Las Vegas Travel
The world's favourite desert city has something for everyone. Stray a few metres off bustling Las Vegas Boulevard and you'll lose yourself in a man-made jungle, watching at close quarters as lions play right in front of you. Or maybe you'd prefer tigers? Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden, also right in the middle of town, features a lush, simulated mountain terrain for their striking Royal White Tigers.
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Glitzy, over-the-top Las Vegas has turned 100, and there's never been a better time to visit. A quick orientation: most of the megaresorts (which in this town are tourist attractions in their own right!) are located on Las Vegas Boulevard, otherwise known as "the Strip". Unlike everywhere else in the world where you base yourself in a hotel to go out and see a city's sights, in Las Vegas the hotels ARE the sights! They vie with each other to stage lavish shows with big-name performers, they take on an exotic theme and translate it into the "wow" factor, and they go for acres and acres. Choose from French, Egyptian, African, Italian, Caribbean, Medieval England, the South Pacific - you name it, Las Vegas has it.
To say the place is over the top is really an understatement. After dark is the best time to stroll down the Strip to marvel at its blaze of lights. It's also the most comfortable time of day to be outdoors in this desert city.
Make sure you stop at The Mirage
Don't miss Treasure Island next door for its epic pirate battle, which takes place every 90 minutes starting from 4pm. It's a brief showdown, but it's a helluva fight. Both these events are free. The best of the Strip is on Las Vegas Boulevard between Sahara and Tropicana Avenues.
Just a few blocks back from "the Strip" is Fremont Street, where the city first started. And it's here you will encounter the Fremont Street Experience: four city blocks covered by a canopy of over two million lights, enhanced by 540,000 watts of sound and special effects, deliver spectacular light and sound shows every night at dusk. From violinists to hard rock to roaming street performers.
But back to where the main action is. From Parisian street scenes surrounding the casino, to shopping at boutiques on cobble stoned streets, the 2,916-room resort Paris Las Vegas draws visitors into a complete Parisian experience. Take a lift to the top of the resort's Eiffel Tower replica, soaring 50 storeys into the sky. Its observation deck offers spectacular views across the Las Vegas Valley. Just across the way is mega-Iuxury resort Bellagio Just beyond Bellagio's gracious lobby lies its Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, a kaleidoscope for your senses with its sublime fragrances, textures and colours. Exotic plants and flowers weave a sumptuous tapestry, and it's the ideal place to take a break from the glitz and glamour of the Strip. Also at Bellagio The show has been seen by more than two million people and has earned the acclaim of reviewers from around the world. Further down the Strip at Caesar's Palace, Celine Dion is performing her latest show, A New Day. A blend of concert, dance, theatre and multimedia, it takes the audience into a virtual world where each song evokes a new visual experience. True to Las Vegas style, the show features the largest indoor LED screen in North America and it teases the imagination of the audience on this journey of song.
A New Day is playing at the 4,000-seat Colosseum at Caesar's Palace.
Up near Tropicana Avenue, Excalibur Hotel & Casino But be warned: in the evening, the knights shed their armour and reveal themselves as in fact Australians. Billed as The Thunder from Downunder, they offer the "ultimate girls night out" experience. As you enter the foyer of The Mirage Managed by Mirage's own in-house marine biologists, the aquarium houses over 1,000 coral reef species from Australia, Hawaii, Tonga, Fiji, the Red Sea, the Marshall Islands, the Sea of Cortez and the Caribbean.
And just inside the Mirage's moving walkway entrance is the open-air home of Siegfried & Roy's Royal White Tigers, available for public viewing throughout the day and evening. Unlike conventional tigers, which have black and gold markings, the white tiger is white with black stripes, pink paws and ice blue eyes. The purest of these animals are snow white and have no stripes. In fact, there are only a few dozen white tigers in the world, making them even rarer than China's panda.
Next to the white tigers is the 2.5 million gallon Dolphin Habitat, home to a family of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. It is designed to educate the public about marine mammals and their environment - including their role in our ecosystem. Four connected pools and an artificial coral reef system replicate the dolphins' natural environment, and it seems to be working: most of them were born here.
Make a point of heading down to the northern end of the Strip to visit the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino. Once you're there, carefully take your heart in your hands as you climb into one of the lifts in the Stratosphere Tower, the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States. Visitors are whisked from ground level to the observation decks in less than 30 seconds in double-decker lifts travelling at speeds of 600 metres per minute or three floors a second. But it's worth it: from the observation decks, you look out on panoramic views of the Las Vegas Strip and out across the surrounding valley.
