Las Vegas 2019

Las Vegas is also known to be the city with the most casino in the world. It is known to have world's largest casinos along with high end fancy hotels. Most of the casinos are along the Las Vegas strip. Along the strip, every hotel has its own unique charm such as its architectural design, shows, night clubs, bars and restaurants. The night life at Las Vegas just never ends.


During the President's Day long weekend, we went to Las Vegas to have a fun weekend. We took the Alaska flight from Portland to Las Vegas on Friday night and we were amazed by the plane that was giving us the ride to Las Vegas. It was a brand new plane with large seat and large leg room. Each seat on the plane had its own universal remote for playing games. We could also send text through the screen in front of us to another person. We were very satisfied with the flight.

When we got to Las Vegas, the night was quite chill. We took the taxi ride to Bellagio and the ride costed us around $30 due to the traffic. When we went for hotel check in, there were so many people lined up for check in. It took about 30 minutes to get us checked in to the hotel room.

Since it was very late already, we walked around the casino and went to Noodles for a late dinner. It was a Chinese restaurant serving all kinds of Chinese food but it was extremely expensive.

The room that we stayed at has a view at the Bellagio fountain. The fountain starts every 30 minutes before 3PM and every 15 minutes after 3PM. The music and the fountain dance were different each time.

On the next day morning, the first thing we did was going to Planet Hollywood to try Gordon Ramsay Burgers. Since it was a restaurant owned by Hell's Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay, this was a must try for us.

Afterwards, we walked towards South on the strip to check out other stores and hotels. The Coca Cola store was quite interesting. It had a large variety different Coca Cola bottles wrapped in different colors. There were also many other Coca Cola swags such as under wears, pajamas, and backpacks. We really liked the polar bear stuff animal and thus we bought one. Beside the Coca Cola store, there was the M&M World. There was also a variety of M&M flavors for people to pick and choose, and the cost was simply based on the weight.

We then walked to the next major intersection along MGM and looped around to Exlibur and New York New York on the other side. We did not go to Luxor and Mandalay Bay because it was further down. At New York New York, there was also the Hershey's store. The Hershey's store was not as interesting but it did have a Statue of Liberty that was made out of chocolate and Twizzlers.

We continued to walk back and checked out Aria and Cosmopolitan hotels along the way. At night, we were originally going to go clubbing at Banks at Bellagio, but decided to just stay at hotel room since we weren't feeling well.

On the second day, we went to Bellagio's buffet for brunch. The buffet was extremely expensive and almost $50 per person. It was totally not worth it since we could spend $50 on something that is much better. We were quite disappointed. We then went to Caeser Palace and this was one of the most fancy hotel we have been to so far. In front of the hotel, there was an imitation of Trevi Fountain of Italy. There were also many stone sculptures within the hotel. The shop at the Forum were also very fancy with stone sculptures every where.

We played some Blackjack games at Mirage because it only has minimum bet of $10. In addition, it was an automatic win if we get 21 pints on first 2 cards. We made small profit there but later lost all to slot machines.

We walked towards North and looped back to Encore and Venetian. Venetian hotel had similar style. has Caeser Palace, but not as fancy in our opinions. It had a indoor canal with boat that allow tourists to ride on, but it was kind of awkward when everyone was watching you. We also saw few wedding photos being taken there.

In the evening, we went to watch the "O" show by Cirque du Soleil and it was spectacular. We highly recommend watching this show while you are at Las Vegas.

Overall, Las Vegas was a very fun place to be to enjoy the long weekend and relieves all the stress. We think that the slot machines are essentially a rip off and we will avoid it next time. Since smoking is allowed at the casino, we don't recommend people to bring their kids to Las Vegas due to the amount of second hand smoke there.

Gordon Ramsay Burger

Gordon Ramsay Burger, as the name suggests, is a burger restaurant owned by the famous Hell's Kichen chef Gordon Ramsay. The restaurant is located within Planet Hollywood hotel, right across from Bellagio and at the heart of the Las Vegas strip. This restaurant is a very popular restaurant and due to the popularity of Gordon Ramsay himself, almost every tourist that came to Las Vegas would want to visit Gordon Ramsay Burger restaurant.


