Excerpt from the Cartoville Las Vegas guide
"Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas"
Erected in 1959, the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, then located outside the city limits, was meant to encourage travel-weary Californian visitors on their last few miles. The sign has since been absorbed into the city, but its location upstream from the first casinos on the Strip still gives credence to the message: "fabulous" Las Vegas, indeed, only begins here. To be seen at the beginning of the twilight, when the sign lights up and the natural light still allows to distinguish, in the background, the resorts of the Strip.
The Strip
Boulevard of casinos, hotel supercomplexes, prestigious restaurants and shopping centres of all kinds, the famous "Strip" is never short of animation. In 2009, part of the boulevard was designated a National Scenic Byway, making it the only officially designated historic, cultural and scenic byway to be experienced at night.
CityCenter Art Collection
From the Cartoville Las Vegas guide
"Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas
Erected in 1959, the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, then located outside the city limits, was meant to encourage travel-weary California visitors on their last few miles. The sign has since been absorbed into the city, but its location upstream from the first casinos on the Strip still gives credence to the message: "fabulous" Las Vegas, indeed, only begins here. To be seen at the beginning of the twilight, when the sign lights up and the natural light still allows to distinguish, in the background, the resorts of the Strip.
The Strip
Boulevard of casinos, hotel supercomplexes, prestigious restaurants and shopping centres of all kinds, the famous "Strip" is never short of animation. In 2009, part of the boulevard was designated a National Scenic Byway, making it the only officially designated historic, cultural and scenic byway to be experienced at night.
CityCenter Art Collection
Nearly $40 million of the budget of CityCenter, one of the Strip's newest complexes, has been dedicated to creating a contemporary art collection that is open to the public: Vegas' big bucks sometimes have other fates besides lucrativeentertainment. Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Long, Jenny Holzer, Nancy Rubins and Maya Lin are among the artists represented.
Bellagio Fountains
The Bellagio Fountains are a great display of water, music and light! Of all the shows in Las Vegas, this is one of the most impressive and romantic. You can see it from the edge of the artificial lake or from the height of the 140 m jets: some rooms in the Cosmopolitan, Bally's, Caesars and Paris offer superb views.
Stratosphere Tower
Conveniently located between Downtown and the Strip, this observation deck offers a breathtaking panorama of Las Vegas and its valley. The Strip, for once, is fully visible, while the suburbs, the residential suburbs of the city, stretch as far as the eye can see. The revolving restaurant at the top of the Strip takes an hour to complete the tour: the dishes and decor are a sight to behold!
Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health
As fascinating inside as it is outside, Frank Gehry's work is all curved, broken and unstructured lines. Its twisted and convex walls, its "soft" windows as in a Dalí painting, its questioning of appearances in the manner of the Dadas, evoke the works of M. C. Escher. A madness that suits the place, which houses a centre for the study and treatment of brain diseases.
Fremont Street Experience
Covered with diodes that illuminate passers-by at nightfall, an immense metal archway has covered the first paved street in Las Vegas since the mid-1990s, now reserved for pedestrians: Fremont Street. In the heart of Downtown, this installation was intended to bring life back to the district, which was then in decline. Artists and writers have since made it their meeting place.
Neon Museum
It is revered in Vegas as the star of the day is revered elsewhere: neon! So it's only natural to discover a museum entirely dedicated to these fluorescent tubes that cover the city's facades, especially since the old gas system has been replaced by LEDs. An unusual, nostalgic place that brings back memories of the early days of the game capital.
Hoover Dam & Bridge
It had left its mark on American civil engineering in the 1930s, and now it has a bridge to match: downstream from the Hoover Dam, a colossal dam on the Colorado River, stands the O'Callaghan Tillman Memorial Bridge, thesecond highest bridge in the United States (275 m), which opened in 2010: it allows motorists to travel back and forth between Arizona and Nevada. A pedestrian access offers magnificent views of the valley and the dam.
Grand Canyon
The perpetual hustle and bustle of Las Vegas is so close, yet it couldn't be further from it when you stand before the vast emptiness of the Grand Canyon. It's hard to imagine that the Colorado River, which meanders through the depths of the abyss, single-handedly carved out this chasm covering all of northwestern Arizona. The result: nearly 2 billion years of geological history told through strata of varying colours. Breathtaking panoramic views and hikes to the bottom of the canyon for the more adventurous.
Excerpt from the Cartoville Las Vegas guide
South Strip / Tropicana Avenue
It is from the north of Sunset Road that you should approach the part of Las Vegas Boulevard called "The Strip", to be greeted by the legendary neon sign "Welcome to Fabulous LasVegas" before going along the Luxor pyramid. To better appreciate the capacity of this gambling mecca, one need only consider that the four resorts that occupy the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas boulevards alone contain more hotel rooms than the city of San Diego. And the financial crisis does not seem to have slowed down this hotel bulimia: in 2009 and 2010, the district acquired two new resorts.
Central Strip / Harmon Corridor
The intersection of Harmon Avenue and the Strip brings together the must-sees of Las Vegas: the Bellagio's jet fountains, the Paris Eiffel Tower replica, the venerable Caesars Palace and the Venetian's Grand Canal, where gondoliers hum their serenades. The Dunes, the Sands and the first MGM Grand once stood here. But Vegas doesn't indulge in the expensive nostalgia. To the east lies the campus of the University of Nevada, renowned for its history, engineering, ecology and management information systems programs.
North Strip / Sahara Avenue
When it opened in 1941, El Rancho was the first stop on what would become the Strip: it burned to the ground in 1960. Several other landmarks, such as the Stardust and the Desert Inn, were in turn destroyed. Beyond the city limits, on Sahara Avenue, the Stratosphere district is now in such a state of disrepair that it deserves its nickname of Naked City. Despite the colossal sums invested, the North Strip still seems far from the renaissance announced.
Downtown / Fremont Street
It all started on Fremont Street, in the Glitter Gulch district: the first traffic light, the first casino... If today the imbroglio of administrative buildings, shabby casinos and souvenir shops that Downtown represents is far from equalling the Strip in splendour and grandeur, it remains no less charming and authentic. Once a month, the Arts District creates a buzz with its art fair, First Friday, and on either side of Route 95, the Cultural Corridor features galleries and museums. To the west, a performing arts centre is under construction and a sports centre is being planned, foreshadowing a much-anticipated recovery.
Greater Las Vegas
Beyond the glitter of the city's neon lights lies a region rich with the most remarkable natural and man-made treasures of the American Southwest. From the snow-capped peaks of Mount Charleston, at 3,657m, to the spectacular Hoover Dam, completed in 2010 with a bypass bridge suspended 275m above the Colorado River, there is no shortage of surprises. There are many nice restaurants and cafes along the valleys, and recently, there have been some upscale hotels, like the Red Rock Resort: a remake of Palm Springs, Las Vegas version.
Grand Canyon
Las Vegas is rarely associated with this natural wonder, but it is the closest major city to the Grand Canyon, a three-hour drive away. Theodore Roosevelt, struck by the majesty of the landscape, advised every American to go there at least once in his life. He was not the only one to be seduced by the beauty of this 4,920 km2 fault, crossed by the Colorado River for 444 km, with the South Rim and the North Rim forming two separate entities. In the 19th century, the Scottish writer John Muir enthused: "The divine, cosmic, primitive nature gives new meaning to the beauty and size of the earth.