![]() Make a date with Lady Luck and meet her downtown on Fremont Street for a taste of the original 24-Hour Town.Īs for the finer things in life, there's no shortage of AAA Four and Five Diamond hotels and restaurants. It can be overwhelming trying to decide what to do during your visit, but don't stop at the Strip. Imagine seeing the Statue of Liberty, a lava-spewing volcano, a sphinx, drive-through wedding chapels, Canadian acrobats, gaggles of wild-eyed gamblers and mountains of all-you-can-eat shrimp-on one street. It's fantastically over the top, this town. Next door, the ghastly old Imperial Palace property has been gussied up and turned into The LINQ resort.īetween the New York-New York and Park MGM resorts, the Park is an outdoor shopping/dining/entertainment plaza that includes T-Mobile Arena, a new 20,000-seat indoor concert and sports venue, as its centerpiece. The world's tallest Ferris wheel, it soars 550 feet into the Vegas sky and anchors the rear of the Strip's LINQ shopping/entertainment promenade. What else is new? For starters, the High Roller observation wheel might stand out if you haven’t been here for a vacation recently. On the flip side, the Cosmopolitan hotel, which opened in 2010 and eschews the vintage, tacky-fabulous aesthetic in favor of contemporary swank, is the place to see packs of celebutante wannabes strutting through the casino in bejeweled Manolo Blahniks. Hungry for more? Sit down to an old-school Italian dinner at throwback restaurants such as Piero's or Battista's Hole in The Wall. Stroll down the famed Strip and behold the finely aged Vegas cheese that is Caesars Palace. Though increasingly hard to find, the gloriously gaudy legacy of Vegas' golden years lives on. UNLV college students and adventurous tourists have largely replaced the shady-looking street urchins who once plagued the area. If you’re looking for where to eat, the hipster-geared shops and eateries of the metal cargo-shipping bins of the Downtown Container Park are only a few steps away. Nowadays the intersection is crammed with old buildings-turned-nightspots. Less than 10 years ago the sketchy corner of Fremont and 6th streets was no man's land, frequented only by the most dedicated of budget gamblers playing at the vintage El Cortez casino. Witness the gentrification of downtown's Fremont East District. Unlike the 1990s when old casinos were being demolished left and right, remodeling and repurposing make financial sense in today's tough economy. ![]() Instead of a date with dynamite, the old girl's bones were dolled-up and reanimated as the glitzy SlotZilla. Prior to "The Riv" biting the dust a different approach was taken with the legendary Sahara hotel, shuttered in 2011. ![]() One casualty is the Riviera hotel, a favorite haunt of the Rat Pack and a filming location for movies ranging from the original "Ocean's 11" to Martin Scorsese's "Casino." After a 60-year run the hotel closed its doors for good in 2015 to make way for a future expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center. And the storied casinos of Sin City's '60s and '70s heyday have been dropping like flies lately. The King swivel-hipped his way out of the building long ago, of course. Vegas is constantly reinventing itself, discarding the old and donning the new. And when the tumblin' dice reward you with stacks of chips that are oh so nice, you'll sing “Viva Las Vegas!” It's all here in a 24/7 desert bacchanalia that on occasion makes Dionysus and his pals come off like amateurs. Chase Your Dreams in Sin City With its neon flashin' and one-armed bandits crashin', this bright light city is bound to set your soul on fire.
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