Las Vegas trip review and photos of the hotels & casinos along the Strip

Photo of New York New York hotel. In Las Vegas we stay at the New York New York hotel and casino, a known themed hotel inspired by the homonymous city, established in 1997. The New York New York is located along the southern part of the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) in a convenient location from where the airport can be reached quickly and from where you can visit all the other hotels along the Strip just on foot. In top pictures: the New York New York seen by day and by night. Below-left: the view from the 33rd floor of the Empire tower, towards the Excalibur, Luxor and Mandala Bay. In the bottom-right picture, the reconstruction of the most popular neighborhoods in New York, housing shops and restaurants.

The trip to Las Vegas begins visiting the theme hotels that are located on the southern part of the Strip. In these photos, the Luxor hotel & casino showing an architecture inspired by the ancient Egyptians, that sees a large sphinx in front of a pyramid in which there is a casino, shops and some of the guest rooms.

Photo of Luxor hotel & casino in Las Vegas. The interior of the pyramid holds shops and large statues, while some of the hotel rooms are located along the sides of the pyramid (they can be reached by a particular type of elevator named "inclinator" because it travels obliquely).

The tour in Las Vegas proceeds north along the Strip (Las Vegas Blvd) visiting the Excalibur, another theme hotel with thousands of rooms and inspired to King Arthur and the Middle Ages in general.

In these photos, MGM and Planet Hollywood hotels, also located along the south Las Vegas Blvd (the southern part of the Las Vegas Strip), thus closer to the airport.

Our Las Vegas tour continues by visiting the Bellagio hotel & casino, which offers one of the most beautiful show among all the casinos in Las Vegas. In fact, at a rate that varies between 30 and 15 minutes depending on time of day, musical fountains performances are held in the large pool in front of the hotel. The Fountains of Bellagio are capable of projecting water up to 75 meters in the air.

Another show is provided by the Mirage hotel & casino, where an artificial volcano erupts periodically by simulating the emission of lava through jets of water lit by fire and flames.

Along north Las Vegas Blvd, we find more theme hotels, like the Treasure Island (inspired to the world of pirates), and the Venetian inspired instead to Venice.

Photos of Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. Inside the hotel there is a real reconstruction of Venice including its water canals, where there are also shops and restaurants and where you may have a gondola ride.

The Stratosphere hotel & casino, one of the northernmost along the Las Vegas Blvd, has a tower 1149 feet high from where you can have a 360 degree view over Las Vegas and southern Nevada and where you can join extreme thrill rides. We recommend that you get on top of the tower just before sunset, to be able to enjoy either the endless panorama of the Nevada desert and either Las Vegas illuminated as soon as it becomes dark enough.

The Stratosphere tower has also an open upper terrace where you can enjoy another ride: the X-Scream.

Photo of Las Vegas at night taken from the observation deck of the Stratosphere tower. In the picture to the right, some airplanes lined up to land at Las Vegas McCarran airport.

Hoover Dam photos. The Hoover Dam is located just half an hour drive from Las Vegas. It was built along the Colorado River in order to create Lake Mead, which supplies water and electricity to Las Vegas, as well as to many other towns in the south-west of the United States.

The 2013's water level in Lake Mead is at record lows due to a prolonged drought that has lasted for 20 years. In the right picture, the water level in November 1998, pictured at left, the level at the end of 2013.