February 28th, 2022
Wow, this has come around fast, but it’s time to leave our splendid suite at the Venitien. After a long day on the road yesterday and trawling around the Vegas Back streets just trying to get back to the hotel, we had a Lazy morning.
We really like staying in several hotels when we hit the strip as there are just so many amazing places we just like mixing it up. There are up and downsides to this, the main down being you lose quite a bit of time on moving day. We did not really plan anything for today as we knew there would be a lot of palaver in switching hotels. So a nice easy morning, packing everything up and then off to our next hotel.
We also had to take the car back so we recovered it from the Valet. It really hit home again just how dusty we had got it, our wonderful shiny Mustang now looked like it had been for a run around the moon! Still, we loaded it up and headed out for our last drive. The last chance to feel the horsepower, subsequent cars on this trip would be a lot less exciting! As we cruised around in the morning sun, we were getting pretty hungry, it was still morning yet due to jet lag we didn’t really have breakfast on our minds. This is when we came across our favorite Burger Chain, no secret here, we just love In-And-Out Burger!
Hamburgers!.. The Cornerstone Of Any Nutritious Breakfast!
We won’t apologize, we wanted burgers so we had burgers. And to be honest we were certainly not alone, for an off-strip burger joint before 11 am it was damn busy! We ordered pretty light for us, just a pair of double, doubles, animal style, and a portion of animal fries!
The perfect breakfast. The temperatures were really creeping up now and we were well above 20°C (70°F) so we sat out and enjoyed our burgers in the wonderful winter sun.
Following this, we headed to present the Dust Magnet back to the horrified Rental Company. We had actually made a reasonable effort to de-dust the car, we didn’t want to be hit with extra cleaning or questions about off-roading (we hadn’t Groom Lake is a de-fined road), but it still needed a good deep clean. Then finally we arranged a drop-off at our next hotel. And we are pretty excited about staying here again…
The Bellagio
The Bellagio is a stunning hotel and sits right in the heart of everything. It is also a really simple hotel to stay in and this might seem an odd thing to say but some Vegas Hotels are complete mazes and have convoluted and complicated room structures. Just working out what room you want to stay in and how to get around the hotel is a complex and challenging task, which is not always the best way to spend a vacation.
The Bellagio is very different, their room types are simple and make sense the hotel layout is simple and easy to navigate and the location puts just right in the middle of everything. It is also a real luxury escape and one of the most upmarket hotels on the strip. Its stunning fountains are the centerpiece for everything the Hotel offers. It really is one of our favorite locations on the strip and we had bagged a really nice room for our stay at some pretty incredible prices.
We arrived at the Foyer a little early for check-in so stowed our luggage with the Bell-Hop and went to explore the strip a little. The first stop was the fountains which were not firing yet as it was low season and a Monday so the shows did not kick off till 3 pm. But just enjoying the lagoon and the location is enough in the warm sunshine.
We then headed across the street to the Miricle Mile Shops and picked up a Large Frozen drink from Blondies Sports Bar, they seemed to have the best offer we could find, 2for$22 and the amount of tequila the bartender added made these very good value indeed! We then just strolled around for a bit taking in the Strip Atmosphere until Check-in.
Check-in was a bit manic, but the line moved fairly quickly, and finally, we got the keys to our beautiful fountain View Room. There is something really special about having a view that overlooks the fountains. To just be able to sit and relax enjoying the show is something really magical. For most hotels overlooking the fountains you miss out on the choreographed music, which is a little bit of a shame, but at the Bellagio, there is a dedicated TV channel that plays ONLY the fountain music as the shows progress.
The room itself was really nice and the huge bed with a deep mattress topper was the kind of bed that you avoid getting into as you just know you won’t want to get out again! It was not as plush and certainly not as spacious as the Venitien suite, but the added bonus of the fountain view more than made up for that.
The Layout of the Room was a little odd with the small table and chair next to the window with the large Chailounge against the wall. However, nothing was bolted down and we rearranged the room so we could relax on the ChaisLonge and gaze out of the window. This must drive the maids mad as the furniture is REALLY heavy and putting back a real pain!
Still we relaxed and had a couple of drinks watching the first few fountain shows of the day before hitting the pool.
The Bellagio Pools
As this was the change-over day we really didn’t have too much planned. The weather was still really warm and sunny so we decided to hit the pool for an hour or two to relax before our evening plans.
As it was still very early season there was only one pool open at the Bellagio with the main pool undergoing renovation. The Open pool was the long 50m pool, with the large square pool and smaller quiet pools still shut down. However several of the Spa Hotubs were open which really helped in the late afternoon sun, and the long pool was excellent for actually swimming in, not something many people do in Vegas, but you can actually pound lengths!
