On the second day of our Vegas trip, we mostly visited the shops on the strip. But that night we took a night bus tour to see all the neon lights in Vegas.

One of the things I really wanted to do in Vegas is go see the M&M’s World store. I saw it on the Food Network channel and it looked really cool! Four stories of M&M’s merchandise. I don’t really like candy very much, but I do like the M&M’s characters for some reason. Did you know the current batch of M&M commercials and characters were created by the same advertising agency that did the California Raisins and The Noid? (I’m aging myself now). Yeah, I know I’m crazy, but I like commercials.

Nearby was a GameWorks, so I took this bird’s eye picture of some Sonic air hockey tables.

The GameWorks store in Vegas sold TONS of Sonic merchandise. Like I said before, normally I don’t like Sonic, but I had to get this T-shirt because it was just so hideous!

There was also a Hard Rock Café store and a Harley Davidson store. I didn’t go into them, but the outsides were neat looking.

For lunch we got a good deal on a buffet at Todai’s. It’s a Japanese restaurant with sushi and other Japanese foods. The tempura fried sweet potatoes were good, and we even got some green tea ice cream for dessert. All around the restaurant were these cute little cartoon character sculptures, so I took a picture of me with one.

Anyway, that evening we took another bus tour. This time we drove around the strip and downtown Vegas to see all the neon lights. It was better than the Grand Canyon bus tour, but it was still kind of a rip-off since some of the stuff we paid to see was cancelled, and some of the stuff we did get to see, we had a terrible view of.

The first thing we did on the tour was go up the Stratosphere, a 108 story tower that reminded me of the Space Needle in Seattle. It was really high! Here’s a pic of the view of the city from the tower.

The Stratosphere also had rides! I would never go on them, though. One was just a bungee cord drop. And another was a claw-like device that took you out over the tower and spun you around!

At one of the hotels we stopped at, called the Bellagio, we saw a dancing water fountain show. It’s free and runs every 15 minutes at night. Unfortunately, the tour group had us watch them behind some trees! Luckily I was able to see the show another night with a better view, so I took this pic then.

Inside the Bellagio, there was a glass sculpture on the ceiling that was pretty cool. The tour guide said it was made by an Indian who was blind in one eye, and I thought that was neat since I’m blind in my left eye, too!

Also at the Bellagio was a garden with statues of giant ants, snails, bees, and mushrooms!

Finally, we went downtown to see the rest of the lights. Up above the buildings is an archway canopy that stretches four blocks, and they project images on it! It’s huge and amazing! They do a light show every hour, and we saw two of them. They featured a couple of rock songs from famous bands: Queen and KISS. Here are a few pics from the Queen show.

And here’s the famous neon cowboy sign.

The neon cowboy has a girlfriend, too. Lucky neon guy.

And here are four more pics of the neon lit casinos downtown. There were so many lights that it nearly looked like daytime on the streets!

And that’s all we did the second night. Stay tuned for the third act where we visit a world of Las Vegas hotels!

And if you missed the first day’s fun, click here.

Tags: Misc