Second day in Macau

Sunday, June 19, 2011
Macau, Macau, China
Having gone to bed fairly early last night (more like passed out), all this walking tires one out, we got up fairly early and heading for breakfast in the hotel. As it turns out, having booked our room on one of the Executive floors, our breakfast is right up here, on the 20th floor, just down from our room. Made it there by 7:30 and the place was empty. By 8am there wasn't a place to sit. Very good breakfast, somewhat Continental, but much larger. They really like their coffee strong over here.

Most of the transportation in Macau is scooters and buses. Scooters for the locals, and buses to move all the tourists around between the casinos. All the buses are complimentary, so all one has to do is find out a pickup location and just the bus to where you want to go. For today’s trek we took a shuttle bus, which comes to the hotel regularly, to get to the Ferry terminal. At the ferry terminal, there’s a multitude of buses to move people to the various casinos and hotels – you just have to find the one you need – and they are all free!

Today, we are headed to Taipa Island, where some of the newest and larger casinos are located.     Looks like this area is going to be the "new" Hotel/Casino destination area of Macau, as it is stated to have upwards of 30 new hotel/casinos in the next few years.

Our first destination today was the Venetian Macau. We were curious to see how Venetian Macau compared with the Venetian in Vegas. This place is huge. The Venetian Macau boosts the largest casino in the World, at almost 600,000 square feet in size(five times the size of its Vegas counterpart) and with 3,400 slot machines and 800 gaming tables. This is the first Casino that we have seen actual Roulette wheels in, vs the electronic version, as it does not appear to be a popular game here. We wandered the 350 shops in the Grand Canal Shoppes mall, this in itself is a challenge, as it is so large, easy to get twisted around.    We had lunch in the casino, right in the very middle of it, in a small open restaurant called The Red Dragon Noodle Restaurant. Beer was only $27MOP, a great price we thought, right in the world’s largest Casino (about $3.40CDN).

Next we headed toward the Hard Rock Hotel, and encountered massive construction projects on the Contai Strip, which looks like it will rival the Las Vegas Strip in a few years, construction everywhere.

From the Hard Rock, we headed to the newest Hotel/Casino Complex, the Galaxy Macau, which only just opened about a month ago. This place is also huge, as has the shopping(very high end shopping), as well as the Casino and Hotel.

Now we reversed our travels and headed back to our hotel for a little rest, before heading out for Supper, as today is Father’s Day here already. We ended up at the Sands hotel, and had the Fathers’ Day Buffet. Similar to a Vegas buffet, but much smaller, and understandably with a different selection of foods, which makes it very interesting for us, as we like to try as many new experiences as we can.

Now its time to head back, as all the walking has pooped us all out.

Comments

Brian Lee
2011-06-21

Awesome entry - loved hearing the stats on the sizes of places - very interesting. Also liked hearing about your comparisons to Vegas

2025-02-17

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