The city of games, lights and – er – good food does everything to excess, from kerching to bling, writes BERNICE HARRISONwho is recovering from eating a plate of pancakes the size of her head
YOU KNOW YOU’VE taken a detour from the real world when you hear locals refer to your hotel, The Cosmopolitan, as Las Vegas’s “boutique” hotel. The Cosmopolitan has 2,995 rooms and is 52 storeys high. It has six restaurants, as many bars, a shopping mall, pop-up wedding chapel, nightclub, and a spa with 120 treatment rooms – “boutique” in this oasis of craziness in the middle of the Nevada desert takes on a whole new meaning.
At check in, I was given a map to my room on the 35th floor – and possibly in response to the alarmed look on my face – detailed instructions: “Through the casino, past the second set of stairs.”
Later, hearing stories from Las Vegas regulars of hours spent wandering the corridors, lost in the 5,000-room MGM Grand or being totally flummoxed by Caesars Palace which is the size of a small town – I realised that my hip hotel with its super-cool, ever-changing LCD artwork in the massive lobby, short corridors (a crucial difference by all accounts), very smart bedrooms – wardrobes lined with Fornasetti wallpaper, that sort of thing – maybe in Vegas, boutique is more about taste than size.
And as I came to see when I strayed in and around the Strip’s other hotels – that’s what you do in Vegas for entertainment, food and just to see the spectacle – The Cosmopolitan didn’t have the blingtastic kitsch that other hotels lay on to lure the punters such as New York New York’s full-size rollercoaster swooping high above its recreation of a Manhattan street; The Venetian where you can go on a gondola ride around a replica of St Mark’s Square; The Luxor with its enormous glass pyramid or the Paris with its scaled down version of the Eiffel Tower which never stops looking surreal and disorientating no matter how many times you see it.
I was in Las Vegas in mid-January for two days – just after a quarter of a million techie types had been for the International Consumer Electronics show – which got acres of global media coverage for its new gizmos and before an international porn convention; which didn’t.
It was the Chinese New Year and as the city is about grabbing all opportunities to celebrate and, above all, decorate, every lobby was festooned with enormous red lanterns, giant papier-mâché dragons and groups of Chinese people – a major tourist market for Vegas – getting their photos taken before grottos filled with red envelopes and luck money. And you need money in Las Vegas; not just for gambling but because there is so much amazing stuff to spend it on.
Top of the list – and this will astonish all those who are a bit snooty about Vegas – is that it is a major foodie destination. Two years ago, before Michelin suspended reviewing in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the city had 25 Michelin-starred restaurants along the four-mile Strip, more per square mile than in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Americans aren't as wowed by Michelin ratings as Europeans and are more likely to be impressed that the city has 15 AAA Five Diamond-rated eateries. All the big name chefs are there including Joël Robuchon, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Guy Savoy and Wolfgang Puck. The shopping is fantastic and the choice of entertainment is bewildering – and it's not just Celine Dion, though she's such a fixture that the MGM Grand has a massive shop in the lobby devoted to her merchandise – there's everything from dreamy Cirque du Soleil – I saw Love, the indescribably beautiful Beatles show, to glitzy shows by an ever-revolving list of stars from Rod Stewart to Elton John.
For Irish visitors to the US, Las Vegas is in third place – New York is our favourite, followed by Orlando for families and then Sin City. Not that in my two days I saw much of the stuff that gave the city the reputation it’s been trying to shake off for the past few decades, unless you count the bored looking women on the sidewalks handing out leaflets promising “a girl in your room in 20 minutes” or the giant posters advertising strip shows and “exotic dancing”.
Do your research before you go – a good one-stop shop is visitlasvegas.com– because there's so much you could do. Next time I'll explore old Las Vegas around Freemont Street where the older casinos are being refurbished and where locals hang out; go hiking down the Red Canyon and find a breakfast place other than Serendipity 2 on the Strip where I ordered and then proceeded to eat "the pancakes the size of your head". Whatever you do in Vegas, you only have yourself to blame.
* Bernice Harrison travelled with Las Vegas Convention and Visitors' Authority, visitlasvegas.com.
LAS VEGAS: The two-day checklist
1: GO TO THE GRAND CANYON
Around two hours by road but the super, once- in-lifetime way to go is by helicopter. Fly over the Hoover Dam – a spectacular sight in itself – before swooping down into the mesmerising Grand Canyon. Some trips land in the canyon where the sheer scale of the mile-high walls around you hits home. Helicopter rides start at around €300. Maverick Helicopters, 6075 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, maverickhelicopter.com.
2. EAT WELL
You’ll be spoiled for choice and, unlikely as it sounds, you do get used to the idea that the route to the door of a top-class restaurant involves passing rows and rows of slot machines. Try Julian Serrano (Aria) for amazing tapas – brilliant for vegetarians; the Jean-Georges Steakhouse, (the Las Vegas outpost of the New York Michelin three-star), also in Aria, and for a serious treat L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon (MGM Grand) where the kitchen is open plan and seeing the chefs at work is nearly, only nearly, as much of a thrill as the food.
3. SHOP
Las Vegas is a major shopping destination with every high-end brand you can think of and three main malls, all attached to hotels along the Strip: Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, a mile of shops with brands such as Sephora and Gap; The Forum at Caesars Palace, from Abercrombie to Apple; and the seriously fancy Crystal at Aria that proves designer shopping doesn’t have to be terrifying – I was treated like visiting royalty in Prada despite dusty Grand Canyon hiking boots. That wouldn’t happen in Milan. Outlets are six miles out of town.
4. GO HOTEL HOPPING
In high summer when the desert heat kicks in you’re more likely to stay put in your hotel – and they all have so much on offer there’s little reason to leave, but at other times it’s a must.
Every hotel lobby has its wow feature.
The Conservatory and Palm Gardens at Bellagio are beautiful; a traditional must-see is the hotel’s fountain show – jets of water 30 metres high dancing to music – on the half hour(3pm-midnight weekdays, and noon-midnight at weekends).
5. VISIT ONE OF THE 30 WEDDING CHAPELS
You might even get married – but be warned, despite the giddy kitschness of it all, weddings in Las Vegas are legally binding.
Every type of wedding is catered for, the quickest is a $99 drive through-option. Take care though: some of the wedding chapels bear more than a passing resemblance to grim funeral homes so if you are getting married, choose carefully. The most fun and cutest looking is Graceland Wedding Chapel, one of the oldest where, if you want, "Elvis" performs the ceremony. Gracelandchapel.com
6. GAMBLE
Las Vegas tourism staff surveyed visitors and found that only 1 per cent came to Las Vegas to gamble, but 70 per cent ended up at the slots or Blackjack tables. It’s hard to avoid: the hotels have their casinos, open-plan in their lobbies, so someone feeding dollars into a machine or playing Texas Hold ’Em is the first thing you see when you come down for breakfast. On a slow night the pit boss will guide newbies through the rules and four- and five-star hotels tend to have pricier casinos – it was $25 for a hand of Blackjack at the Cosmopolitan.
* Delta Air Lines flies to Las Vegas via New York, prices start at €743 including taxes. Delta.com