If this city is to your taste, Las Vegas offers excitement 24 hours a day seven days a week. You can choose from dozens of gaudy casinos to play the tables or pull one-armed bandits, see different big-name entertainment every night and eat in fancy restaurants. And, your hotel room won't cost an arm and a leg. For a period of time, some of the big hotel and casino owners tried to make Las Vegas into a family resort by adding children's attractions to the large hotels. The idea was to attract baby boomers who take their children with them on vacations, but few who visit this city ever talk about how much fun it is to have the kids along. They still see Vegas for what it always has been — the best place in the world to kick back, gamble and forget everything else. It is worth noting here, too, a darker side to those attractions: This entertainment mecca is built on human weakness.

Watching a new bride cry as her nest egg disappears or a man beg for bus fare home casts a shadow. Venturers, if they hang around despite their inner voice, tend to get bored with gaming. Shows, especially with name entertainment, can amuse them, but not for long. This is not their kind of town.

Take a hot-air balloon trip.

Choose kayaking or canoeing in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area or on the Colorado River.

Check out mining tours offered by Eldorado Canyon Mine Tours, which is based in Eldorado Canyon at the Historical Techatticup Mine.

Take a murder mystery dinner cruise aboard one of Lake Mead Cruises’ paddlewheel vessels. Other, more frequent choices are the champagne brunch, midday sightseeing, early dinner, pizza party and dinner/dance cruises. You can get married on one of these vessels, too.

Go horseback riding in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

Travel over sand dunes and across desert landscape in an ATV; take a guided excursion or choose the self-guided kind.

Make a tandem skydive from two miles high, and see the Colorado River, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the Strip, too. For those who don’t want to jump from a plane, indoor skydiving is a Vegas option, as well.
Ride the Manhattan Express Roller Coaster inside the New York New York hotel. If you really like it, buy an all-day Scream Pass.

Take in a couple of good shows. Las Vegas still has a bonanza of entertainment, from big-name acts to laser-light shows, from circus shows to truncated Broadway productions. There are fewer chorus lines than in other times, but you'll always find an original version at the Tropicana Hotel (“Folies Bergere”). Catch some of the lounge acts with rising stars.

If golf or tennis is your game, you’ve found your place. Golf courses are attractive and reasonably priced. Tennis courts at the better hotels are well-maintained and usually free to guests.
Go sightseeing by helicopter, day or night. In one of the more ambitious daytime options, you fly into the Grand Canyon, land and cruise the Colorado River on a pontoon boat — or in another variation, have a Champagne lunch on the canyon floor.

At Treasure Island, watch one of the four nightly performances outside the hotel of “The Sirens of Treasure Island,” in which beautiful “sirens” do battle with “pirates” accompanied by lots of music, swordplay, acrobatics and pyrotechnics.

Be sure to look in at the Luxor, too. Shaped as a 30-story black glass Egyptian pyramid, the eye beam at the top is the world’s most powerful. In the lobby is a life-size replica of the Great Temple of Ramses II.
Take in Star Trek: The Experience, described as an interactive adventure based on “Star Trek,” the TV show. It offers two interactive adventures, the History of the Future museum, Quark’s Bar & Restaurant and a store. And it has still another Vegas venue for weddings.

Las Vegas is a good place to be a people watcher. Visitors come from all over and let it all hang out in this town. Normal inhibitions don't seem to apply when visitors assume they won't meet anyone they know.
Restaurants: Try a variety. What you get for the price at some of the inexpensive “all-you-can-eat” buffets in the big hotels will amaze you. Then, go to a few of the better-known, pricier places on the Strip. Many hotels boast at least one fine-dining spot. Ask your concierge for recommendations.
The MGM Grand — with 5,034 rooms the largest hotel in the U.S. and maybe the world — has its Lion Habitat, a space set aside for viewing live lions (the lions don’t live here; they are rotated in and out).

Go shopping, and regardless of your taste or budget, at least take a look at one of the ultimate shopping spots: the Shops in Desert Passage at the Aladdin (more than 140 specialty shops and an indoor rainstorm!), the Forum Shops at Caesars (more than 150 boutiques and shops) and the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian Resort (more than 80 shops plus gondola rides).
There are more than three dozen spas in town, at your service.
Visit the Liberace Museum or the Atomic Testing Museum.

Lest we forget to mention it, gamble. (At some hotels, take advantage of your swim-up gaming opportunity.)

For more information, consult the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority at www.visitlasvegas.com
and Nevada Commission on Tourism at www.travelnevada.com


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