Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Yesterday was a long and very good day! I’m being lazy this morning (more on why later) and it’s getting late now, so I need to (try) to be brief here today.
Relaxing morning at the hotel!
Drank tea, wrote blog post, etc.
Showers and headed out by 10:45.
On the great LINQ Promenade:
First destination, Caesar’s Palace:
Caesar’s is enormous and such a great theme hotel/casino. Very beautiful.
Wandering around!
Sports betting area and Omnia nightclub.
Next checked out the huge Forum Shops area. Luxury store after luxury store!! 😳 Not in my price range but fun to walk through.
The whole mall area is amazing. Fake skies and everything in Roman decor.
Didn’t realize the Atlantis Show dark on Wednesdays. Will have to go back.
Love the aquarium!! Stingrays so cool.
In a huge Nike store. Tons of World Cup displays.
More hotel/casino at Caesar’s:
Next- lunch! Wanted something quicker, so found a food court type area along the strip. Ethan said this was his dream- fast food Chinese right next to Chipotle!! Ivan and I had Panda Express, boys had Chipotle.
Closer up of the Hard Rock:
Next up, one of my favorites- the Venetian!
SUCH a pretty hotel and casino.
I have no idea how to play any of the table games. Always makes me wonder – how exactly do people learn?! They’re typically always packed with people playing. But like, I never see a “beginners” table or anyone teaching anyone?? I’d also probably completely screw up any proper etiquette that goes along with all of that, too. lol.
The big event of the day was our 2 pm tickets for The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere!
Cool photo op area:
Made our way to the Sphere- basically behind the Venetian but everything is always a long walk… ha.
The Wizard of Oz came so highly recommended as a “must do”. It’s a bit hard to explain- on the surface it just sounds like a very expensive viewing of the movie. But it’s so much more than that!!
First, the Sphere itself is incredible. Also, it’s a gigantic curved screen and there are tons of special effects, so you feel like you are IN the movie. The picture has been edited to be fully immersive and you feel the wind from the tornado and poppy flowers and apples fall from the ceiling and the seats vibrate and move etc. It’s fabulous! Everyone, including the boys, loved it.
I snagged a few pics but really you have to experience it to get any sense of what it’s like!
It was so fun!! Glad we splurged for this.
From there, we looped back through the Venetian to see the rest (we ran out of time before the show).
The gondola area and St. Mark’s Square are so beautiful!
This is one of my favorite areas in Vegas! Just like Venice (which I’ve also been to and loved).
More Venetian on the way out:
Gorgeous!
The evening plan was to find somewhere to watch the Mexico vs Czechia World Cup game. The boys headed back to hotel to regroup a little while the rest of us checked out options and finally settled on the Tilted Kilt which had a million huge TVs and said they’d be playing sound for the game.
We were super early so snagged an amazing table right in front of a huge screen.
The boys joined back up with us for the game. We were there for several hours all in all, between pregame and the game. Haha.
I had one beer and some spinach and artichoke dip with chips.
México won 3-0!
The game ended and the boys and my mom and dad headed back to hotel. Ethan wanted to swim and my mom just wanted to relax after so much walking around during the day.
Ivan and I decided to go out on the town alone for a while!
Ended up getting some cash out to try our hand on the casino for a while. (Note- the ATM at Paris was going to charge $11.50 service fee to take cash out. What?!? I hit cancel and googled and found that the CVS pharmacy ATM next door only charges $3.50. I forgot what a money grab Vegas is…. 😬)
Here’s me donating my hard earned dollars to the owner of Paris casino! 😜🤣
In the end we lost $80. Meh. This particular machine was actually fun- it let me win just enough to keep going up and down for a longer while. lol.
Sat long enough to get our “free” cocktails though! 😉
It was fun though. I mean, you have to gamble a little in Vegas, right?!
Afterwards we wandered around more and finally got some amazing authentic carne asada tacos at midnight!! lol! Yummm these were so good, with excellent salsa. All Mexican run so knew it would be good. Was a taqueria just like in Mexico!
Back to hotel just before 1 am. Whew!! 😅 Fun day.
That’s why I’m lazy this morning- lounging in a cabana by the pool currently but going to head up soon.
Boys want to explore some other hotels today, down by Luxor, Mandalay Bay, etc. Maybe some more pool later. And USA plays tonight!
GRATEFUL KAE 
I’m glad you are enjoying Vegas. I got married to my American husband in Vegas. I was born without the ‘Wedding Gene” and wanted the simplest wedding possible. We tied the knot at a roadside by a mobile wedding service! When I took my son (visiting from the UK) to Vegas and asked him what he thought of Vegas, he said “it’s an abomination worth seeing”. He has a way with words…….
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I am loving these posts. I’ve been Zion and I’ve been to Vegas and love both. you were surprised it sprinkled but we were there for three or four days and it poured rain. Everyone said it never rains in Vegas but it did when we were there. We missed the helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon & Hoover Dam, for which we paid a lot of money, but at least we got it back!! to compensate we did the giant Ferris wheel with unlimited drinks and got our moneys worth lol. Vegas is so cool with the realistic skies and backdrops. My husband and I had just been to Italy, including a few days in Venice a few few months before and we said “oh we didn’t need to go to Venice” it’s right here lol.
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