A week ago Rose and I checked into the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for one night. We were on our way the next day to visit our daughter in Bellingham, WA, and Rose had never been to Vegas.
“What are you here for?” the well-trained receptionist asked.
I threw him off guard. “I don’t drink and I don’t gamble.”
Vegas is back, and the Bellagio’s guests, a culturally diverse mix, eager to drink, gamble and shop, showed little sign that a pandemic had ever happened.
Never mind chronic drought, water shortages and the “mega-heat wave” across the west. The Bellagio is tricked out in every possible way to keep you in suspended reality.
Many of you might enjoy blackjack or slots in the casino with drinks on the house, hanging out in the spa or waiting in a long line with your cockatoo to shop at Louis Vuitton.
We didn’t abandon air conditioning for 24 hours
I would have preferred poking around Death Valley or the Mojave Desert, but that’s best done in the spring, especially after a rare winter rain. Prickly pears were not in the cards on this short trip. It was 110 F.
I never tired of people watching, and the horticulture was extravagant.
Our first walk to the hotel room elevators took us through the 14,000-square-foot Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Garden jammed with guests, admiring and photographing Medusa, grateful they’d found a green oasis and relieved their cars had not broken down on the desert drive from Los Angeles. There were muscled men with thick gold chains, women with false eyelashes the size of small awnings, an odd professorial-looking fella in a sports coat with elbow patches, and young families on summer vacation. The Bellagio experience is over the top, but I was happy to see money bet on gardens, even if it is a peculiar come-on for the dim glow and allure of slot machines, crap tables and blackjack just down the hall.
The plantings were high maintenance, portions of it kitschy but all of it catchy—in a Disney sort of way—expensive, lavish, over the top, and executed perfectly.
It was hard to move around the Conservatory, packed with afternoon gawkers. We walked around the casino, ate dinner at 5:00 (welcome to senior living), returned to our room, turned on Wheel of Fortune and fell asleep before Vanna White had turned her last vowel. It was not quite 8:00 pm.
I raised the shades the next morning at 5:30 and stared out from the 18th floor at the dull ugliness of Vegas rooftops. Skies were blue, and the jagged Spring Mountains were hazy in the far distance. I have seen the Nevada desert in spring bloom and hope to see it again.
We headed toward the Italianate Conservatory’s—“Bellagio’s Opus”
There were barely a dozen hotel guests here the next early morning. The planting design is changed over during the four seasons and the Lunar New Year. Thousands of plants are brought in from growers every other week. The horticulture crew looked happy with their work. They were pulling out foxgloves quickly and replacing them efficiently with delphiniums. They wasted no time. They’d started work at 5:00. Gamblers were still ordering up cocktails and croupiers were sweeping chips off the table. The flower turtle was being replenished with fresh carnations. Colorful clivias, fuchsias, kalanchoes, camellias, butterfly bushes and Gerber daisies needed watering.
We checked out at 10:00 am. It was 90 F at curbside, with the forecast heading toward 115 F later in the day. We arrived at the airport ahead of departure. I fell off the wagon, clinched my teeth and took a turn at the dollar slots. I won a quarter.
Lady Luck was with me.
Viva Las Vegas.
Cockatoo?
Interesting they don’t incorporate more Chihuly in the garden scene. I guess the lobby ceiling is enough.
I think it’s a sin and a crime to use all the water and a/c that must be wasted hourly maintaining all the horticultural “decoration”. People eager to go there don’t give a good G-D about flowers, or nature. Just create a couple dozen golden calves and put them on pedestals where the flowers used to be, no one will even notice, and would be so appropriate.
Agree fully. Can only hope they are using recycled water. Perhaps Allen can enlighten us.
You are so wrong!! I’ve been an employee at Bellagio since day one and it has been the experience of a lifetime!! I love the fact that I “party” with people from all over the world daily and my job is to make the experience fun and unforgettable. Vegas isn’t for everyone but it is a kaleidoscope of experiences from great food and music to breathtaking city and mountain views. I’ve enjoyed conversations with so many people from all over my beautiful country. I raised 3 great kids in this city and just like everywhere else anywhere in the world you can seek and find the ugliness but if you need a little escape from reality, some belly laughs, great food, dancing and so many other experiences, Vegas has it all!!! Come and find me. I’ll show you how wrong your judgement is. The water shortage exists but there are too many ways to help this. Our city government is restricting landscaping and I’m sure there are emergency plans that will be implemented. Been here 37 years and experienced it before.
Well done, I lived as a snowbird for 8years in Las Vegas it’s the greatest place to be.
I think you did a great job educating people, that people actually live there and it’s a great place to live.
I sold, and I got home days of the border being closed.
I loved going into the Bellagio and looking at the themes.
I’m in White Rock BC Canada.
I’m waiting for the border to open and I’m heading for Las Vegas to
see all my friends.
Viva Las Vegas Lily,
Regards,
Norma
Superb explanation as There were muscled males with heavy gold chains, ladies with awning-sized fake eyelashes, a strange professorial-looking man in a sports coat with elbow patches, and young families on vacation. Even though it’s a strange come-on for the dark light and appeal of slot machines, crap tables, and blackjack just down the hall, I was thrilled to see money placed on landscaping at the Bellagio.
I’d rather be outside in 110F than cooped up breathing COVID-19 air inside of a hotel. LMFAO what a lame post.
Not me! I’ll take indoors any a day, anywhere rather than be outside in 110 degree heat. The casino went over the top but I bet some of the flowers and designs were beautiful.
So, I’m guessing you weren’t there scouting venues for a tour…
Note to self: Never go to Vegas without my gold chains and eye lashes.
THE best reply this year. Smiled ’til my cheeks hurt.
In Vegas the line between reality and fantasy is so blurred it’s difficult to tell the difference between a real Fushia and a fake Felidae unless you are physically there.
It’s good to know that a place so artificially contrived invests in a botanical garden . . . and that so many guests choose to escape the casinos for a moment and take a garden break.
Thanks for the great photos.
We’ve attended a number of conventions in Vegas. I enjoy the seasonal Bellagio gardens. The Sunday Buffet is also over-the-top at the Bellagio and we find it well worth the steep price. Not a gambler, smoker, or drinker (ok, maybe 1 glass of wine occasionally), so we have the money for the splurge. I never get my moneys’ worth at a buffet, but I enjoy it because some dishes offered I rarely, if ever, get to try.
Leather elbow patches on a non-drinker seems like a waste of cowhide. Sort of like if the blackjack dealer was wearing a hard hat. Anyway, I once visited one of the larger wholesale flower cut flower markets in Shanghai, that took up the entire ground floor of the Four Seasons Hotel. Sounds like The Bellagio would benefit from a similar arrangement.
What a fun post – thank you for sharing your experience and photos, with humor and insight, minus unnecessary snark.
Just enough snark to be fun. Personally, I thought the plantings are grotesque. But then, so is everything about Vegas. Have been twice; will never go back. GLad that Rose Cooper Bush got to see it. .
Fun post! I lived in Bellingham for 28 years, enjoy!