But wait, there's more. Thrill seekers can experience the ultimate in excitement over 100 stories above the ground on Stratosphere's thrill rides: the Big Shot, X Scream, and the High Roller rollercoaster. The Big Shot thrill ride catapults 16 riders from the 300-metre level up the Tower's mast to a height of some 360 metres. Riders experience 4Gs as they reach the very top and then feel negative Gs on the way down. At over 280 metres above ground level, X Scream is the world's third highest thrill ride. Riders are propelled head-first nine metres over the edge of the Stratosphere Tower in an open vehicle, which then dangles them weightlessly above the Strip. And then there's the High Roller, the world's highest rollercoaster. At over 300 metres above the ground, it rockets around the tower three times at speeds of up to 55 km/h. If you survive all of this, you can shout yourself a stiff drink at the bar on the observation deck. Stratosphere Tower is open seven days a week from 9am to 1 am. Getting around this desert city is easy. Taxis are plentiful, but an even better option for you may be the monorail. Running roughly north to south along a seven kilometre route, it stops at seven stations: MGM Grand; Bally's/Paris; Flamingo/Caesars Palace; Harrah's/Imperial Palace; Las Vegas Convention Center; Las Vegas Hilton; and the Sahara.
This US$650 million light rail system travels at a top speed of 80km/h and operates from 8am to 2am daily. Single rides are US$3 each, and a one-day pass is US$10. Daily, multi-day and multi-ride passes are also available for purchase at participating hotels and at all monorail stations.
There are stage-worn jumpsuits, including Elvis's famous Peacock Suit, and more than $500,000 worth of Elvis-worn jewellery, along with his Hollywood movie clothing, personal documents, handwritten letters and his personal speedboat. Continuing the theme of legendary entertainers is the Liberace Museum. It houses Liberace's rare piano collection, his antiques, his outrageous jewellery, his customised cars (including a 1934 Mercedes Excalibur covered in Austrian rhinestones) plus over-the-top costumes from his million-dollar wardrobe. Of particular interest are a Louis XV desk owned by Czar Nicholas 11 of Russia, a piano that belonged to Chopin and a concert grand piano owned by George Gershwin. You'll walk in the door thinking this is high camp, but you'll leave as an admiring fan. The Liberace Museum is at 1775 East Tropicana and is open Monday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm and on Sundays from 1 pm to 5pm.
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Showcasing over 100 celebrities who seem alarmingly real, Madame Tussaud's Las Vegas features the world's hottest stars, alongside controversial politicians, recordbreaking athletes and legends. Sink a putt with Tiger Woods, dance cheek to cheek with Britney Spears or simply admire J.Lo's most famous asset. And then there's golf. Choose from an astonishing 40 public and private golf courses- and that's just within the city limits. A staggering 27,124,195 passengers arrive and depart from the city's McCarran International Airport each year, indicating Las Vegas is indeed one of the most popular places on earth. Why? The city has become one of the world's favourite destinations by continually repackaging itself, growing and changing to attract record-breaking numbers of visitors each year. When gaming became legal in other parts of America, some people thought that Las Vegas was finished, but the added competition only enhanced the city's reputation for being the best. Las Vegas is not only good at promoting gaming - it excels at customer service. You don't have to be a high roller to feel pampered in this city. Thanks to the low cost of accommodation, dining and entertainment, a vacation in Las Vegas can be very affordable. And you don't have to even set foot inside a casino.
Take a tour beyond the city
There are some memorable one-day tours out of Las Vegas: Experience the Grand Canyon by plane, boat and helicopter! Start with a heart-stopping aerial sightseeing tour of Lake Mead, Hoover Dam and the west rim of the Canyon before landing at Grand Canyon West. Descend by helicopter 1,300 metres from the top of the Canyon down to the valley floor, A waiting boat takes you down the Colorado River to explore the grandeur of the Canyon, Return to the top of the West Rim by helicopter. Visit with Native Hualapai Indians at Guano Point, where a light barbecue lunch is served before the return flight to Las Vegas.
See Hoover Dam, testimony to a country's ability to construct huge projects in the midst of adverse conditions. Built during the Depression, the massive structure was constructed by thousands of men who, with their families, came to Black Canyon to tame the Colorado River. It took less than five years, in a harsh and barren environment, to build the largest dam of its time. Now, more than 60 years later, Hoover Dam still stands as a world-renowned structure. Hoover Dam is about 50 kilometres south east of Las Vegas.
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