was a fair bit of skin out. Some notable get-ups we saw hilst walking around - and all of these were done really really well mind you - The Hulk, Batman, Catwoman, a black Wonder Woman, Headless man, Mad Butcher, Puppet master, Caesar, naughty nurses and gladiators.

Is that apron a legal colour?

After seeing all we had, and after all the walking and driving we were knackered. We stopped by a shop and i bought a nice Bellagio Polo shirt. I think to date i have warn it twice. haha. It looks good as though. Back at the room we quickly planned out what to do tomorrow before crashing hard.