Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill in Caesars Palace Las Vegas opened December 2012. Celebrity chef restaurants hold little sway with me in dining. I am simply not much of a foodie. The environment created in the Pub & Grill with the music and drinks is what I found attractive along with a stylish post-punk fashion.

I was surprised to learn our travel blogger tour included a free dinner and drinks at the Pub & Grill.

Beer is one of my true loves. There are over 80 beers at the Pub with more than 20 on tap. Uncommon imported beers for free is one way to this man’s pleasure. Read More…

“Experience is the teacher of all things” is a quotation attributed to Julius Caesar.

Caesars Palace Las Vegas has no apostrophe in the name. The idea is that all guests are Caesars.

Well, some guests at Caesars receive a welcome more imperial than others as I learned on a site visit to Caesars Palace on the opening night of the New Media Expo January 2013 conference in Las Vegas.

Caesars invited a few bloggers to tour some suites in their one year old Octavius Tower. The Octavius Tower and Augustus Tower are two of the six hotel towers at Caesars Palace Las Vegas. Together they are referred to as “The Laurel Collection” when booking on the website. Read More…

Las Vegas Boulevard is full of hustlers. Tourist modis operandi is to avoid the face, wave off the pitch and move on.

Yesterday, I took a different tack to the Strip while on an extended lunch break from the New Media Expo 2013 conference at the Rio. I faced up the hustlers on Las Vegas Boulevard working the Strip in front of the Bellagio fountains, Caesars and Cosmopolitan to get insight to the street players, peddlers and performers. Read More…

Driving from Monterey, California to Las Vegas requires a 250 mile trek across the western portion of the Mojave Desert. All those travelers on Route 66 during the Dust Bowl era coming west welcomed the end of the Mojave Desert when crossing the Tehachapi Mountains to find the irrigated promised land of orchards and agricultural fields around the Bakersfield area in the Big Valley of California.

The drive is tougher for me going east as I leave the forests of the Monterey Peninsula and travel south through the green Salinas Valley and then turn east to cross the California Central Valley to Bakersfield. The Central Valley is a 100-mile wide flat landscape in typically mountainous California. Read More…

MGM CityCenter in Las Vegas is the $9 billion dollar casino resort complex with the Aria Resort & Casino, Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel and residences, Vdara – a mixed use hotel and residences, a high-end boutique shopping mall, Veer Towers condominiums, and the Harmon  – a structurally deficient tower that is the most expensive billboard on the Las Vegas Strip.

Harmon building is most expensive posterboard on Las Vegas Strip

The Wall Street Journal reports CityCenter’s senior vice president of facility improvements sent a letter to Clark County Director of Development Services stating CityCenter will demolish the Harmon Building to abate potential for structural collapse in case of an earthquake.

The Harmon, CityCenter Las Vegas

The fate of the building is currently in limbo tied up with court litigation between MGM Resorts International and CityCenter’s general contractor Perini Building Company over $200 million in payments.

CityCenter was a complex I watched being built over several years from rooms at the Planet Hollywood hotel across the street.

CityCenter construction August 2009. Harmon building on right.

The Harmon building is directly across the street from Marriott’s newly opened in December 2010 Cosmopolitan Hotel. I wonder if guests can stay on the Harmon side of the Cosmopolitan during the implosion? The Cosmopolitan outdoor pools are also on the Harmon side of the hotel.

The Palazzo has an entire city block of pools wrapped around two sides of the hotel. I read somewhere there are seven pools. I guess that depends on which ones are counted.

The view from my room looked down to the Azure Luxury Pools in the top right. These pools require a premium spend to hang out. The days I was there the charge was $250.  The large oval pool is open to all guests. Two pools and spa tub in Azure are nearer Las Vegas Blvd.

The large pool outside the main hotel pool doors was packed on a Friday afternoon. Pool hours were 9am to 6pm in late April. One of the most disappointing features of the major hotels on the Las Vegas Strip are short day pool hours. Few pools stay open to even 8pm in peak summer when it can be 90 degrees at midnight and many pools have open hours as short as 10am-4pm in winter, even on days when it is 75 degrees.

The pools look out to the Venetian in one direction and the Wynn and Encore Hotels across Spring Mountain Road in the other direction.

The large pool centrally located directly outside of the hotel pool entrance on the 3rd floor is at the hallway to Canyon Ranch Spa and there is a cafe and bar on the hotel side of the pool and another bar on the other side of the pool.

A smaller pool is empty and showed Reserve signs on lounge chairs when I walked by.

The long pool has views of the Venetian Resort.

Pool Cabana

TV, couch and table.

Two chairs.

Canyon Ranch Spa was a treat just to walk through to reach a different set of swimming pools. I know nothing about the spa, except there are two fitness rooms and a café. The walk engaged me with the walls as I wandered the corridors alone.

The first mile  is a warm-up walk to what else is inside for a workout.

And down the hall and another corner and there is a reception desk and beyond that a rock climbing wall.

There are around a dozen or so spa pools located around teh resort pools. I didn’t count them all.

The best “swimming” pool is around the back side of the Palazzo outside the doors of the Canyon Ranch Spa.

Pool Bars are located in several places around the pools. Drink prices range from $6 for beer to $12 for cocktails.

The pools nearest the Venetian get the most early morning sun at this time of year in the early spring months.

