these are photos were taken by my friend Portia in Ballys Hotel and Casino. Their pathway had a garden. I can't imagine these flowers are still growing despite of the very hot climate that ranging until 115 degree Fahrenheit..Oh well, they are automatically watered by small water pumps. Nice flowers along the pathway!!

I just took a photo on this huge animal Ride in Paradise Pier in Disneyland, California...any idea what ride is this!!have a great Monday!!

Hi Everyone!! how was your Sunday?? I have a good one!! Did you notice something new in my lay-out?? Isn't it great and fantastic!! I love it. It is very perfect to the title of this blog. This lay-out was made possible thru the hard work, time and effort of Miss Carlota. One of the great template designer in the blogsophere and author of bisdakplanet. Thanks a million dear friend for the design of my template. I really like it!!

I am so happy!! Thanks also to all my friends, readers, visitors and fellow bloggers who always visit this blog and my other sites. I really appreciate it!! To Miss Choco, I really appreciate everything especially for all the infos and teachings you had imparted to me. Keep up the great job!!

walking around Caesars Palace, one of my favorite hotel where I always go walking and shopping?? wink..I need to sign-off now..visit my other sites for more updates..thanks in advance...have a nice weekend!!

My first ride in Disneyland, California. It is a cool ride ..feeling like you are one of those Star wars actress who's also flying in the space with the spaceship. I felt so bad after the ride because I have some problems on motion..In short I have motion sickness...Disneyland is really worthy of seeing and experiencing!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratosphere_Las_Vegas

The Stratosphere Las Vegas is an iconic tower, hotel, and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, owned by American Casino & Entertainment Properties which is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Real Estate Partners. The property's signature attraction is the 1,149 ft (350 m) Stratosphere Tower; it is the tallest free-standing structure in Nevada and the second-tallest free-standing structure in the United States west of the Mississippi River, after the Kennecott Smokestack in Magna, Utah. The hotel is a separate building with approximately 20 stories, 2,444 rooms and an 80,000 square foot (7,000 m²) casino.

The Stratosphere is the northernmost of the major Strip casinos and the only one actually in the City of Las Vegas, as the rest of the strip south of Sahara Avenue is in the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester. Following its completion in 1996 it was initially less popular than first envisioned due to its location on the extreme north end of the strip, far away from the most popular hotel casinos, but its low room prices and unique offerings eventually ensured its success. While many tourists consider its location to be inconvenient, others feel the location is an advantage since it is equidistant between the more popular strip casinos and the downtown area (which includes the Fremont Street Experience).

I was there!! Oh yes, I was really there..This street really amazed me!! read below for more infos about Freemont street!! have a great evening!!

Fremont Street is a street in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is the second most famous street in the Las Vegas metropolitan area after the Las Vegas Strip. Named in honor of explorer John Charles Frémont and located in the heart of the downtown casino corridor, Fremont Street is (or was) the address for many famous casinos such as Binion's Horseshoe, Eldorado Club, Fremont Hotel and Casino, Golden Gate Hotel & Casino, Golden Nugget, The Mint, and the Pioneer Club.

Prior to the construction of the Fremont Street Experience, the western end of Fremont Street was the picture of Las Vegas that was included in virtually every television show and movie that wanted to display the lights of Las Vegas. The abundance of neon signs, like cowboy Vegas Vic, earned the street the nickname of Glitter Gulch. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Street)

The first hotel I stepped-in. As my sister and her hubby picked me up at the airport, they brought me first in Venetian Hotel where I had my dinner. I ate in a Chinese restaurant there. Venetian is the replica of Venice in Italy. This is also a very nice hotel..Las Vegas is truly fabulous!! I really enjoyed my stay there!!here is photo I took in front of the Hotel.

Having a pose with one of the performers of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at New Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, USA.....That was really an amazing and breath-taking show!!

remembering my vacation in the United States especially in Las Vegas!! just sharing some photos from Luxor Hotel and casino..

The Grizzly River Ride in Disneyland, California...I was there enjoying this ride!!

a restaurant/bar inside Paris Hotel..I had been here all the time since I always go with my cousin who performed in Ballys Hotel. Ballys is just connected to Paris Hotel. Visit Vegas too...It is a place for entertainment and fun!!

I am very tired and sleepy now..just sharing this very beautiful winding stairs in Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino!!! love it here!!

see you tomorrow again folks!! take care!!


photo by Euroangel

The biggest catch is in the middle with the orange cap..I was there!! happy Sunday!!

Ringling Bros. and Barney Bailey Circus at New Orleans Hotel and casino in Las Vegas..I'm wearing a warbrode here...picture please!! I really enjoyed the breathtaking and exciting show!!!

