I had a fair amount of fun in Las Vegas this week, entirely aside from my visit to Sin City Knits 🙂 I’m not a gambler, and none of the big shows going on while we were there were of much interest to us. However, there are always things to do there. We stayed at the Venetian, and there is so much to do just inside that hotel!

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We had a nice view outside the city from our room, which was pleasant too. We could see a little bit of the lights from the strip at night, but mostly we had a mountain vista. And also the vista of the convention center roof, but that was pretty easy to ignore for the most part 🙂 Two of the days we were there it rained, and we got to see a bunch of guys working on the convention center roof, which was kind of diverting in a way. (Vegas!) (I am easily entertained.)

Outside of our hotel, the Bellagio has a really beautiful floral display going on – it has an Indian theme and is right out in one of their main public areas. So I went and wandered around that for a while.

I watched the Bellagio’s fountains for a while too, but did not get any good pictures. I was too busy enjoying them 🙂

At the Mirage, across the street, I went to their dolphin and big cat habitats. The dolphin habitat does not seem to have a show, per se. But the handlers occasionally do a talk about the dolphins and the ocean and so on. There are rings and balls and other toys in the pools with the dolphins, and they were playing and horsing around with them when I was there. Also there was a new baby dolphin! He was likewise playing with a ball, which was one of the cutest things I have seen in a good long time. The big cat area was just that – largish enclosures with different big cats in them. They were pretty nice habitats, with water features and high platforms for them to nap on, and toys, or “enrichment items” for them to play with.

We also got a couple chances to catch the Mirage’s volcano show! This was one of my favorite things about Las Vegas the last time we were there, and I was so glad it was still going on 🙂 I also enjoy that the Mirage lists their volcano under their Amenities page!

We got to eat at a lot of good restaurants and some fun ones. We got to Guy Fieri’s restaurant, as well as a pub, an Italian place, and a very fancy modern Cantonese restaurant in our hotel. I didn’t get good pictures of them all.

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I also got to have coffee and some macarons in a restaurant where the seating area was on a bridge over the canal, so I got to enjoy my treat while the gondolas came and went under my table.

The last big- ish thing we did was go to Madame Tussaud’s, which was interesting, and exactly as creepy as you would think it would be. Those figures look really really close to real life – close enough to be just on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. So naturally we had fun with that 🙂

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And then it was time to come home. I don’t know that we will be back there anytime soon. Both times we have gone it was because DH went to AutoCAD University and I tagged along. We have heard Autodesk is planning on moving their annual event to other locations in the future, and if so it is unlikely we will be back there for any other reason. Unless for some reason there is a knitting convention there – which seems kind of unlikely. But in any case – it’s an interesting place, and I’m glad we got to go!