After a nice relaxing swim and time catching the last of the sun we headed back to the room for a night on the town.
Gambling
The first port of call was the M-Life desk, or the MGM Rewards as it’s now called. We have been playing MyVegas for a long time and have racked up a lot of Loyalty Points with no real way of redeeming them. So this was our chance to cash in some chips. We had 7 Premium Rewards between us, and really from the various selections available there was not much appealing to us. In the end, we just went all-in on Free Play.
We redeemed the $100 Bellagio Freeplay, as we had a 3-night stay here. And then 6x$25 in Konami Freeplay. These do not require a stay so we just filled our boots. As ever in Vegas, this was a bit f a Gamble as we have been seriously unlucky with Freeplay in the past, to the point we suspected the casinos were not playing fair!
We will briefly stop here as there are now two kinds of people reading this. Those nodding along knowing exactly what we are on about and the other going what the hell is MyVegas!
Well, MyVegas is a Free-To-Play casino game, available on Mobile and Facebook. You play free coins and are able to accumulate Gold Coins called Loyalty points. These are redeemable for real-world rewards you can actually use in the Vegas Casinos. These are things like free or reduced dinners and Buffets, Reduced room rates or Free Rooms, Free or reduced Shows, attractions, food and drinks, and of course FreePlay…Actual Money you use in the Casino and potentially win thousands, although the chances of winning big are slim. It’s pretty amazing, if you are interested we have a full guide here.
For this Trip, we redeemed $250 in free play to spend in various MGM Casinos, and we had $150 to hit the Bellagio.
Before dinner, we played around main on the slot machines. We employed our tactics to make sure we got some fast service from the Cocktail Waitresses who quickly provided us with our first Vodka Martini as we played through the first 2 $25 Freeplay’s.
We are not big gamblers but we like a bit of fun light gambling when in Vegas. We especially like getting free drinks while doing so and when you are only rolling free money, and winning it is especially fun. By the end of my $25, I has pulled in an impressive $53, which was pretty satisfying. Kate was well up, but we had to head to Dinner before her roll was done, we had acquired two martinis each from the waitress and only paid out in generous tips.
See our Guide to Getting FREE Drinks in Las Vegas Casino’s
Strip House Steakhouse
There are literally hundreds of Steakhouses in Vegas and we have a long list of our favorites here. The problem with most on that list is none are really near the Bellagio and we just didn’t want to travel. So we headed across the street to Strip House at the Planet Hollywood, which gets an honorable mention on our list and really deserves a place on it. We might change things up after this evening’s experience which was excellent.
We have our go-to order at most Steakhouses and this is the Porterhouse for two. And we didn’t change things up tonight. With the Sharing Size Porterhouse, you are guaranteed a huge chunk of dead cow, which offers two Steaks, Fillet and Striploin (Sirloin) on either side of the bone. It’s also pretty resilient to overcooking so you get a really charred outside but moist and pink middle. It’s just the Steak-lovers dream.
We also just have to order some Mac and Cheese and we went with some cream spinach as we had not seen many Vegetables so far this trip… if you exclude the tomato n the In and Out Burger! Although the amount of cream and butter added they were probably the least healthy item on the table.
The Porterhouse is carved at the table in real old-school fashion and was utterly divine, melt in the mouth, and really heavily seasoned. There was a lot of ground Black Pepper on the crust and this has charred up perfectly. It really was a great Steak, maybe some will find the pepper too heavy but we were in heaven. This Steak will actually change the way I season steaks at home as you can get away with FAR more pepper than I would usually dare!
Overall it was a great meal and we left thoroughly happy.
We hit the Casino on the way back and finished off Kate’s Freeplay, along with some Martinis, and hit a mini Jackpot taking the Total for her Freeplay up to $90.29. So from just $50 Freeplay, we have made $143+
For those that are new, that’s real cash that we can (and did) withdraw. We guess that covers tonight’s Dinner, which is pretty awesome!
For the rest of the night, we just retired to the room, with a little Tequila (Teremana) and just enjoyed the ridiculous view from over the fountain shows!
Walking Total – 10,544 Steps – 5.6 Miles
Another light walking day, we never really covered any distance up or down the strip and just really stated in the local vicinity. It felt a lot tougher on the feet but we did quite a bit of standing today which is also tough on the lower legs, we would rather actually be walking than standing.
Day 5 – Bellagio Buffet – Maverick Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour – Sushi – Highroller and more Wins >>>