Associated Press – It’s not often you can use the word “dry” to describe a Las Vegas landmark, but tourists hoping to cruise along the Venetian hotel-casino’s indoor canals are finding them tapped out.
The waterways were emptied for repainting earlier this month for the first time since the casino opened in 1999. When they reopen in mid-October, the water will once again appear to sparkle below the hotel’s trompe-l’oeil sky.
On Thursday, piped-in Italian music echoed off cement mixers and construction tools strewn around the bottom of the canals that meander through the hotel’s shopping mall.
Tourists leaned over ornate stone and iron railings, frowning at the gray concrete. Normally, the canals course with 280,000 gallons of water. It would take a garden hose 65 days to fill them.
British honeymooners Will and Ann Marie Husbands had booked the hotel in part because of its waterways. They were debating whether they could brave the 90-degree-plus heat to take their planned gondola ride in the canal in front of the hotel, which was still flowing but provides a much shorter ride, and is more obviously in Las Vegas, not Italy.
