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The neon artery of gambling pulses with excitement. Imaginatively themed resorts make it a street that never sleeps.

A large, sumptuous dining buffet offering more than 60 dishes, ranging from Chinese to Italian, and from Japanese to new American cuisine. Specialties include all the shrimps you can eat, wild duck breast, and roast venison. Save room for the decadent cheesecake or the heavenly chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Half the fun here is watching the chefs work as they interpret the flavors of Brazil, the East, Italy, Mexico, and the USA in a staggering 1,000-recipe repertoire.

Huge three-decker bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, great hamburgers, and chocolate chip cookie pie.

The place for breakfast: scrumptious french toast and eggs fixed to your liking.

This may be the most expensive brunch in town, but the Sterling Brunch can compete with any in the world for quality and imagination. Two dozen appetizer choices include prosciutto mousse on raspberries, caviar with warm blinis, and lobster gazpacho. Roast salmon in phyllo pastry with shrimp and spinach mousseline is the carving station star, while French toast with cinnamon ice cream provides a delicious finale. Reservations required.

The Harrah’s group of hotel-casinos has a reputation for excellent food. Although the buffet offerings at the Fresh Market Square are not as unusual as those of some competitors, the standards of preparation and service are consistently high. Folks in the know go for the salads and extremely attractive desserts.

Fresh Market Square Buffet

This casino sets itself apart from its downtown neighbors, for both clientele and ambience. The restaurants are very good, and the casino is a pleasant place to gamble while waiting to see the Fremont Street Experience, which takes place just outside its doors.

One of the most respected names in the gaming industry, Harrah’s has more than a dozen properties across the USA and offers value for money in service, food, and ambience. Harrah’s also has one of the best slot clubs as far as prizes are concerned; the club card can be used at any Harrah’s casino, so it works well for people who like to gamble wherever they vacation.

Cocktail waitresses in bright, flouncy costumes, an upbeat color theme, and friendly personnel make this casino a favorite with residents and visitors alike. The Rio also has the reputation of serving the best casino food in town. Video poker is the most popular game here, perhaps because mini-TV sets are mounted on top of some of the machines.

Like its Manhattan namesake, Studio 54 attracts celebrities. Some of them even make impromptu stage appearances. Most nights, DJ Frankie officiates over the four dance floors and bars; special theme nights cater for different tastes. Additional entertainment is provided by performers suspended from bungees above the crowds.

Studio 54

Opportunity Village, an organization that helps the mentally challenged, raises funds by creating a Magical Forest with 50 decorated Christmas trees. The centerpiece is Santa’s Castle, fashioned by the toy wizards FAO Schwarz.

The part of Fremont Street associated with Glitter Gulch is now under cover and the site of lavish free entertainment collectively labeled the Fremont Street Experience. Alongside spectacular nightly sound and light shows, special events take place throughout the year, such as the March St. Patrick’s Day Celebration, Mardi Gras in April, May talent showcase national finals, the June Las Vegas Jazz Festival, Summer in the City in July, the Rock and Roll Bandstand in August, Oktoberfest, and the Holiday Festival in December.

Jubilee features showgirls who not only look good but also dance well. The show offers an effective mix of production numbers and specialty acts, glamorous costumes, and pretty tunes. There are terrific special effects, too, such as the sinking of the Titanic.

Created especially for Treasure Island, Mystère is an enchanting circus that – like all Cirque du Soleil productions – has a mystical thread running through it. The costumes are innovative and colorful.

“O” , staged by Cirque du Soleil, is a circus quite unlike any other. The whole show revolves around the theme of water (hence the name, as in the French eau ). Seven hydraulic lifts raise and lower the water levels throughout the performance, allowing for spectacular diving and other feats.

Highlights include the international wildlife room and a live shark exhibit. The children’s hands-on exploration room is excellent, but the roars of the animated dinosaurs may elicit equally loud cries from frightened toddlers.

Over the course of almost 30 years Circus Circus has entertained hundreds of thousands of spectators with their impressive shows. Stars have included the Flying Farfans of Argentina, the miniature-bicycle rider Charles Charles of Paris, and Russian acrobat Valerie Akishin. With performances every half hour, you can pop back for different shows to catch a wide variety of acts.

Take a free tour to view the glass-enclosed, spotless, white kitchens where the diligent candy-makers concoct their sweet creations. Find out what the large stainless steel machines do, and admire the finished confections wrapped in their foil of emerald, ruby, sapphire, and other jewel colors. Every tour participant receives a free chocolate at the end of the tour. Outside the factory is a lovely cactus garden, with plants clearly identified.

Rub shoulders with the stars of the entertainment and sporting worlds, and learn how wax reproductions look so very real.

More than 1,000 fountains perform a water ballet above Lake Bellagio, in defiance of the parched, baking desert that surrounds the city. Soaring as high as 240 ft (73 m) in the air, the cascading water is choreographed to classical music. Bellagio and the other properties in the Mirage group use incandescent lighting rather than neon, which helps make the Italian village surrounding the lake a lovely backdrop for the dancing waters.

In keeping with MGM’s lion theme, the hotel has a glass viewing station in the midst of a lion enclosure, allowing you to stand face to face with the king of beasts. Three of the 30 or so animals, Goldie, Metro, and Baby, are descendants of the original Leo, who posed for the famous MGM movie logo.

This is Las Vegas at its lavish best: after dark, every 15 minutes, the “volcano” at the Mirage blows its top (see The Mirage Volcano).

The Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe are faithfully and impressively reproduced at Paris Las Vegas Hotel, albeit on a smaller scale than the originals. Buy fresh baguettes from a street vendor, and nibble to the strains of tunes by the great Maurice Chevalier, as interpreted by a wandering accordionist.

It is truly awe-inspiring to wander within the special walkways of the 1.3 million-gallon (5.9 million-liter) tank and observe the thousands of weird and wonderful sea creatures swimming together. Look out for the arowana dragon fish – and, of course, 11 different species of shark.

Listen in on conversations between the robotic statues of Bacchus, Venus, Pluto, and Apollo at the Festival Fountain, and watch a mini-drama performed by another group of statues – Neptune and his feuding children – at the Atlantis Monument between the Cheese-cake Factory and Race for Atlantis. The show also features huge winged beasts and a dazzling, hi-tech wrath-of-the-gods firestorm. Some of the shops, too, provide entertainment: pop into Magic Masters and look out for a secret door leading to the replica of Harry Houdini’s library.

It would be a shame (if hard) to miss the 10-story sphinx (larger than the original) guarding the Luxor Hotel-Casino. The best view of this Las Vegas landmark is as you come in to land at McCarran International Airport.

Top of the bill is the spectacular pirate battle staged regularly at the hotel entrance (see Treasure Island Sirens of TI).

You may not be able to see forever exactly but, from the top of the tower on a clear day, parts of Arizona and California come into view. Count the 40 seconds it takes for the high-speed elevators to whiz up to the tower’s floor-to-ceiling glass observation floor, which is 900 ft (275 m) above street level. The tower is a tourists’ after-dark favorite for viewing the mesmerizing lights of Glitter Gulch and along the Strip.

These regal white tigers, extremely rare in their native Himalayan foothills, should be on every sightseer’s itinerary. The magnificent creatures live at the home of their trainers, Siegfried and Roy, whose show has wowed audiences at the Mirage for more than 10 years. When they are not training or performing, the animals can be viewed in their specially designed all-white habitat (it makes them feel camouflaged and secure), complete with waterfalls and palm trees.