VegasChatter

Pool number 2

The best thing about it? The size. There are three pools, and it’s laid out over three levels so you can cram a huge level of people in here without it feeling full to bursting. There’s the main pool, where we were, a tiny plunge pool in its own little garden behind that, and one between those two in size down on the bottom layer, with some cabanas round it.

Pool number 3: the plunge pool

Off that final pool is a terrace where you can get massages or look over at the views – proper, spectacular views of the Strip from Spring Mountain upwards, and the mountains – you’re not tucked away in your own little world here as you are at other pools.

The service was a little slow – food took a while – but the ladies were so charming that we didn’t mind. Although our bill got mixed up with someone else’s, so don’t get too drunk that you end up paying for another table’s Jagerbombs.

Obviously you want to know about the servers’ bikinis. At first we thought they were all in white and no sarongs, but then we spied a blue top, and a sarong. So either they’re allowed to freestyle or a sarong denotes a lady of rank. We didn’t quite dare ask.

Cocktails aren’t the best we’ve ever tasted, but they’re strong, and not too sweet, either. Miles ahead of the sickly sweet concoction we had at Encore Beach Club, but not as good as the frozens at Liquid, which taste like the fruit, only with a nice kick of booze in. We tried the Spiked Lemonade which was nice and tart and the Frozen Jagerbomb, which was, as expected, a Jagermeister slush puppy. Both were $17 - pricey.

The food is by Wolfgang Puck and from what we saw it looked good. We tried the steak skewers which were way beyond pool food standards – but they were expensive, at $18.

The douchebag quotient was thankfully low. There was a party of eejits on the door making a fuss about getting in, but it was nice to see the staff making them wait (nicer if they’d kicked them out, but since they were waving credit cards around, we won’t complain too much). In an afternoon, we spied a single fedora, no Ed Hardy, and only one couple wrapped around eachother in the pool as we were leaving. In fact, we quite liked the fact that it wasn’t body fascisty – we saw one very big guy, one so pasty (English, surely) that you could use him as a flashlight in a powercut, and one man so oblivious to putting on a bella figura that he was wearing a tshirt on his head.

This low dose of douchery may have something to do with the fact that they’re all at Tao Beach, or something to do with the music. It was interesting, definitely – dance versions of My Baby Shot Me Down, Bohemian Rhapsody, White Stripes – so it made a nice change from the chart stuff at other places, but it didn’t get anyone dancing and didn’t quite work.

All in all, if we wanted a quiet day of lounging or of getting in the pool (the first pool we’ve seen this summer where we could make out water past the bodies), we’d definitely be back. If we were up for some hard partying, though, we’d probably go somewhere else – because there were no discernable crazy drunks here. And if we wanted to get busy in the pool, well, it’d be a tossup between the devil we know and the devil we don’t (so well).

But if you like your water a) clear and b) visible, but with a bit of class, this is a very good bet indeed.

Azure is open Friday to Sunday, 11am-6pm. Door fee: $20. Food and bev minimums for your sit downs start at $50 for loungers, $500 for daybeds and $1000 for cabanas.