Dawn Rising Sun

Finally, we left Las Vegas on May of 31st evening and we stopped by University of Nevada in Las Vegas for some picture taking, we were guessing if this university teaches hotel and casino management because it is just that close to those facilities. Anyways, it was just our thought of mind. Las Vegas can gamble everywhere, you even can find slot machine in airport’s terminal, which is a great income for the city and I think it is also a main attraction to visitors to this desert area. Las Vegas is a city that never dark before midnight, it provides fun and entertainment to people. However, it is just for visiting to me, I don’t think I would choose this place as my settlement because I couldn’t imagine how this city would change my next generation if we live there. To me, Grand Canyon and Red Rock Canyon are great tours as well because I can see something else than neon light, they share their greatness of creator and inspirited me to the mother of natural, no human can build a grand c...

As many people know, Las Vegas also is known as the Sin City in many aspects, people lost themselves in this city, get drunk, gambling and sex, no matter enjoying life or fallen, they are just a little bit different if you see it in other city. When you entered a hotel in Las Vegas, you will be pretty hard to find it without a casino, people bet they money to a machine, on a table, in a room, they bet their luck because that provides them a little hope for getting richer than last minute they were. Actually, SL and I are not gamblers because we just doesn’t like to put our money on risk, but we took it as entertainment and our budget was USD5 :P, just because we were in Las Vegas that we just wanted to know how it felt to be there. Finally, we used USD3 on slot machine, we lost first two bucks and we got back USD 4.81 at the last buck, which mean we got USD1.81 profit, which is less but that is enough than we lost every penny. That is feeling of gambling, you would feel upset when you ...

Except sightseeing, Las Vegas also provided a lot of shopping location, visitors almost can find shopping location in almost every hotel in Las Vegas, like Bally’s Avenue Shoppes, Caesar Palace’s Forum Shops, The Shops of Via Bellagio, The Shoppes at The Palazzo, The Grand Canal to Shoppes at the Venetian, Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, Wynn Esplanade, Fashion Show Mall and a lot more of different shops in different hotel. Actually, most of shops are repeated in different hotel but I think they are still attracted to visitors because there are too many hotels in Las Vegas and not all visitor can visit every hotel during their staying, therefore it’s no harm to find the same shop in different hotels. Along the Strip, that is a Showcase Mall where we could find two specific shops, M&M and Coca Cola, they sell any kind of their very own products and souvenir, also you can pick your own colour M&M candy and pay according the weight you take. For a memory, I just randomly c...

If we said the Strip is front yard of Las Vegas, then I would say Fremont Street is backyard of Las Vegas, we do grand renovation at our front yard and we have party at back yard. Yes, Fremont Street just likes a happening party street to me when I visited there, especially after summer started. Fremont Street is the first ever street in Las Vegas and the first casino was built on this street, I could say it is the oldest street in Las Vegas with lot of history behind it. Before the Strip where a lot of high rise hotels built, Fremont Street accommodated most lower hotels along it. During our stay in Las Vegas, we booked a hotel just along Fremont Street, therefore we had pretty chance to experience the party along Fremont Street, which called Fremont Street Experience, they would provide free concert to visitor nightly at every exact hour. The most special part is Fremont Street west was covered by a long screen above the building and the screen would display songs and shows for free ...

Beyond Las Vegas, there are a lot of other attractions, like Lake Mead , Mount Charleston, Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire, Boulder City, Henderson, Hoover Dam, Bonnie Springs Ranch, etc. which are close to Las Vegas. If you still could go even further, you could choose Bryce Canyon, Cedar City, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Mojave Desert, Rhyolite, St. George, Zion National Park, etc. Due to limitation of time and our body strength, therefore we only chose to go somewhere nearby Las Vegas for visiting, finally Red Rock Canyon Conservative Park and China Town were in our list of tour. Nevada has at least three Red Rock Canyons and we chose the one of the ranges of hills that surround Las Vegas in most directions nearby by east side of Spring Mountain, it is just five miles from the edge of the city, the Red Rock Canyon is a red and yellow sandstone escarpement, the entrance fee is USD7 each vehicle for a day visit. Actually, there is a viewpoint just outside of the Conservative Park with...

