Macau Return... pt 1: the great....

So as I mentioned, my mom is in town,  because of all the events going on (Josie's Show, Audiotraffic show, etc),  I hadn't had a free weekend day to take her to anywhere except for a day trip to Shenzhen the first weekend she was here.

So I took off a half-day last week to take her to Macau.  She had done the tourist stuff on her previous trips out here, so this time she wanted to enjoy more the casino side of things.... 

今僕のお母さん香港に来ているから、マカオまで連れて行かせられた。最近毎週末イベントが有るから、平日時行かなければなりませんでした。お母さん綺麗ホテルで泊まりたいんですから、新MGMゴランドマカオで予約した。（12月時僕達MGMのオペンパーティーを参加した- blog 1 blog 2）

Actually my mom was quite demanding,  if we were going to go, no economy hotels this time, she asked me to get a room at the new MGM Grand Macao(which you may recall we went to the opening party for back in December - blog 1 blog 2). 

As you can expect, since this is a brand new multi-million dollar casino, the rooms were quite nice, definitely one of the nicest hotels I've stayed in:

My mom actually made me take pictures of EVERYthing, but i'll spare you all but two. :-P

We got the 'city view',  which I'm guessing is actually much more interesting than the ocean side:

Looking back at the Wynn with the super-uniquely shaped Grand Lisboa sticking out behind it.

and down below, a view of the glass roof over the Portuguese style piazza:

Actually its kind of hard to figure out what that is, so let me show the ground view instead...

I had only really seen this during the evening, so it was cool to see it during the day, it is actually quite nice,  they have a lot of detail on the walls too (Portuguese tile, etc)...

The lobby has some fancy glass work done by a famous artist who's name escapes me at the moment:

this was actually taken later that night...

ホテルとてもすごいですよ！部屋広し、綺麗し、Piazzaところも綺麗。

My mom also wanted to visit the Venetian Macao, since she had heard a lot about it...  I had visited here once before, but this time we had some more time to wander around through the non-casino parts...

ザ・ベネチアン・マカオも行った、とても大です、デサイン一寸オバーザトプのに。。。

Even the drive way has fancy roofs here...  After visiting this place, I am led to believe that all people in Venice dress like gondolier... :-P

This place is REALLY over the top... in a gaudy, almost disney-esque kind of way...  for example:

not only is it huge, but its huge and ornate... (venetian is actually the 2nd largest building in the world...)

Back to the disney-esqueness:  they have the famous canals of Venice through the shopping mall area (which is actually on the 2nd floor, believe it or not):

And they make the gondoliers sing while they go down the fake canal...   I noticed that the boats are actually electric and have a small propeller underneath...   I guess there's not enough room to actually row in there, so I'll forgive them..   not sure why they had a chinese style boat over here.... i guess cause it was the Marco Polo canal? :-P

In one of the larger areas, they had these singers doing some sort of operatic performance:

The mainland tourists can't get enough of this kind of stuff... there were lots of people stopping to take photos...

Even the food court had a fancy fake sky:

The food court was actually my favorite part of the venetian... unlike the Wynn, Sands, et al,  since the Venetian is so big and is more like a shopping mall than just a hotel or casino, they also have some more affordable food choices. They even have a McDonalds in here... but then again considering its way far from the down town area, it has to have something affordable... there's no where else nearby to go.

In this foodcourt they had mostly asian food counters... several kinds of Chinese, several types of japanese, some korean, vietnamese, etc.  Also tex-mex, burgers, etc.  But this Japanese one was the most photo worthy:

But actually it was photo worthy for a bad reason... I had to sneak a photo of this sign:

Don't bother to zoom in if you're not versed in the H...  (and if you're japanese,  just don't zoom in at all, please!　 日本人たら、この写真を絶対見ないで下さい！) :-D

Needless to say I went for some Mexican and passed on the 'splash' noodles. :-P

Anyway, food court aside,  we also stopped by the Wynn on our way back.  Previously I had though the decorations inside were nothing special,  but:

This time I noticed the fancy astrological themed ceiling...

On our way out we caught a nice view of the fountain show:

Lisboa and Grand Lisboa all decked out in multi-colored lights in the background...   unfortunately it was quite windy and my camera and I got pretty wet from the water blowing on us during the high shooting parts...   then it was back to the MGM... ウーンホテルの前の噴水ショウ。後ろのリスボアとゴランドリスボアを見える。

Needless to say we did some gambling in between these various photo ops.  We had a lot of fun visiting the various casinos and get a sampling of the new macau casinos first hand...   I definitely liked the MGM a lot though, the design was much more tasteful than Venetian and location is a lot better too.    ... and the breakfast was over the top too! :-D

MGMすごいでした、朝ご飯もすごいでした、マカオへ行くたら、MGMで泊まってください！

I have a few more pics, i'll save them for tomorrow. :-P