The restaurant opens at 11AM in the morning. We thought about walking around within Planet Hollywood for a bit before heading to the restaurant, but we saw a line has already formed in front of the restaurant and thus decided to line up for 15 minutes. Right before the restaurant opens, the line was quite long.

We sat down at our table as the restaurant opened and ordered a signature Hell's Kitchen Burger, a Farm Burger, a Just Fries, and an Oreo Milkshake.

The milkshake at the restaurant is very popular and we were recommended to get Oreo Milkshake by the server. The milkshake has Oreo cookie cream within the glass. At the top, there was some custard cream. The Oreo Milkshake was very creamy and tasty. We really liked it. The issue was that the custard cream was at the top and it was very difficult to push it down and mix it with the Oreo cream. At the end, the custard was so thick that we could not really suck it through the straw. So we had to scoop the remaining cream and custard with the straw.

The Hell's Kitchen Burger was not as unique as we thought. We did not really see anything special in terms of toppings. It has avocado, cheese, jalapeño, and tomato. The burger was stacked quite tall due to the toppings however. The Farm Burger came with a fried egg. As we picked up the Farm Burger, the yolk broke and dripped every where. Both burgers came with butter baked buns and had sesame seeds on the top. One thing we did not like was that we found the burger to be quite salty, and make us want to drink water all the time.

Just Fries was a big serving of fries. Other than fries, there were also sweet potato fries and onion rings. Just Fries came with big wedge fries and 2 dipping sauce. The dipping sauces were not ketchup. The first dipping sauce was like spicy version of ketchup. The second dipping sauce was a curry flavored ketchup. It was quite interesting.

Overall, we think the restaurant is not bad and we like the milkshake the most. The price of burger range between $15 to $25, but it was not bad. We recommend to check it out if you have not been there and make sure you go early to get a table.

Noodles

Noodles is a Chinese Asian restaurant located inside Bellagio Hotel at Las Vegas. Although the restaurant name is called Noodles, it serves all kinds of Chinese dishes including rice, noodles, and stir fries. We landed at Las Vegas on a late Friday night and we were quite hungry. Thus we looked around and found that this place opens till 2AM in the morning and decided to go there for a late dinner.


Noodles is located at the corner of the hotel, right behind all the gambling slot machines. There are signs that indicates where the restaurant is. When we got to the front of the restaurant, the server told us no tables were available and we had to wait for about 10 minutes. We stood at the front of the restaurant and the servers in the restaurant seem to be just wondering around and not really clearing up the tables fast enough. There were actually few more couples lined up behind us.

After 10 minutes passed by, we finally got our table. We sat down and the server did not show up until 5 minutes later. We ordered a Hainanese Chicken Rice, and a Stir Fry Beef Noodle. These are 2 very common dishes at any Chinese restaurant.

After about 10 more minutes, our dishes were served. The Hainanese Chicken Rice came with a bow of rice, the chicken, and a bowl of soup. The soup seem to be just a broth soup with green onion. The rice is not any ordinary white rice. It was drizzled with chicken flavor and it was actually very tasty. The dish came with a good large portion of chicken and it was quite good. The only thing is some people may find the chicken having too much bones, but that is how this dish is.

The Stir Fry Beef Noodle is quite ordinary, just like the one that a food court Chinese vendor would serve. So it is really nothing special here.

The food at Noodles was good, but it was extremely expensive. Each dish costs at least $15, which is insane. For similar dish at any Chinese food court with same standard, it would only cost $7. We understand that everything at Las Vegas tend to be more expensive, but this is really over charging the food that was being served. The service is not great either at the restaurant.

We do not recommend people to come here for Chinese food. There are many options outside of the Las Vegas strip with cheaper price and probably with better quality too.