On the third and last day, we just walked around and looked at some of the hotels in Vegas. Now, these aren’t just your regular hotels. They’re HUGE! If you tried to walk through all the hotels on the strip, you’d die of exhuastion! Not only do these things house the hotel rooms and casinos, each one also has a big shopping mall with a food court, a stage or two for the shows, and other goodies. Most of the hotels on the strip have a theme. Only in Vegas can you visit New York, Paris, Egypt, Venice, and Ancient Rome all in one day!

Our hotel, the Excalibur, had a medieval castle theme. But the hotel next to us was called “New York, New York” and you can guess what kind of theme it had. The buildings you see in the background were where the hotel rooms were, and there was even a roller coaster going around this hotel! And Lady Liberty was out front greeting guests!

Speaking of Lady Liberty, in one of the candy shops they had this big statue made out of jelly beans!

That morning I wanted to check out the Circus Circus hotel that was on the other side of the strip. There was NO WAY we would walk all that way, so we tried the bus. Unfortunately, Vegas’ public transportation on the strip just plain sucks. The buses are way too slow and it’s faster just to walk. Which is disappointing because I was hoping to use the buses again that night to go down and see the pirate ship show at Treasure Island and the erupting volcano at the Mirage hotel. But since the buses sucked so bad, we decided to hang nearer to our own hotel that evening. Oh well.

Anyway, back to Circus Circus. I can’t recommend taking kids to Vegas to anyone, but Circus Circus is certainly the most kid-friendly hotel there. I saw more little kids there than anywhere else in Vegas. Obviously, it has a circus theme and it’s one of the oldest hotels in Vegas. Unfortunately, since it is so old, it does look a bit dingy and run down. But that kind of adds to the circus appeal.

Inside the ‘big top’ above the casino is a pretty sweet arcade with games old and new. I was happy to see Ms. Pac-Man and Frogger alongside TMNT: Turtles in Time and Metal Slug 3 next to Mario Kart Arcade GP 2! There was also a bunch of midway carnival games and hourly circus acts in the middle for everyone to see. We saw two brothers from Argentina doing some acrobatics. It was neat, but not picture-worthy. Here are some pics of Circus Circus at night. We visited it during the day, but I liked how it looked better after hours.

We used the bus to go halfway down the strip on the way back before we decided the buses sucked. So as we made our way back to the hotel, we stopped and saw the sights at the other hotels. First off t was the Venetian, which looked like the canals of Venice. They even had gondolas!

And on the inside lobby of the hotel was this huge painting on the ceiling.

And even the shops looked like Italy. This was taken inside, even though they tried to make it look like you were outside with the fake sky and all.

Down the way was the famous Caesar’s Palace. That hotel was so huge there was no way I could take a pic of it from the outside! The shopping mall inside had a few attractions, like a moving statue show that was kind of boring. Each hotel also has shows and concerts from celebrities, and one of the ones at Caesar’s Palace was Cher. We didn’t go see her (THANK GOODNESS), but my mom loves Cher so she had to at least see the Cher souvenir store and some of her weird clothes on display at the mall.

We didn’t go inside it, but another themed hotel was Paris, complete with Eiffel tower and that arch thing. Here’s what it looked like at night.

But of all the hotels we visited that day, I think my favorite was the Luxor. It has an Egyptian theme and houses a giant Sphinx and pyramid. You can even stay in a hotel room in the pyramid part, but I don’t know how the elevators get you there. What do they do? Go diagonal or something?

Anyway, the pyramid part lights up at night, and the giant spotlight at the top only runs at 60 percent power because any higher and it distracts the planes from the nearby airport! Here’s what the pyramid looks like at night:

And here’s it during the day:

Greeting you at the Luxor is a giant Sphinx. I wanted to take a picture of the front of it, but it was so huge I didn’t feel like walking all that way around it. So you get a side view of it with cars parking under its crotch.

Upon entering, you were greeted by an Anubis statue and some other guys.

And there were some pretty cool décor on the inside, too. I think next time I go to Vegas, I might stay at the Luxor.

We visited a few more hotels that evening. There’s a monorail that runs through the Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay hotels, so we also walked through the Mandalay Bay one as well. Like Caesar’s Palace, it’s freaking huge and has a water park, shopping, mall, and a shark exhibit that I didn’t feel like paying 50 bucks to see. As a finale, we also ate Italian food that night at the Tropicana, one of the oldest hotels in Vegas.

And that’s pretty much all we did on our trip. Again, don’t worry; I didn’t do anything naughty like everyone thinks you’re supposed to do in Vegas. I’m way too boring to do anything like that. I wouldn’t recommend bringing anyone to Vegas under 21 either, as it’ll limit what you can do there. But I’m still glad I got to go, as I’ve always wanted to visit Vegas. In the comments section, let me know if you’ve been to Vegas and what you did, and if you have any other questions you’d like to ask me about Vegas, too! Later!

If you missed out on the previous acts in this blog series, check out Act 1 and Act 2.

Tags: Misc