More Las Vegas

Today we explored the Las Vegas strip. We walked through the following casinos: New York, New York, Montecarlo, Bellagio, Paris, Bally, Venetian, and Treasure Island. All of them were basically the same, the exception of the Bellagio which both Jim and I just loved.

When you walk into the Bellagio, you see the amazing mosaic floors. Then there's the front hall with this art-glass display on the ceiling:

What do you think, Laurie? Chihuly or a knock off? There were other glass displays in the same theme throughout the casino.

The Bellagio also has a small botanical garden with orchids, topiaries, and Asian-themed decorations, but my favorite was its garden, which was in a courtyard in the middle of the massive building. The garden had several pools with mosaic designs on the bottoms. There were also orange trees and other trees and plants. Wow.

It was a dream. (And by the way, the temperature was only in the 50's. Some kids were in the pool anyway. It was so beautiful that I would've gone in too if I was staying there!) The rest of the casinos were basically just big halls with millions of slot machines with some decorations on the theme, whatever the theme is.

We were walking from about 9:30 in the morning, with a short break for lunch, so by 2pm, I was exhausted. We came back to the hotel, where we took naps. We're going to go out to dinner pretty soon. Our flight leaves at 6:30 tomorrow morning - ugh.

As a side note, I learned today that one of the passengers on board the plane that crashed in Buffalo was an expert witness that I was just in contact with this week for an asylum case that I've been preparing for a hearing. The expert's name was Alison Des Forges and she was perhaps the most qualified expert witness on asylum country conditions that I have ever worked with. We exchanged e-mails on Monday. It just makes me sick that she was on this flight. Actually, the whole incident makes me sick. I'm not so thrilled to be getting on a plane tomorrow.