You have to see it with your own eyes.
Las Vegas, with its bright neon lights, grand casinos and no-holds-barred attitude, may not be everybody’s cup of tea. But no one can deny that it’s a mind-bending experience. “Sin City” gets about 43 million visitors a year, and more of them come to dine, shop and see glitzy shows than to gamble. They leave in total about 35 billion dollars behind.
The Vegas time bubble
Where else can you enter a time bubble, where shows, events and restaurants are running full tilt 24 hours? When you walk down The Strip, you and the crowds of wide-eyed people from all over the world pass through casinos that have invested millions of dollars in creating surroundings that are meant to impress. And they do. Biggest, tallest, strangest: whatever, you name it, Vegas has it.
Spreading into Nevada
Las Vegas has been the fastest growing city in the US, growing by a whopping 80 per cent in the last decade of the 20th century. Today the metropolitan area has more than 2 million residents. New hotels are sprouting up everywhere. No wonder it’s tough to get tickets to the most popular shows. If you can get tickets, make sure to catch a Cirque de Soleil show like ‘O’, ‘Love’ or ‘Ka’. This French Canadian circus company conquered the world a few decades ago, but they’re still going strong. Other shows that have gotten great reviews are ‘Magic reinvented nightly’ and ‘La Reve at Wynn.’
“You name it, Vegas has it.”
Highbrow Las Vegas
Las Vegas is also reinventing itself as a centre of highbrow culture. The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art brought world-class art to the city of kitsch. Then the Venetian Casino followed suit, opening the classy Guggenheim Hermitage Museum. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts is another foray into haute culture. New York City, eat your heart out?