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_convention_rdp

ST. PAUL, Minn. - After two days of silence, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will step to center stage at the Republican National Convention to prove to delegates that she can help John McCain win the White House despite distracting questions about her family life and qualifications.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, once McCain's rival for the GOP presidential nomination, was to deliver the convention's keynote address Wednesday. Both Palin, 44, and McCain, 72, also were to be officially voted onto the GOP presidential ticket by convention delegates.

Republicans hoped Palin's speech — to be delivered before a nationwide television audience Wednesday night — would sell voters on her candidacy despite questions about her qualifications and the thoroughness of McCain's selection process, to say nothing of the continuing distractions involving her family and her brief tenure as governor.

The addition of Palin to the ticket has excited Republicans here and across the country. She has earned a reputation for taking on entrenched interests in Alaska and is staunchly pro-gun and anti-abortion.

But the stunning disclosure Monday that Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant — and a continuing drip of potentially embarrassing details — had knocked the convention off message before a rousing program Tuesday night.

Speakers extolled McCain as a war hero and maverick senator while blasting Obama as an untested liberal. The 47-year-old Illinois senator is seeking to become the first black president.

"Democrats present a history-making nominee for president. History-making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee ever to run for president," former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson said as delegates roared with delight.

Palin, who has been in St. Paul since Sunday but out of sight, has a chance Wednesday to speak above the media din and present herself directly to voters as a strong-willed reformer and a solid conservative with appeal to women, including supporters of failed Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The convention returned, mostly, to normal Tuesday after its opening session was cut short as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the Gulf Coast. With damage from Gustav relatively light, the political speeches began, with President Bush calling McCain "ready to lead this nation."

Thompson, a longtime ally of McCain whose own campaign for the White House flamed out early this year, tossed chunk after chunk of rhetorical red meat to the delegates.

"Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit," Thompson said.

But the media focus on Palin's difficulties won't go away, particularly since Bristol Palin and the unborn child's father, 18-year-old Levi Johnston, were to attend Wednesday's session.

Republicans across the party defended Palin, who in addition to her daughter's pregnancy is under investigation by a state legislative panel over whether she had Alaska's public safety commissioner fired after he refused to dismiss a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.

"I haven't seen anything that comes out about her that in any way troubles me or shakes my confidence in her," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ran unsuccessfully for the party's presidential nomination this year.

The prime spot in Tuesday evening's lineup went to Connecticut Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — whose vote presently gives Democrats control of the Senate — who enthusiastically endorsed McCain and Palin.

"When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack Obama was voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground," Lieberman said, "John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion."

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Lieberman "can give all the partisan speeches he wants, but as the American people have made very clear, the last thing this country needs is another four years of the same old failed Bush-McCain policies of the past."

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writers

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Gustav slammed into the heart of Louisiana's fishing and oil industry with 110 mph winds Monday, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans that raised hopes the city would escape the kind of catastrophic flooding brought by Katrina three years ago.

Wind-driven water sloshed over the top of the Industrial Canal's floodwall, but city officials and the Army Corps of Engineers said they expected the levees, still only partially rebuilt after Katrina, would hold. Flood protections along the canal broke with disastrous effect during Katrina, submerging St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward.

"We are seeing some overtopping waves," said Col. Jeff Bedey, commander of the Corps' hurricane protection office. "We are cautiously optimistic and confident that we won't see catastrophic wall failure."

The nearly 2 million people who left coastal Louisiana on a mandatory evacuation order watched TV coverage from shelters and hotel rooms hundreds of miles away. While New Orleans wasn't submerged, there were scores of homes that suffered damage. More than 500,000 customers were without power. In Terrebonne Parish, located in the southeast part of the state, several homes had torn roofs, but winds were still too fierce for officials to fan out and assess how bad the damage was.

Keith Cologne of Chauvin, La., looked dejected after talking by telephone to a friend who didn't evacuate. "They said it's bad, real bad. There are roofs lying all over. It's all gone," said Cologne, staying at a hotel in Orange Beach, Ala.

In the Upper Ninth Ward, about half the streets closest to the canal were flooded with ankle- to knee-deep water as the road dipped and rose. Of more immediate concern to authorities were two small vessels that broke loose from their moorings in the canal and were resting against the Florida Street wharf.

By mid afternoon Monday, the rain had stopped in the French Quarter, the highest point in the city. The wind was breezy but not fierce, and some of the approximately 10,000 people who chose to defy warnings and stay behind began to emerge. But knowing that the levees surrounding the city could still be pressured by rising waters, no one was celebrating just yet.

"I don't think we're out of the woods. We still have to worry about the water," said Gerald Boulmay, 61, a St. Louis Hotel worker and lifelong New Orleans resident.

Mayor Ray Nagin said the city didn't yet know if the vulnerable West Bank would stay dry. Worries about the level of flood protection in an area where enhancements to the levees are years from completion were a key reason Nagin was so insistent residents evacuate the city.

