Bellagio is a nice place to take visitors (slight bonus poker content right at the very end, if you're patient)

My sister is in town for a meeting, so we went out to eat at "In 'n' Out Burger" (her choice--she had never been there) and bowling at Gold Coast (I got a 164 in my second game, including 3 strikes and 4 spares--my best score in years). We're talking high-society outings here.

She had seen the Bellagio fountains for the first time when she was here for the rodeo in December, so we stopped by again. They remain enjoyable no matter how many times you may have seen them before:




Then we went inside the Bellagio to stroll through the conservatory, dressed in its fancy spring attire. I regretted not anticipating this. I would have brought my real camera, instead of the crummy low-resolution cell phone camera. (For much nicer photos, see Vegas Rex's sampling here, as well as the link within that post.) Anyway, here's what we saw:
















As we were about to leave, it dawned on me that one of the biggest poker tournaments on the calendar was taking place right that minute within that very building. So I dragged my sister over to the Fontana Lounge, and sure enough, there was poker being played. Ted Forrest walked right by me, returning from a break. With only my crummy camera and no admittance to the room by spectators, I was reduced to these two pathetic shots:



Above, that's Burt Boutin standing there in the camel jacket, getting in the way of people I actually wanted to take a picture of. He's obnoxious. I didn't really want a picture of him.



OK, see that rectangular light sort of in the middle? Directly below that you see a person seated at the table wearing a white shirt with a black baseball cap on? That's Phil Ivey. And if you look just a hair down and to the right of Phil, the face that is sort of in profile is Men "The Master" Nguyen.

So there's your very slight bonus poker content for this post, right there!