One thing you cannot avoid in these Macau hotels is the shopping arcade, each with the same ubiquitous luxury brands – some more exclusive than the others – all expensive but boring – and they were mostly empty when we were visiting.  The masses had not yet descended on these hotels and shopping centers as it was before New Year day.

The public areas of the Venetian are built around indoor canals with Venetian-style facades and a painted ceiling of the outdoor sky. There was a long line of people waiting to take a gondola ride with a singing gondolier. Yes, I saw a woman holding a little flag taking a group of tourists around the place.

This is a shopping mall, faking the ambience of Venezia, but selling genuine branded goods to tourists mostly from China, a country that knows quite a bit about fakes.  Vrai et/ou faux ?Access to the Venetian’s hotel rooms are also located near the canals so it completes the illusion of “being there.”   We were so glad that we did not stay there –  for one – you have to walk miles to get out of the hotel, and the worst part I imagine is the feeling that you are staying in a mall designed for shopping and not a hotel for pampering.

The Four Season’s shopping arcade is constructed to look like the arcade of yesteryears – think Burlington Arcade of London or Galleria Vittorio Emmanuel of Milano.  Its ceiling is so high and the entrance so tall that the names of the shops are scaled-up accordingly.  The labels are really in your face and bigger than life.

David Yurman, Brioni, and Canali in a mall ?  Only in Macau.

I liked these light fixtures suspended from the ceiling with a skylight.  They are massive yet give such soft relaxing light.

Möet & Chandon’s own bubbles bar at the Shoppes at Four Seasons.