Hello Vegas!

Well we're back from a really great trip to Vegas. We took a break from Colorado this year and needed to get away for a little bit to relax and get away from the norm. Aaron was quite smart while making reservations and backed it up next to Thanksgiving break, so we actually ended up with 12 continuous days off which was AMAZING!!! My parents were kind enough to watch Madison while we were gone, so she didn't even notice we left which was really great.

We just had to go to the restaurant Serendipity (because of the movie of course) and it was truly yummy. We actually went there for breakfast twice!
One of my favorite things of Vegas was how each of the hotels magically transported you to another country. You completely forgot where you were as you strolled the streets of Venice like below at the Venetian. They even had the boat rides, the sky of course which you can see, the street lights, and each store looked like a building front. It was amazing....

New York was also one of my favorites. This is the outside with the bridge out the front, and the hotel was shaped like the skyline with different buildings which was cool.

Sorry this picture is a little dark but it's the inside of New York, NY. Again it was just like you were walking down the streets of NY. The employees that worked at the sandwich shop that we went to even seemed to have accents like they were from Brooklyn and made a delicious sandwich!

This is inside another one of the hotels/shopping malls. The middle was a bar,lounge that was amazing. The whole thing was made of strands of crystals which was quite enchanting. It took up three floors.

This was outside of one of my favorite places to go, the Forum shops at the Caesar. This part of the mall was quite outstanding, but was connected to another world like the Venetian and NY.

At the far end of the Forum shops was the Nike store which Aaron did some damage in, and Tiffany's which I did some damage in. We also had our very first Cheescake Factory experience which was fantastic! I had an Asian twist of a dish which was awesome, Aaron had a spin off of Chicken Marsala which was ok, and we shared the 7 layer chocolate cake. We even took half of it back to the hotel and saved it for the next night!!

Yum, it just makes me hungry looking at it.....

The hotels at night are just spectacular. This was right next to the Venetian as they decorated for Christmas outside and advertised Winter in Venice!

The trees were quite spectacular and changed colors every minute or two.

Another one of my favorites was the Bellagio. It was so neat to be there the week that we were as everything was decorated for fall the first part of the week and slowly transformed into these spectacular Christmas displays. The first time we saw the water show it was a Frank Sinatra song which was great. The second two times we watched the show it was Christmas songs which were still amazingly coordinating and totally mesmerizing....

So pretty

The amazing tree displays in the Bellagio mall

Another amazing restaurant in one of the malls. I'm not sure how the architects dream these up but they are truly enchanting.

This is the only street "performer" that we took our picture with because they expect $$ for each picture but it was one of my favorites. It's Bumblebee from Transformers! There were several good ones like Elvis of course, or Mickey Mouse, there was a Garfield and Mario that lay on the ground like they were passed out so you can lay next to them like you had been partying with them.

One of the water shows that's right by Serendipity. Walking around was so spectacular as each hotel was incredible and so different from the next.

Sunset on the way home from the Hoover Dam which will be posted in one of the next posts.

The same night we went to the Hoover Dam (since we rented a car) we went down to the Stratosphere. We had dinner at the fancy restaurant at the top that rotates 360 degrees over 1 hour. Sadly while we were there the mechanism was broken so we only rotated about a forth of the turn, but the food was AMAZING. There are 4 rides off of the top that we also had to check out but definitely did NOT partake in. Being hung over the edge of something that tall just wasn't something we were up for after eating such an amazing dinner.

Another one of the hotels that was down my NY. I think it looked like the Magic Kingdom at Disney...

Paris

This was the show outside of our hotel (Treasure Island). There was a pirate ship battle where one ship charged the other and one eventually sunk the other. They put on a good show (although slightly corny) still neat to see.

This was the inside of the mall at Caesars like I had mentioned earlier. The storefronts all looked like different buildings and the sky seemed changed as the time of day did, it was quite neat.

This was another part of the mall at the Venetian that had this spectacular display with a large waterfall

and this amazing leaf display right above the waterfall that eventually changed to snowflakes by the time that we left Vegas

The volcanic eruption at the Mirage. It was pretty cool, we had hoped to see it from another angle as we weren't sure where to stand for the best view the first time but just didn't seem to coordinate our time right to catch the show again.

Another view of the show at the Mirage

Well I've added Fremont Street and the Hoover Dam to another post, stay tuned.....