You can see from this photo that things are really crowded on the strip.
You can see the Bellagio sign, Bally's Entrance walkway, the new City Center complex under construction, and the Jockey Club all crammed into one space.
There were only two things I really wanted to see on Casino Row in Las Vegas--the fountain show in front of the Bellagio, and the blown glass sculpture on the lobby ceiling. We headed inside first. On the way, we had to walk past lots of blooming shrubbery, and we saw this little guy.
We weren't quite sure what he was at first, but we figured out he must be a butterfly.
If anybody knows what kind he is, please let me know.
One of my favorite things about the strip turned out to be the live plants and real flowers that were in abundance. There was a great deal of artificial (read--fake) greenery, too, but the real plants made it worth the trip.
This is the famous sculpture / chandelier in the Bellagio lobby.
It's by Dale Chihuly, and is called Fiori di Como.
It contains over 2000 hand-blown glass flowers of every color of the rainbow. Each flower is supported by a heavy metal stem.
The sculpture covers 2000 square feet of the lobby ceiling. The longer you look at it, the more you see. It's lovely. And I can't imagine the man hours it took to make it.
Fiori di Como reportedly cost $11 million. I really, REALLY enjoyed looking at it, but I don't think it was worth that much.
The lobby area of the Bellagio also contains a conservatory.
This is a shot of the Registration Desk, with a part of the conservatory behind.
And this is another part of the conservatory.
That greenhouse looking structure is a butterfly house, where live butterflies fly freely. You can go inside and have a close encounter if you want. It's a wonderful experience, if you've never had the chance to do that.
Here are a few other detail shots of the conservatory area.
It's all a mixture of real and artificial, but it makes for beautiful, no matter. Another thing the Bellagio seems to understand is that the scent of a place makes a difference. The lobby smelled like lilies. After some of the street smells, that was lovely. (Not that the street smells were awful, but at least occasionally you'd get a whiff of unpleasant.)
After we left the lobby, we waited for the fountain show outside.
This is a view of the Bellagio and the pool in front. That's 8 acres of water between the strip and the hotel. The Bellagio stretches to the right in this picture. Here's the rest of the view that direction.
Shops occupy these low 'buildings' that all the way around to the strip. The area with the light colored balustrades to the right of the shot is the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard. The Bellagio widened the sidewalk here, and planted it with trees to provide both viewing space for the fountains and a buffer from the traffic.
What you see out in the middle of the lake is a couple of guys in a boat.
They're in wet suits. They were out there working on some of the water jets that weren't behaving just right.
That's the misbehaving nozzle sticking up out of the water to the far left. The nozzles are supposed to fold down between shows, apparently. This one didn't.
I wondered why they would be in wet suits just to fix one nozzle, but later I understood. These guys were out between nearly every show. It's a full-time job. The Fountains of Bellagio show runs every half hour from noon to 8:00 pm, and every 15 minutes from 8 to midnight. Just in case you don't know, the fountains are computer synchronized to music. The water 'dances' to music, if you will.
Here are a few pictures of the fountains dancing. Still pictures, of course, can't convey any of the sense of movement, but at least you can get an idea of the different water configurations possible.
One of the fountain shows we caught was "Singing in the Rain." Here's a video of that show from Google videos. This video shows the show at night, which we didn't get a chance to see. Lots of folks think the fountains are more beautiful at night, because of the lighting. I hope you enjoy the show as much as we did.
Singing in the Rain
I'll try to get the rest of the Vegas Strip pictures up today.
And Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!
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