Before we set up our final plan to Grand Canyon National Park, we originally planned to visit Death Valley National Park instead, first reason because Death Valley is closer to Las Vegas compared with Grand Canyon, second reason is SL had been to Grand Canyon National Park five years ago and he said it wasn’t an attracted place to him. All after all, I still decided to choose Grand Canyon National Park before Death Valley because it once has been named as seven wonders in the world. Finally, we made it and brought a lot of memory and inspiration from Grand Canyon National Park. Though I still don’t know if Death Valley is really nice or not, I still never regret that I chose to visit Grand Canyon because it is really a wonderful place from my perspective. On our second day of Las Vegas trip, we departed to Grand Canyon National Park from hotel at 4:30am, it was about five hours driving distance between Las Vegas and Grand Canyon National Park, well it actually doesn’t need this long bu...

Hoover Dam is another attraction in Nevada, to be precise, it is at the borderline Nevada state and just next to Arizona state, which originally known as Boulder Dam. Hoover Dam is a project completed in 1935, amazingly it is ahead the schedule and under budget (wow… this is what my company always hopes for :P) This attraction controls the flow of Colorado River and provides water and electricity supply to this desert area, which means it is really important to them because once it ruined, the people in this desert (included Las Vegas) might not be able to survive. Therefore, we could see security is pretty strict when we entered into Hoover Dam area. Upon the entrance, everybody need to stop for security check and rangers have right to require you to open your car boot or lift the engine cover if you are suspicious because the security has responsibility to protect their only source of survival. Hoover Dam is about an hour driving distance from Las Vegas and it is just on the way from...

Many people would say that you should try buffet in Las Vegas, because there is a lot of hotels and hotels surely would provide buffet. As said, so that SL and I tried a buffet during our stay in Las Vegas, we chose Wynn’s the Buffet after seeing a lot of reviews and recommendation on this award winner restaurant. Once we were landed to Las Vegas, we directly headed to Wynn Hotel and tried the Buffet, it was a weekday price at around USD50 for two people. Well, we didn’t wait too long because we were earlier than peak hour. The restaurant is big and nice, they have a specified area for food and desert and it is enough space for many customers to walk along the selection window. Honestly, I like Wynn’s Buffet, it is really nice and delicious, I think it is worth for price because we need to pay even more if we tried Todai in Portland (we took it during SL’s birthday) but it wasn’t what we expected. However, Wynn’s dishes were much better than that and we didn’t expect it could be that n...

If you were going to Las Vegas, the Strip surely is a must-visit place because there is the most happening street in Las Vegas, where I would say it as Hotel street because there is numerous number of hotels in this street and many of them have different theme for their hotels. Besides of their special theme, some hotels also have free performance for tourists entertainment. The Strip can be divided into two part, south of Strip is a hotel collection of many attrations around the wold and north of Strip is hotel of modern world. Due to too many hotel in Las Vegas, I am not having chance to visit all of them, therefore I only summarized some hotels that I visited and attracted my interest, I only brief them with my own perspective. 1. Wynn Hotel Wynn Hotel actually is a hotel name after Steve Wynn, he is quite an influence person in Las Vegas to me because he had successfully to found some success hotels in Las Vegas, which included The Mirage, Treasure Island and of course Wynn after h...

At the very first place, we didn’t really have plan to visit Las Vegas, first reason is because SL had been there five years ago and second reason because I had been to several countries in Europe, so that their themed hotels shouldn’t be too special to me. The spark was started from early this year when SS and CP were planning for a trip to Las Vegas, then I wished to visit there and some nearby national parks (either Grand Canyon or Death Valley). However, the plan didn’t come true due to flight ticket was too expensive, then we just decided to make our booking early in five months ago. Finally, we were on flight to Las Vegas on May 28th of 2010. Our flight was at early morning 8:20am, therefore we woke up early in that morning for catching the flight, I was so excited for that, I think Las Vegas is another famous city in US, no matter if it is famous in a good name or bad, it should be a nice place for travelling, I am sure that we should have some inspiration from this so-called si...