Vegas rolls with novelty and innovation, and the house always wins. Dozens of new attractions and events will open this week and dozens more the next. To entice new people to visit and others to return, Las Vegas continues to grow and change, launching bigger casinos, more exotic restaurants and sexier shows. There are worlds here to explore, and, when it comes time to leave, I’ve barely scratched the surface. At dusk, I drink delicious cocktails covered in glittery pop rocks, at a bar made to look like a fantasy facsimile of 19th-century Europe I watch The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil, and am brought to tears by its intensity then, almost as a rite of passage, I forfeit the contents of my purse to a slot machine. As a blonde American gondolier sings to me, beautifully, in Italian, as she paddles me around The Venetian Las Vegas hotel, it dawns on me: this place isn’t meant to be authentic it’s a world of make-believe.īut that doesn’t mean there aren’t real thrills to be had. The Vegas that most visitors flock to is the Strip, a cartoonish theme park of a boulevard serving up a sensory overload. Many Americans are now moving to Vegas it’s not just the sunshine, good salaries and affordable housing that lure them, but the thriving culinary scene and community feel. Today, Frida Kahlo smiles down on me on a Main Street full of small businesses, including craft breweries and vintage clothes shops. Consequentially, here and in Downtown, local artists were hired to paint murals. In March 2020, when casinos on the Strip were closed for an record six weeks in response to the pandemic, the focus shifted to other neighbourhoods. My first stop is the residential Arts District. Many travellers might feel predisposed to dislike Sin City for its brashness, its lurid aesthetic, its populist appeal - but I find its unique brew of hedonism and heart intoxicating. Each year, up to 40 million people visit the city of just 635,000 residents that’s home to the world’s biggest tourist trap: the Strip. Las Vegas is a monument to human ingenuity and vice capitalist performance art let loose in the outer reaches of the Mojave Desert a neon-lit oasis existing solely to entertain us. GameSense is a registered trademark of British Columbia Lottery Corporation, used under license by MGM Resorts International.This article was adapted from National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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