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Condé Nast Traveler picks
 Best of Las Vegas
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A record 37 million people visited Las Vegas in 2004, and it's easy to see why. The neon oasis—once a backwater gambling mecca—has evolved into a culinary, nightlife, and shopping capital to rival anything on the continent. By all means try your luck at the tables, but take no chances when it comes to plunking down your hard-won cash. Here are the city's best bets at every turn.
Lodging In a city of hotels, there are a few safe bets. The newest player in town, Wynn Las Vegas is almost 50 stories of curved bronze-glass. A 140-foot mountain shields the entrance, forcing folks to step inside the Conservatory foyer. There's a casino—one with too narrow walkways—but you could miss it on the way to dinner, shopping, or the hotel elevators. Down the Strip, the Bellagio is packed with treats—from the lobby's Dale Chihuly chandelier to the dancing fountains out front—and is so popular that the crowds can make it tough to enjoy. Don't miss the Gallery of Fine Art, the Conservatory, a seasonal garden of 7,500 plants tended by a team of 100 horticulturists, or the caviar-infused facial at Spa Bellagio. Closer to the airport, separate from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino but housed in one of its towers, the Four Seasons Hotel is a comforting retreat just steps from the "real" Vegas experience. Business travelers like the luxury, and non-gambling parents like the lack of a casino and the fact that their kids can use the Mandalay Bay's expansive pool area. Across the Mandalay complex, THEHotel at Mandalay Bay is all blacks and grays, a departure from the typical Vegas glitz, but still close to Mandalay Bay's top eateries and entertainment as well as its pool and faux beach. Ascend to Mix, the top-floor lounge/restaurant, before 10 p.m. (when the $20 cover kicks in), and take in the Strip view. When George Maloof opened the Palms Casino Resort one mile west of the Strip in 2001, cynics criticized its lack of theme, visual interest, and Vegas-y vastness. Maloof is now considered a marketing genius for parlaying a season as the set of MTV's "The Real World" into being the place for Gen-X celebs. Music museums cum restaurants all around the globe earned Hard Rock its rockin' rep. At the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, two blocks east of the Strip, you can gawk at the rockers themselves. The Palms has stolen some of the hipsters, but the Hard Rock is winning them back with the opening of the Body English Nightclub and the Beacher's Madhouse (a comedy club for your inner frat boy). If you're on the far side of 30, you might feel geriatric. Dining It's been more than a dozen years since the Strip's first celebrity-chef eatery, Spago, at Caesars Palace, opened to nay-saying and giggles. Who's laughing now? Some of the biggest names in the food world—Charlie Palmer, Bobby Flay, and Tom Colicchio, to name but a few—are chortling all the way to the bank as they take a crack, or two or three, at setting up shop in one of the country's few growing restaurant markets. Aureole's Andrew Bradbury has turned another lovely Charlie Palmer dining experience into something befitting the Strip. The food is superb at this Mandalay Bay restaurant—staples include porcini-crusted Chilean sea bass and Swiss chard ricotta ravioli—but it is Bradbury's eWinebook, a 4,000-wine list on an easy-to-use tablet PC (which diners can search by price, region, and menu option) that has oenophiles and techies talking (702-632-7401; prix fixe, $69; tasting menu, $95). Upstairs, at Mix, the Alain Ducasse eatery atop THEHotel at Mandalay Bay, diners are presented with a quandary: Where to sit? On the deck, peering over the Strip, or inside, beneath a chandelier with 15,000 Murano glass spheres? Fortunately, the food is no afterthought: The menu is a "mix" of seafood and meat with a fusion touch: Thai beef salad with mango and green papaya; pork en cocotte with grits, barbecued pork, and a corn muffin. Don't miss the potato gnocchi with mushrooms and Parmesan shavings (702-632-7777; entrées, $13–$55). Vegas eateries often wow with fancy touches, but Craftsteak, across the way at the MGM Grand, charms with simplicity. James Beard winner Tom Colicchio strays little from his Manhattan Craft restaurant dynasty formula, decorating with the same steel wine racks, wood floors, and bare bulbs. The food—like the grilled hanger steak or the roast lobster tail—is basic and straight-up sumptuous (702-891-7318; entrées, $29–$110). Even if the menu had no masterworks, dining amid 11 Picassos would be art enough. But thanks to James Beard winner Julian Serrano's roasted scallops and his lobster, scallop, and shrimp boudin, the Picasso restaurant up the Strip at the Bellagio is not just a museum outing. Bored with Pablo's paintings? There's always the view of the dancing