A day on the Las Vegas Strip

When we checked into our RV park here, they gave us a list of free shows. One that sounded interesting was the Bellagio Conservatory, so we drove to the Strip this morning to see it.

We were able to get into the self parking at the Bellagio for free and found the conservatory just off the lobby with no problem.

The current exhibit is celebrating the Chinese Year of the Goat.

It was really neat to see the figures with their clothing made out of flower blooms

 "Mrs Green Thumb" was still there when we got there (something I read said that Mr & Mrs Green Thumb were there from 10:30-11:30am each day - we got there just before 11:30am) - I asked her about how they kept the flowers on the figures fresh - she said that every day they pull bad ones and replace them, and about once a week, totally replace all the flowers on the figure. She pointed out that they had one stripped down to the florist block and were replacing it. It was really interesting to watch them re-carve his underneath and start to re-flower him.

At this point, they were adding florist block to his arms - the torso looked pretty beat up too, but she was already putting flowers into it, so I guess it wasn't ready to be replaced yet.

At this point, they had finished putting the new florist block on the arms, and had wet it well with a hose. They were doing more flowers on the torso. We decided to come back later to see the final product.

While wandering around the conservatory (it isn't that big, but there are multiple paths), we happened upon this egg...

And a brochure about a Faberge' exhibit - neat!

So, we went to the Faberge' exhibit - the funny thing was, it was an exhibition from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - I've never see the exhibit there! There were 4 eggs in the exhibit, and a large number of other items - things I didn't know of from the house of Faberge' - like small carved animals, beautiful enamel work, Orthodox icons, and picture frames by the dozens. It was really quite interesting. No pictures allowed in there...

Outside the museum, we visited a photography studio - one of the photographs was really striking - it was entitled "Three Brothers" and was a 15 minute time-lapse of a thunder storm off La Jolla, CA. You can see it on the web here: http://www.jeffmitchum.com/raw_nature/  It is the 4th one down and the 4th one across. Beautiful.

Then we headed back to the Conservatory to see the finished work on the figure that we had seen earlier - very neat how they use the flowers to clothe the figure!

The completed figure

I don't know how many times a year they change the display. There was also water being delivered inside the figures in some way (there was water dripping down from the feet that had an uncomfortable look of the figures having wet their pants...).

Since it was almost 3pm, we went outside to see a performance of the Bellagio Fountains. Dwayne and I both took videos but I have one photo of the pool before it started.

Bellagio Fountain pool - before the fountain show started. In the background, you can see the "High Roller" - a huge ferris wheel that we had thought was not going at this time, but as we got closer to it, we saw that it was moving, but very, very slowly.

Dwayne captured a still from his video - note the rainbow to the left within the fountain.

We were both interested in seeing the Canal Shops at the Venetian again, so we headed off that way.

Along the way, we stopped in the Flamingo as our "Free" list indicated that they had a Wildlife Habitat to visit.

Flamingos at the Flamingo Wildlife Habitat

Pelican at the Flamingo Wildlife Habitat

From the Flamingo, we made our way to the Venetian (taking a route that GoogleMaps didn't seem to know about!) - and found the Canal Shops area pretty easily. We arrived just in time to see a performance by the "Streetmosphere" players - it was fun and enjoyable too!

One of the performers in the Streetmosphere

We saw some of the gondoliers in the canal

We stopped for "Taco Tuesday" and then headed back to the Bellagio to get the Jeep and head back "home".

A picture up the strip as we were heading back to the Bellagio

We had a really nice day - we both achieved 10,000 steps on our "S-Health" monitors on our phones, and saw as much of the Strip of Las Vegas as we needed to!