I feel like Las Vegas is somewhere you should go at least once in your life. It is a place like no other - big, bright and just crazy.
My husband and I spent four days there in January - after seeing the New Year in on a freezing cold balcony party at the Paris hotel, looking down on the packed strip beneath us.
We ate loads, we walked loads and we tried our hand at gambling. Here are my top five things from the trip:
THE HOTELS
When people have told me in the past that they spent time just wandering around the hotels on The Strip I thought it was a bit odd! But when you go to Vegas you realise that the hotels are the main attraction, and that walking around looking at them all is the same as wandering around the West End in London, or Times Square in New York. So bearing that in mind, we spent a fair amount of time going in and out of the hotels. The sheer size of them amazed me, walking through them took 10-15 minutes and the decorations were incredible.
The Paris Hotel, with a replica of the Eiffel Tower, was a highlight, as were the Christmas decorations in the Conservatory in The Bellagio - with life-size horses and toy soldiers completely covered in painted pulses. And the fountains at The Bellagio, which are done in time to music, are a must see. The New York, New York hotel was one of my favourites though, with the ‘streets’ of cafes and restaurants where we had a bagel brunch taking you right back to the streets of New York, and I loved the rollercoaster that gave great views of The Strip (even if it did make me feel a little sick.) The canals of Venice, recreated throughout The Venetian Hotel were simply out of this world too. It is crazy just how much effort, and detail, has been put into the decorations at the different hotels and I was simply awed everywhere we went.
THE CASINOS
Of course you cannot go to Vegas without visiting a casino. In fact as soon as you get off the plane there are fruit machines scattered throughout the airport! And you usually have to walk through the hotel casino wherever you are trying to get to in the hotel. The casinos have dim lighting and no windows so they look the same at any hour of the day. And there are people in them at any time of the day too. We walked through one at 6.30am in the morning and people were still betting!
I’m not a big gambler at all so I was never going to come back having won loads. My husband and I decided on a (conservative) amount that we were happy to bet (and lose) and stuck with that. We did really enjoy our time on the machines though! Our favourite was the virtual roulette as it’s quite easy to pick up how to play tactically but you can bet a lot less than on an actual roulette table. You get free drinks when you are playing so we made sure to try and catch the waitress’s eye when we sat down, and give her a tip so that she came back. But they do check out how much you are betting and return quicker to those who are betting more so we were never going to get that many drinks!
THE 'FABULOUS LAS VEGAS SIGN'
One of the things I insisted we did was get our photo at at the ‘Welcome to the Fabulous Las Vegas’ sign. It’s at the edge of the strip, about 1.5 miles away from the most popular hotels on the southern edge. Tripadvisor recommends about an hour there - that is because there is a queue (at least there was when we went). It is a bit of an odd thing, because you basically walk more than a mile to stand in a central reservation, just queuing to have your photo taken! You can miss the queue by standing to the side of the sign, but then you have people stood in the background and quite frankly if you’d made the effort to walk there you want a proper photo don’t you?
We had our photo taken by a man who was stood at the front of the queue just taking them for people and being given tips in return.
THE SHOWS
There are so many shows on in Vegas it is had to pick just one. We ended up seeing two Cirque du Soleil shows - O, which is the water one, and LOVE, which is based on all The Beatles songs. I would recommend them both as they were amazing but O was my favourite as was just incredible. The tricks that the performers did on the trapezes were just breathtaking, as was the amazing diving they did into the pool of water on the stage that was constantly changing size and shape, and I’ve never seen synchronised swimming like it! There was also so much going on on the stage that I just didn’t know where to look and I loved it.
THE GRAND CANYON
We spent one of our days visiting the Grand Canyon. I’d say it’s a must do when you are so close, and I doubt you’ll be disappointed with just how stunning it is. Again, like Vegas, it is hard to explain just how big it is, it is just so vast and beautiful.
We did our trip to the West Rim. There are others that take you to the southern rim, or let you spend more time in certain places but I picked our tour because it did a stop off at the Hoover Dam (very impressive engineering) and it got us back onto The Strip by late afternoon, which meant we still had the evening to enjoy.
I’m not sure what it is like at other parts, but the West Rim is very set up for
tourists. There is a tourist centre that you have to pay to get through, a free bus that takes you to different viewing locations and restaurants at the viewing spots where you buy a voucher in advance and get a choice of a couple of meals when you arrive. It means that you can get around very easily to the different spots you might want to go to and eat quickly and interestingly I don’t feel that it takes away from the beauty of the place at all. In fact I think they’ve done it in a really nice way as being a tourist attraction protects the part of the Canyon and stops just anyone from going anywhere, but at the same time doesn’t ruin it either.
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