Tag: Review

Review of the Bellagio Penthouse, Las Vegas

This is all you need to know about this room – THERE WERE TV’S IN THE MIRRORS OF THE WASHROOMS AND I GOT TO WATCH ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC PLAY IN MY MIRROR WHILE SHOWERING.

That’s it. That’s the blog post. Fin.

Okay I may have exaggerated, obviously I’m going to tell you more but that first line really was what cemented how amazing this room was.

On Sunday, March 31st we checked into the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I wanted to pick somewhere special to stay on the eve of my boyfriends birthday so getting a penthouse suite at the Bellagio was OBVIOUSLY what I chose. This probably sounds selfish, but I really think it was equally for me as it was for him. Oh well, still did it.

We arrived at around noon to drop our bags off before heading to a pool party and the valets outside promptly took care of storing our stuff until we would come back. (Shout out to Ivan, always tip your valets!)

When we got back around 5pm there was still a significant line for checking in to the hotel but I’d never seen so many open tellers ready to help. There must have been at least 20 people working the front desk so everyone could check in quickly. As someone who is quite impatient (duh) I love seeing a hotel doing everything they can to get people checked in as fast as possible.

For those of you using a credit card, they will hold $150USD for incidentals. For those of you who will be using cash, they will hold $500USD for incidentals and give it back to you as soon as you check out. Wanted to make sure all mans knew that, I know not everyone is too fond of using credit cards for everything.

Another fun fact I wanted to share is, DON’T TOUCH SHIT IN THE MINI BAR. I understand that a lot of you wouldn’t anyways, because those things are usually very expensive. However, I literally mean do not even touch it. I guess I haven’t stayed in a fancy pants hotel in a while because apparently now things are weighed? So if you even pick up any of the items at your minibar for 10 seconds, guess what? You bought it. It’s yours. Our mini bar had liquor, a portable phone charger, snacks and actual Bellagio casino chips. We didn’t even go breathe near that area as a result of knowing this.

Our room was on the 32nd floor – #62. Once we opened the door, it all became so surreal. This room was the biggest space I had ever slept in. It was legitimately larger per square foot than WHOLE AirBnB houses I had rented. Ours was the one bedroom penthouse and it had 2.5 bathrooms, a living room area and a dining room area. If you want to see a video of me taking my YouTube followers on a tour of it, you can find that here.

Upon entry you have the .5 bathroom to your right and the minibar area to your right. The living room area is directly in front of that and had some comfy couches and a huge TV that I feel had so many plugs, I may have been able to hook up like seven video gaming consoles to it if I wanted. The dining room area was a table and some chairs for hanging out, along with our massive windows overlooking the Bellagio pools. Then in the back was our huge bedroom that had a TV, a love seat and the BEST blackout curtains I have ever seen. In our dining/living room area it was really bright but with the blinds shut in the bedroom it looked like 3am dark. It was awesome.

Connected to the bedroom were the his and hers bathrooms. These bathrooms were larger than my whole bachelor apartment in Toronto OK? The ‘his’ had a closet, a seat, a robe with slippers, huge mirror with the TV in it, toilet and a shower. The ‘hers’ had a massive soaking tub, toilet and bidet, closet, seat with vanity mirror, huge mirror with TV in it as well and of course the robe and slippers.

Each bathroom also had its own toiletry kits from shampoos, conditioners, creams, a shaving kit, dental kits and even a sewing kit. I assure you, all of those made it back to Toronto with me 🙂

Not sure if this will make me sound a little bougie, but having your own massive washroom was so cool. I loved that we could get ready at the same time but in totally different spaces.

After taking in the grandiosity of the room we had other plans to get ready for and we went out and did those prior to turning in for the night. Best sleep on that bed EVER, I should add. The bed was huge and with those blackout blinds it was pitch black all the way until noon for us.

The check-out was supposed to be at 11am but we asked the concierge if we could stay until noon and they obliged.

After going to the front desk to report we had checked out, we gave our luggage back to the valets and with our room key were able to spend the rest of our day at the Bellagio pools. I really like that we had use of the grounds even after check out because our flight was not until 11pm later that day.

Overall, HELL YES if you want to do something special or be somewhere special, you should book this penthouse. My only regret was having other things planned that night, otherwise I would have just stayed in the room from 3pm to 12pm the following day and not moved. I loved it and hope one day I’ll have another reason to come right back to this penthouse.

  • Mirna

Review of The Hyatt Regency, Cartagena

I’d say this is probably the second best hotel I have ever stayed at.

There aren’t too many opportunities for me to stay at high-end hotels since I pride myself on trying to find cheap deals, but sometimes you have to splurge right? We got our flight to Cartagena for so cheap that it made sense to spend a little more on our accommodations.

I knew I wanted to stay at this hotel as soon as I had seen the pictures of their incredible infinity pool overlooking Bocagrande. In fact, I’m pretty sure this hotel had five different pools and I was really pleased at the sexiest infinity pool having a NO CHILDREN policy. They had their own pool so the rest of us had peace and quiet to drink our liquor and take all the selfies for IG we wanted. Big win.

There isn’t too much depth and detail to go into with this review because unlike the other two ‘very nice’ hotels I have stayed at – we didn’t spend much time at the Hyatt. We had a lot of plans and activities to do so the hotel was truly only used for sleeping, swimming and the spa. (If you want to read about how the spa was, click here)

First of all, this hotel is massive. I can’t recall the exact number but I know we were on the 18th floor, the check-in desk was on the 12th, the spa on the 14th and there was floors going way up into the 30’s. This was the first time I walked into a hotel and the front desk wasn’t on the first floor, it was all the way on the 12th. Luckily the check-in process was very quick and painless as we had arrived at 11pm on a Friday night and just wanted to get to sleep as soon as possible.

The room was a good size and looked modern. Because I am lazy, I didn’t like the closets being all the way by the entrance to the room so naturally, the chairs and table by our beds ended up being where we stored our clothes. (don’t judge) The bathroom was cool because everything was motion-activated so if you went to the bathroom at 3am you didn’t even have to search for buttons, the lights would just turn on. Also, there was a lot of toiletries in the shower, the bath tub and by the sink. My travel mate said that the cream was very good and we made sure it accompanied us back to Canada as a result.

I should note, the best part of the room was the view! We were fortunate to get a room that overlooked the beach and we could also look below to see the infinity pool. This came in handy because we could time when to go to swimming due to the large groups of people wanting to occupy the area.

There are probably a million other things going on at this hotel that we maybe didn’t see or just didn’t have time to get to, but, I would definitely stay here again. For three nights we paid $280.00 Canadian per person and it was well worth it. The attentive staff, beautiful room, amazing infinity pool and location all combined into a very pleasant stay for a long weekend.

Happy travels!

  • Mirna