These pools bake in the early morning while the long pool and other pools in the front side ot the Palazzo linger in the shadows.

Loyalty Traveler post: The Palazzo Las Vegas – Part 1 The Bella Suite

Expedia.ca 48-hour sale ends Sunday midnight Pacific time

Update: 13:00 Pacific time, Sat Nov 20.

Expedia has updated the SAVE300 voucher terms to state travel and transactions must originate in Canada.

This offer is effectively DEAD unless you are traveling from Canada.

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Las Vegas including airfare from San Francisco on a package trip in a Vdara Suite for $44.

Or $41 for one night in a Premier Strip View at the Four Seasons Las Vegas normally priced at $259.

Or $120 for a night in a Strip View Suite at the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, normally priced at $425 per night.

The Venetian in a Venezia Bella View Suite for $30 and breakfast buffet included.

And the deals go on for Wynn Tower rooms with $100 stay credits for under $100, Palazzo suites, Bellagio Lake View Suites and many other hotel deals in Las Vegas for trips in November and December.

Expedia.ca has a $300CAD discount voucher for Air + Hotel packages in Las Vegas. The rates are so low that many packages are actually less than $300CAD all-in. Room upgrades pushed the price of the hotel rooms listed above to over $300CAD for a one night trip on December 13, 2010 leaving SFO Monday morning and returning Tuesday evening.

This deal went viral yesterday with over 1,000 posts on FlyerTalk in less than 24 hours. This is one of the longest lasting high value travel deals I have seen in quite a while and still appears available as I write this post.

Who knows if Expedia will honor these rates or not?

The one thing I have learned from this offer is there are some incredible Las Vegas deals through Expedia Hotel + Air packages, even without a $300 CAD credit.

Bellagio Las Vegas for two nights + airfare = $14CAD after discount

Update 12 noon Sat Nov 20:

I originally posted quickly this morning to let people know the extraordinary rates people are getting for Las Vegas vacations. I know this Expedia.ca deal also applies to New York and Cancun, but the Las Vegas hotel deals for travel from San Francisco have held my attention.

The numbers I quote in the previous text do not exactly go with the images since I calculated rates based on hotel searches I had made for Monday night December 13 and the images are from a variety of Expedia rate searches.

The Expedia Canada SAVE300 offers are deep discounts on some Las Vegas upgraded hotel rooms and suites in 5-star hotels.

Here is a more systematic picture of the deep discounts at Las Vegas 5-star hotels available with the ‘SAVE300′ voucher credit on the  Expedia.ca (Canada site) at 11am Pacific Sat Nov 20.

Monday December 13 – Thursday December 16, 2010

Prices shown are reduced by $300 when applying SAVE300 coupon for one person flying and staying in hotel for three nights.

Bellagio Hotel for three nights Dec 13-16 and airfare for one person from San Francisco is a total cost of $121 Canadian dollars after the Save300 voucher credit.

Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas with room rates normally in the $199 per night range is available for three nights at $376 CAD all-in with free airfare from San Francisco.

And you can upgrade your room. The Expedia Canada sale has been getting booked for over 24 hours and many suites are getting booked out. There were suite upgrade options for these dates just a couple of hours ago.

The new City Center Las Vegas  is one of the largest real estate development projects in the world at more than 8 billion dollars. Click the link just to get a great photo image of the complex on the Las Vegas Strip if you are not familiar with the property. Several luxury hotels are part of City Center Las Vegas including the new Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, Vdara, and Aria Resort.

Room rates at the hotels in City Center are probably 50% of what they were predicted to run when these hotels were planned. City Center opened about 12 months ago into the worst hotel market of modern times and the greatest slump in tourism Las Vegas has ever experienced.

And these Expedia Canada rates are a fraction of the current published rates for these hotels in December 2010.

The best value comes from a simple one night stay where the hotel rate opportunities for a cheap upgrade are phenomenal.

Monday, December 13

A roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas and a room at the Wynn Resort for Dec 13 is free after the $300 CAD credit. You might as well upgrade:

Wynn Resort Deluxe Panoramic View King is $38.29CAD after applying $300CAD voucher credit.

Wynn Tower room is just $62 CAD for the night. Remember the SFO-LAS flights are included in this $62 luxury hotel night.

Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas Hotel is actually free  when booking one night Air+Hotel Package for Monday Dec 13.

Why not upgrade to a suite at a rate you will likely never see again?

VancouverDealsBlog.com with step-by-step instructions for booking this deal (from Canada).

Related Posts:

Betting on Expedia.ca for a Vegas Suite Deal (Nov 20, 2010) [This post tells how I bought my flight to Las Vegas and an upgraded room at the Mandarin Oriental for $12.]

CityCenter Las Vegas – Art, Architecture and Space (Dec 16, 2010)

Hotel Detail – Aria Resort and Casino Las Vegas in HD (Dec 11, 2010)

Aria Resort Las Vegas – Pools, Spa and Dining (Dec 12, 2010)

Aria Resort Corner Suite and SkySuites (Dec 18, 2010) 

Aria Resort Las Vegas SkyVilla 19 (Dec 19, 2010)

Vdara Hotel, CityCenter Las Vegas (Dec 19, 2010)

Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas (Dec 23, 2010)

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (Dec 21, 2010) (The Cosmopolitan is next to Vdara Hotel, but not part of CityCenter complex. The Cosmopolitan is a Marriott Autograph Collection Hotel.)