Our 12th Anniversary on December 17, Dave and I decided to celebrate in fabulous Las Vegas. We had looked through the Vegas deals and promotions and chose a package on vegas.com, which included 4 nights in the hotel Aria, airfare from Washington, DC and a show by Cirque Du Soleil. All of it for $620 each. 🙂
Our journey began from the Reagan National airport, which is conveniently located not far from our home, and in a couple hours we landed in the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – the dairy capital of the United States. The airport itself was neat, fairly quiet and nicely decorated for the Christmas.
The reason I mentioned this, is that I had the best fast-food burger I’ve ever had. The burgers were prepared on a flaming grill. We both had decadent chocolate milkshakes, and chose a side of delicious onion rings, which were tasty as well – with no grease. Here is a picture of our little fast-food restaurant – Northpoint. We could not miss it on the way back and enjoyed our favorite burgers again.
The taxi ride from the Vegas airport to our hotel was about 15 minutes. Aria is an impressive modern hotel, enormous as are most hotels on the strip.
Some statistics about Aria:
Towering over the Las Vegas Strip, the 5-star ARIA Resort & Casino dominates the multi-billion-dollar CityCenter shopping and entertainment complex. This is the Las Vegas of the future: gleaming metal and glass, modern decor, and high-tech amenities to match” (from hotels.com).
According to wikipedia, Aria opened on December 16, 2009 as a joint venture between MGM Resorts International and Infinity World Development. At 4,000,000 sq ft (370,000 m2) and 600 ft (180 m) in height, it is the largest and tallest structure at CityCenter.
Cute fountain near the Entrance. Belagio has the best fountains.
The Wall Waterfall.
Aria’s beautiful lobby, which expands into a huge casino.
Partial view of the casino.
We booked a standard room with a king bed and we were very pleased with it. Our room was located on 26-th floor of the North wing and it was new, clean and with great amenities: flat screen TV, Internet, bar and panoramic windows. The highlight was a touch-screen remote that controlled almost every gadget in our room including lights, TV, curtains, room temperature, etc. There are 4004 rooms in Aria.
Us in our room… just arrived 🙂
The bed feels good… 🙂
The bedside touch screen remote display is also viewable on the flat screen TV shown in this picture. So cool…
The rest of the evening we spent walking around the interior of the enormous Aria Hotel, viewing beautiful modern designs and art pieces.
We finished the evening with delicious lattes and sandwiches in the Jean Philippe bakery in the lobby downstairs.
Chocolate Flowers below are made from white, dark and milk chocolate.
My favorite features of Aria are as follows:
- The size of the rooms. Very nice!!
- Panoramic from floor to ceiling windows that run the length of the room and open via a long curtain.
- According to the Aria website, there is really not one “bad” view in the hotel.
- The beds. They are the most comfortable hotel bed I have ever slept on. Actually, it is possible to order this kind of a mattress for home from Sealy®, the supplier of mattresses custom-designed exclusively for ARIA Resort & Casino from here.
- The big appeal of Aria is how technological it is. The Room Touch Panel and Remote Control Instruction are here.
- Location. Aria is fairly centrally located on the strip and connects to Crystals which is a mall with shopping and dining.
The Bad:
- A mandatory charge of $20 a day for “convenience” items like wireless internet and gym use. Even if you have no plans for either one you still have to pay that fee on top of the already expensive hotel rate.
- No electrical outlets near the bed to charge your phone, use your laptop, etc. Actually, the outlets are there, but they are hidden under the mattress near the head bed. Hard to guess…
- There was too much vanilla-jasmine? scent in the hotel lobby. 🙁
In summary, it is a gorgeous new hotel and minor inconveniences did not bother us.
Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day. We are going to explore the Stratosphere hotel and jump from the top of the Tower – 108 stories high!!!
