Las Vegas is all about spectacle. Everything is larger than life and bright as day throughout the night. You get used to this as you walk along the strip, but the parabolic pillar of Bellagio will stop you dead in your tracks. Las Vegas has never known a hotel like this.

Bellagio is a sprawling luxury complex midway North of Tropicana Avenue, on the West side of the strip. The grounds of the hotel are enormous, and the building itself is constructed in a semi-elliptical wrap around a football-stadium size pool of fountains.

Steeped in the style of Italian luxury, Bellagio offers nothing but the finest in accomodations. The entire hotel is rich with pink marble tile, dense plush carpet, ornamentation, and generous natural light. Vaulted entryways and a palatial lobby lead the way to the promenade of shops, the casino, and many restaurants, clubs and accommodations.

The Fountains at Bellagio are a staple of any evening stroll along the strip. Under the ripples in the water of Bellagio's fountain pool are several hundred high-powered geyser jets. As music echoes through the courtyard around the pool, the jets fire dancing streams of water into the air in a high-tech chlorine choreography. The sight is impressive and the music brings people together for blocks and stops traffic at night - it is one of the most seductive technological presentations I have ever seen.

With all the luxury and to-do of Bellagio, visitors don't head as directly for the casino as they might at other hotels. It is a modest casino - not so cavernous as those in New York, New York or Mandalay Bay. Slot machines are interspersed in small clusters throughout the casino with no 'endless labyrinths' of machines like the other casinos. It is a classy facility, and you get the idea that Bellagio doesn't depend on machines for revenue.

The prices for the hotel are among the highest on the strip, and they deserve to be. Vegas being what it is, you can get a nice tour of this fabulous resort without even touching your wallet. This is the first in a new class of super-high-luxury hotels it Las Vegas in which the experience is the hotel itself, not the service or the casino.




Recommended: Yes