Sights in Nevada
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Shark Reef
M-Bay’s unusual walk-through aquarium is home to 2000 submarine beasties, including jellyfish, moray eels, stingrays and, yes, some sharks. Other rare and endangered toothy reptiles on display include some of the world’s last remaining golden crocodiles. A staff of biologists, scuba-diver caretakers and naturalists are available to chat as you wander around. Better yet, go scuba diving yourself (from $650).
reviewed
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B
Lied Discovery Children’s Museum
At a public library branch, this award-winning museum is designed for much younger kids than the natural history museum across the street. Most of the rotating exhibits, however, are either too complex for children to operate successfully without lots of guidance or they are too simple and unfortunately, boring. Check the schedule in advance for multisensory creative play workshops for families.
reviewed
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C
Mirage
Despite having been open for more than 20 years, there’s still nothing quite like casino mogul Steve Wynn’s most exotic creation, Mirage. Its paradisiacal tropical setting, replete with an atrium of jungle foliage and waterfalls, captures the imagination. Out front in a lagoon, the fiery trademark faux volcano erupts nightly, stopping slack-jawed onlookers in their tracks.
reviewed
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Mirage Rainforest Atrium
This high-roller's casino is replete with a rainforest atrium under a 100ft (30m) conservatory dome filled with jungle foliage, meandering streams and soothing cascades. Woven into this waterscape are scores of bromeliads. Exotic scents waft through the hotel lobby, with its 20,000-gallon saltwater aquarium harboring five dozen species of tropical critters from pufferfish to pygmy sharks.
reviewed
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Museum Of The American Cocktail
Delve into the liquid origins of American mixology, from the pre-Prohibition era to the modern day. Witty historical exhibits fill an elegant side lounge at Commander's Palace restaurant, which offers 25¢ martini weekday lunches to put your newly acquired knowledge to immediate use. Check online for cocktail seminar schedules and to see if the museum has found a new permanent home.
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F
Pinball Hall of Fame
Next to a discount cinema east of the Strip, this interactive museum is more fun than any slot machines. Picture 200-plus vintage pinball, video-arcade and carnival-sideshow games dating from the 1950s to the '90s.
reviewed
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G
Fremont Street Experience
Streaking down the center of Vegas' historic Glitter Gulch gambling district, this five-block pedestrian mall is topped by an arched steel canopy. Hourly from dusk until midnight, the 1400ft-long canopy turns on a six-minute light-and-sound show enhanced by 550,000 watts of wraparound sound and 12.5 million synchronized LEDs. The shows are ridiculously cheesy, but mesmerizing enough to stop passersby in their tracks, especially drunks.
reviewed
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Palazzo
The Venetian's pretty but less interesting kid sister, the Palazzo may be younger but she's hardly the scintillating life of the party. The decor exploits a variation on the Italian theme to a somewhat predictable effect, and despite the caliber of the Shops at Palazzo and the star-studded dining – including exhilarating ventures by culinary heavyweights Charlie Trotter, Emeril Legasse and Wolfgang Puck – the luxurious casino area somehow exudes a lackluster brand of excitement.
reviewed
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Southern Nevada Zoological-Botanical Park
Near Texas Station casino hotel, this small zoo takes care of Canadian river otters, African fossas, ostriches, swamp wallabies, Barbary apes and every type of venomous snake found in southern Nevada. Kids can feed some critters (not the snakes, of course), while adults look over the rare bamboo, cycad and gem displays. Go online for discount admission coupons.
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Neon Museum
Experience the outdoor displays through a fascinating walking tour ($15) of the newly unveiled Neon Boneyard Park, where irreplaceable vintage neon signs – the original art form of Las Vegas – spend their retirement. At press time, the museum was expanding their digs and hoped to add a self-guided component in 2012; until then, be sure to reserve your tour at least one to two weeks in advance.
Stroll around downtown come evening (when the neon comes out to play) to discover the free, self-guided component of the 'museum.' You'll find delightful al-fresco galleries of restored vintage neon signs, including sparkling genie lamps, glowing martini glasses and 1940s motel…
reviewed
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Springs Preserve
On the site of the natural springs (which ran dry in 1962) that fed las vegas ('the meadows'), where southern Paiutes and Spanish Trail traders camped, and later Mormon missionaries and Western pioneers settled the valley, this educational complex is an incredible trip through historical, cultural and biological time. The touchstone is the Desert Living Center, demonstrating sustainable architectural design and everyday eco-conscious living.
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Wildlife Habitat
Slip away from the madness inside the Flamingo’s wildlife habitat, out back behind the casino. Over a dozen acres of pools, gardens, waterfalls and waterways are filled with swans, exotic birds and ornamental koi (carp). Here Chilean flamingos and African penguins wander around, and palm trees and jungle plants flourish in the middle of the desert.