The storm surge in the Industrial Canal on the east side of the city reached 12 feet — the same height as the lowest wall. Officials monitoring the flood protection system relaxed, then turned their concern to the West Bank, where waters could still rise and pressure incomplete levees over the next day as the storm blusters inland.

"It doesn't look like it's going to, like, break," said resident Renee Gilmore, who surveyed her neighborhood near the canal before joining friends for an impromptu neighborhood party.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav hit around 9:30 a.m. near Cocodrie (pronounced ko-ko-DREE), a low-lying community in Louisiana's Cajun country 72 miles southwest of New Orleans, as a Category 2 storm on a scale of 1 to 5. The storm weakened to a Category 1 later in the afternoon. Forecasters feared the storm would arrive as a devastating Category 4.

As of noon, the extent of the damage in Cajun country was not immediately clear. State officials said they had still not reached anyone at Port Fourchon, a vital hub for the energy industry where huge amounts of oil and gas are piped inland to refineries. The eye of Gustav passed about 20 miles from the port and there were fears the damage there could be extensive.

The storm could prove devastating to the region of fishing villages and oil-and-gas towns. For most of the past half century, the bayou communities have watched their land disappear at one of the highest rates of erosion in the world. A combination of factors — oil drilling, hurricanes, levees, dams — have destroyed the swamps and left the area with virtually no natural buffer against storms.

Damage to refineries and drilling platforms could cause gasoline prices at the pump to spike. The Gulf Coast is home to nearly half the nation's refining capacity, while offshore the Gulf accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output. But oil prices actually tumbled to $111 a barrel as the storm weakened.

The nation was nervously watching to see how New Orleans would deal with Gustav almost exactly three years after Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city and killed roughly 1,600 people. Federal, state and local officials took a never-again stance after Katrina and set to work planning and upgrading flood defenses in the below-sea-level city.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had cartons of food, water, blankets and other supplies to sustain 1 million people for three days ready to be distributed Monday — a contrast to Katrina, when thousands waited for rescue in a hot Superdome.

"With Katrina they didn't come and rescue us until the next day," said LaTriste Washington, 32, who stayed in her home during the 2005 hurricane and later was rescued by boat. She was in a shelter in Birmingham, Ala., Monday. "This time they were ready and had buses lined up for us to leave New Orleans."

President Bush, who skipped the Republican convention to monitor the storm from Texas, applauded the preparation and response efforts.

"The coordination on this storm is a lot better than on — than during Katrina," Bush said noting how the governors of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas had been working in concert. "It was clearly a spirit of sharing assets, of listening to somebody's problems and saying, `How can we best address them?'"

Meanwhile, Republicans hurried to turn the opening day of the convention into a fundraising drive for hurricane victims. Presidential candidate John McCain's wife and first lady Laura Bush were expected to address the shortened session and appeal for Gulf Coast help.

Both Republicans meeting in St. Paul and the campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama asked supporters to send a text message to a five-digit code that would make a donation to the Red Cross to help victims of the hurricane.

For all their apparent similarities, Hurricanes Gustav and Katrina were different in one critical respect: Katrina smashed the Gulf Coast with an epic storm surge that topped 27 feet, a far higher wall of water than Gustav hauled ashore.

Katrina was a bigger storm when it came ashore in August 2005 as a Category 3 storm and it made a direct hit on the Louisiana-Mississippi line. Gustav skirted along Louisiana's shoreline at "a more gentle angle," said National Weather Service storm surge specialist Will Shaffer.

Nagin's emergency preparedness director, Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, said residents might be allowed to return 24 hours after the tropical storm-force winds die down.

Other evacuated areas along the coast may be away from home for longer, said National Hurricane Center director Bill Read. The hurricane will likely slow down as it heads into Texas and possibly Arkansas, and those areas could then get 20 inches of rainfall.

Only one storm-related death, a woman killed in a car wreck driving from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, was reported in Louisiana. Before arriving in the U.S., Gustav was blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean.

In Mississippi, officials said a 15-foot storm surge flooded homes and inundated the only highways to coastal towns devastated by Katrina. Officials said at least three people near the Jordan River had to be rescued from the floodwaters. Elsewhere in the state, an abandoned building in Gulfport collapsed and a few homes in Biloxi were flooded.

The ground floor of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Biloxi's casino row was flooded during the storm surge from Gustav. Hurricane Katrina smashed the casino three years ago shortly before it was to open.

Bobby Tuber, the casino's facility-grounds manager, said the storm put about 30 inches of water in the building but the casino itself, located on an upper level, and was not damaged.

"We're fine. We'll come out all well," Tuber said as he and others used a pump and a large hose to remove the water.

Gustav was the seventh named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. The eighth grew into Hurricane Hanna Monday, followed quickly by the formation of Tropical Storm Ike a few hours later. Forecasters said it could come ashore in Georgia and South Carolina late in the week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080901/ap_on_re_us/gustav_gulf_coast