For me only the Bellagio would do once we had decided to visit Las Vegas as the second stop on our honeymoon just over two years ago. The hotel featured in the Oceans' 11 film which I loved and I was particularly looking forward to seeing that famous water fountain show.

We organised our whole trip with Kuoni a few months in advance. Strangely in this modern age, we had to wait a few days for confirmation whilst they requested the room. So this was probably not the most efficient booking process and as I wanted this hotel so particularly, it was an anxious wait. If I had booked directly myself like I normally do I would have known straight away but it was easier to make all our arrangements with the agent on this occasion. During our trip, we made a last minute decision to spend four nights in Las Vegas rather than the two we booked but unfortunately with only a couple of days notice it was not possible to get into the Bellagio for the extra nights. Consequently our first two nigths in Las Vegas were in a different hotel.

Although we were moving from a hotel not that far away we arrived by taxi as we had lots of luggage. Our taxi was greeted by one of the many bellboys on duty outside helping both the arriving and departing guests, they took charge of the luggage, gave us receipts and told us to call the number on the receipt once we were in our room and wanted our luggage delivered. So far so good.

With this number of guests and a constant stream at reception, I expected it would take ages to get our luggage. In fact, once we were in our room we called down and it was delivered to us within a few minutes.

We were more than happy with our room, which was modern and elegant and also very large, over 500 square feet in fact which is well above average. It contained an extremely comfortable king size bed, desk, two armchairs, coffee table and large wardrobe. I was impressed that in a hotel this size there was a nightly turn down service. The bathroom was in a beautiful cream coloured marble and contained a very deep bath as well as a two-person shower and was well-stocked with toiletries and big fluffy towels.

Firstly of course there is the large casino floor, the Bellagio has tables for normal people, high limit tables for others, poker rooms, plenty of slot machines and a very large and comfortable sports bar area. Waitress service and free drinks are provided everywhere but it is normal to tip about $1 per drink. We never went long without a waitress asking us if we would like a drink, even though we are not gambling sorts and only frequented the 2c slot machines or the sports bar to watch football on big TV screens. Yes my honeymoon clashed with the 2006 World Cup. My personal opinion is that when you have seen one casino floor you have seen them all and the Bellagio's casino did not particularly stand out from all the others to me apart from it was better at providing drinks. Not necessarily a good thing for some I expect.

Although the Bellagio has an Italian theme, it offers restaurants of various cuisines and in the evening we decided to try the fine dining Chinese restaurant, Jasmine. We had to wait about ten minutes for a table which was a much shorter wait than at some of the other restaurants, best to book a table for dinner at this hotel. We liked the feel of this restaurant, it was nicely decorated, the tables were comfortably spaced out and the food was good too. I was not very impressed with having my main course delivered before they had cleared away our starters though I must admit. It was a memorable evening though because the restaurant overlooks the lake and after we finished our main courses we had an unobstructed night time view of the fountain show, the accompanying music is played in the restaurant which I think you really need to enjoy the show fully. The prices in the restaurants are probably not the cheapest to be found, however they are not prohibitive and are unlikely to shock anybody used to paying UK prices especially with the strong £ v $ right now. We happily took all our meals in the Bellagio.