fountains outside (702-693-7223; prix fixes, $90–$100). Next door at Caesars, Food Network star Bobby Flay proves he has substance to back up his TV style at Mesa Grill, where he adds Southwestern cuisine to the Strip's French and Italian lineup. The menu is typically adventurous: smoked chicken quesadilla topped with avocado and garlic crème fraîche (702-731-7731; entrées, $23–$44). Attractions & Activities Need a break from the casino action? Here are a few quick trips off the Strip, from museums to chances to commune with Mother Nature. At the Atomic Testing Museum, a mile east of the Strip, you get a simulation of an aboveground nuclear test, complete with trembling benches and blasts of air. One of the nation's first museums to focus on Cold War history, it has a collection that recalls the 928 nuclear tests which took place from 1951 to 1992 in the Nevada desert and examines their role in world events (702-794-5151). More whimsical but no less impressive, the Liberace Museum is a tribute to the famed pianist who practically invented over-the-top Vegas camp was recently renovated and given a respectable and seriously curated presentation. At this repository two miles east of the Strip, guests wander from room to room learning about the Liberace legend and the role that grand pianos, candelabras, and 100-pound feather costumes played in creating it (702-798-5595). The Neon Museum isn't a pretty sight. Its two junkyards, known collectively as The Boneyard and located about seven miles north of the Strip, are crammed with more than a hundred pieces of nonoperational—but still fabulous—signage. Visitors must see the assemblage on reservations-only group tours. Eleven of the classic signs are restored and functioning on the public plaza of the Fremont Street Experience downtown (702-229-5366). In contrast to the Strip's glitz and glamour, Hoover Dam, Nevada's other wildly popular attraction (about 30 miles to the southeast), is a brainy tribute to architectural and scientific accomplishment. Built in the 1930s on the Colorado River along the Nevada–Arizona border, Hoover Dam is 726 feet high, 1,244 feet long, and 660 feet thick at the base. The Discovery Tour, which replaced the more impressive "hard hat tour" that was halted because of post–September 11 security concerns, is a nonetheless fascinating look at how electricity is generated and how engineers used 3.2 million cubic yards of concrete to hold back the mighty Colorado (866-291-8687). Happily, there's more for kids to do in Las Vegas than ride roller coasters and kill time in family-friendly casino arcades. The excellent Lied Discovery Children's Museum, about ten miles north of the Strip, has lots of hands-on offerings, such as the faux grocery store where future shoppers pick out items and stay within a budget (702-382-5437). Kids (and chocoholics) will love to visit Ethel M Chocolate Factory and Botanical Cactus Garden, about ten miles east of the Strip, to see how the chocolatier's treats are made and packaged. Monitors explain the step-by-step process, and when guests exit the tour, they enter a cactus garden full of ocotillo, prickly pear, and other desert flora. Every visitor gets his or her pick of a free chocolate (702-433-2500). Nature lovers have a couple of good options, too. Forty-five minutes northwest of the desert valley is Mount Charleston, a 12,000-foot mountain that's capped with snow six months of the year (it's typically 30 degrees cooler here than in the swelter of the Strip). A 316,000-acre alpine wonderland in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest's Spring Mountain National Recreation Area, Mount Charleston has long been a well-kept secret among hunters. You'll find quaint cabins, ski areas, and horseback riding trails, and several tour operators offer hikes and drives (702-515-5408). A 30-minute drive west of the Strip but worlds away is Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, in the 500-million-year-old red hills of the Las Vegas Valley. Locals adore Red Rock Canyon, the area's most sensational bit of nature, and they bike, hike, and drive through it year-round. No wonder: This conservation area's 13-mile scenic route winds through part of a mountainous region that spans 308 square miles of the Mojave Desert and is loaded with easy-to-spot Native American carvings, friendly wild burros, and places to rock climb (702-515-5367). Truth in Travel is the guiding principle for all content published in Condé Nast Traveler. Other travel publications often accept free travel and accommodations. Condé Nast Traveler does not. It is independent of the travel industry. The magazine always pays its way, and, as far as possible, its correspondents travel anonymously. By doing so, they experience the world—both the good and the bad—as other travelers do, and their reports and recommendations are fair, impartial, and authoritative.
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