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Fitzgerald’s
South across the train trench, rub a Blarney Stone for good luck before heading inside Fitzgerald’s, with its dopey ‘lucky leprechaun’ theme and the cheapest buffet in town. It’s near the landmark Reno Arch, built in the 1920s, which proclaims Reno the ‘Biggest Little City in the World.’
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M
Fountains of Bellagio
With a backdrop of Tuscan architecture, the Bellagio’s faux Lake Como and dancing fountains are the antithesis of the desert – although they do recycle and use reclaimed water. The fountain show’s recorded soundtrack varies, so cross your fingers that it will be Italian opera or Ol’ Blue Eyes crooning ‘Luck Be a Lady, ’ instead of country-western twang.
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Black Rock Desert
Outside Gerlach, world land-speed records have been set on the dry, mud-cracked playas of the Black Rock Desert. Although most people only visit during the Burning Man festival, this vast wilderness is primed for outdoor adventures year-round. Drop by Gerlach’s small museum for information and advice before heading out.
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Ethel M Chocolate Factory & Botanical Cactus Garden
This chocolatier’s self-guided ‘factory tour’ won’t take you more than five minutes. Grab a free sample then visit the pleasant, 2.5-acre desert garden outside with more than 350 species of succulents, such as teddy bear cholla, organ pipe, beavertail cacti, and crazy octotillo. It’s not worth a special trip, though.
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Atomic Testing Museum
Recalling an era when the word 'atomic' conjured modernity and mystery, the Smithsonian-run Atomic Testing Museum remains an intriguing testament to the period when the fantastical – and destructive – power of nuclear energy was tested just outside of Las Vegas. After visiting the museum, it's almost possible to imagine that during the atomic heyday of the 1950s, gamblers and tourists picnicked on downtown casino rooftops while mushroom clouds rose on the horizon. Don't skip the deafening Ground Zero Theater, which mimics a concrete test bunker.
reviewed
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Liberace Museum
For connoisseurs of kitschy celebrity shrines, this memorial to ‘Mr Showmanship’ houses the most flamboyant art cars, outrageously cheesy costumes and ornate pianos you’ll ever see. There’s a hand-painted Pleyel, on which Chopin played; a Rolls-Royce covered in mirrored tiles; and a wardrobe exhibit full of feathered capes and million-dollar furs.
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Fleischmann Planetarium
The Fleischmann Planetarium on the University of Nevada campus does the usual planetarium-y things: simulations of the night sky and assorted astronomical phenomena are projected onto a dome-like screen, plus there's gee-whizz movies shown on a wraparound screen. The building itself is most unusual, looking not unlike a giant potato chip.
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Sirens of Ti
The laughably spicy Sirens of TI show is a hilarious mock sea battle of the sexes that pits sultry femme-fatale pirates dressed like lingerie models against manly renegade freebooters. With a booming soundtrack and pyrotechnics, the show’s ships – a Spanish privateer vessel and a British frigate – face off in the cove outside the casino.
reviewed
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Circus Circus Midway
Free circus acts – trapeze artists, high-wire workers, jugglers and unicyclists – steal center stage directly above this Austin Powers–era casino’s main floor. Over in the peanut gallery, grab a free seat at the revolving Horse-A-Round Bar, made famous by Hunter S Thompson’s gonzo-journalism epic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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Unlv Marjorie Barrick Museum
Learn about Las Vegas’ original inhabitants – the southern Paiutes –and other Native American tribes from around the Southwest, along with pre-Columbian American artifacts. Outside is a small xeriscaped garden of Mojave Desert plants. During spring and fall, the university sponsors a free science lecture series that’s open to the public.
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Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat
All of the feats of conservation bragged about on the free audio tour can’t compensate for enclosures built much too small for animals such as snow leopards, black panthers and white lions and tigers, who roam the world’s wildest places. The claustrophobic Atlantic bottlenose dolphin pools may also make animal lovers sick at heart.
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Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens
Beyond the hotel lobby, adorned with Dale Chihuly’s sculpture of 2000 vibrant hand-blown glass flowers, the Bellagio’s conservatory houses ostentatious floral arrangements that are bizarrely installed by crane through a soaring 50ft-high ceiling. The effect is ridiculously unnatural, but that doesn’t stop crowds from gathering.
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Madame Tussauds Las Vegas
By the Venetian’s moving Rialto Bridge walkway is this unique interactive wax museum, where you can strike a pose with Michael Jackson, be judged by Simon Cowell like you’re on American Idol or put on Playboy bunny ears and sit on Hugh Hefner’s lap (be sure to touch him, because Hef’s made of silicone – how apropos!).
reviewed