We arrived in the evening, and was whisked off to "downtown Vegas" to watch the "biggest screen in the world" on Fremont Street.
The Fremont Street Experience was fun, to say the least. While waiting for the Viva Vision show to start, we walked under this huge canopy which housed souvenir shops and casinos and strip bars and casinos and strip bars and casinos and strip bars (you get the picture). There were little stalls selling all kinds of knick-knacks. And in the middle of it, there was a free concert stage. It was like a street party!
At Fremont Street - and that's the large canopy screen overhead
At 8 pm, the lights on the street dimmed and the Viva Vision show started - sponsored by LG. The entire canopy overhead (and I do mean the ENTIRE canopy which is about 4-blocks-of-shops long - or the size of about 5 football fields) lit up with moving images and it was one long LG advertisement, in story-line of course. It was fun to watch, with a good sound system to back it up, and trying to figure how on earth could a canopy be filled with millions of little LED lights that show such clear images. Only in America ... or maybe, only in Vegas - where things are supposed to be in-your-face.The tour then brought us back to the infamous Strip to visit the hotels in Vegas - which sounded odd to me, but apparently the Vegas hotels are an attraction in itself.
The Venetian hotel was pretty amazing, and it managed to pretty accurately mimic St Mark's Square and the Venetian gondolas in a rather small area. But the thing I was impressed with was the sky. It was already 9pm at night outside, but when we entered this area, it looked like it was 7am in the morning! The sky was blue and filled with clouds, a string quartet was playing in a corner, many people were fine-dining with white tablecloths and all, gondolas were gliding on the superbly clean river (this was the thing that was most unlike the actual Venice) and of course, there were tourists like us who were trying to ruin the atmosphere with our photo-taking :)
In Venice! In Vegas! At 9pm at night! Or day?!
The Caesars Palace was also Italian in nature, with an entire shopping complex built to mimic the shopping streets of Rome, complete with a Trevi fountain. But the whole thing felt rather contrived to me, because I've been to the real Rome! And shopping for Louis Vuitton in Vegas didn't interest me :P
The best experience that night was the Bellagio fountains. It was the most romantic thing ever. And I realized then that no photo can ever replace the actual experience (I had that thought constantly throughout the US trip because there were indeed so many experiences I couldn't frame in photos). It is a musical fountain show on a huge lake, with the best dancing waters I've ever seen and a great sound system. The song was "Time to say goodbye" by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli - and boy, was it a great performance. If I could, I'd watch the Bellagio fountains every day of my life. It was a beautiful beautiful performance. (I think someone probably youtube-d it, but again, nothing beats actually being there!).
The most romantic fountain show in the world
Oh, and if you're ever in Vegas and would like to catch a show, Jubilee! is the one to go for. It has a cast of maybe about a 100 stunning costumed dancers (some acts of which are by beautiful topless dancers, so preferably no kids) on million-dollar sets (the Titanic act was quite cool), and it cost us about $35 per person (having ripped 50% discount vouchers off one of those what-to-do-in-Vegas books lying around the concierge - and that is something you MUST remember to do when in US). The show was almost 2 hours, held in Bally hotel, and was a magnificent display of all the glitzy showgirls that Vegas is famous for. A truly classic Vegas experience.
1 comment:
bwahaha
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