By Sierra Credico
Las Vegas, NV is only a 1-hour flight (or 4 hour drive!) from Los Angeles, making it the perfect vacation spot for any student needing a quick and fun getaway from the stress of college. As a Vegas native, I’d like to share a few of my favorite things to do while in Sin City!
Walk The Strip
Obviously, if you’re in Las Vegas, especially for the first time, you have to check out The Strip! It’s so much fun to pass Vegas landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the MGM Lion, and the Bellagio fountains and take photos with the showgirls or the characters that line the streets.
Visit the Fashion Show Mall
The Fashion Show Mall is on the Vegas strip, and the three-story mall has hundreds of amazing shops and delicious restaurants to visit. However, the best part about the Fashion Show Mall is that every hour, in the middle of the mall, a catwalk rises up and models walk in an ‘impromptu’ fashion show. It’s like getting front row seats for Fashion Week, every single hour!
Eat Your Heart Out At a Buffet
Las Vegas is famous for its cuisine, and in particular, our variety of buffets. All of the buffets include stations for all types of different cultures, like Chinese, Mexican or American themed foods, as well as sushi stations, meat carving stations, and, the best, the dessert stations!
Take Pictures in the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Garden
The Bellagio is very famous for its dancing fountains outside of the hotel, but my personal favorite place in the Bellagio is the Conservatory. The Conservatory is a massive auditorium decorated with flowers, trees, koi ponds, and birdcages, and each season or holiday brings a new theme for the Conservatory. Even with the huge crowds of people, it’s hard not to feel at peace. Plus, it makes for the perfect photo op!
Go to a Golden Knights Hockey Game
The Golden Knights team is just a year old, but you can find people repping the Knights everywhere in Vegas. The Knights took the hockey world by storm last year, even playing in the championship during their first year as a team. I highly suggest attending one of their games-the atmosphere and energy in the stadium is unbeatable!
Go to Red Rock Canyon
If you’re looking for a more outdoorsy type of vacation, Red Rock Canyon is the place for you! Red Rock is an ideal hiking spot filled with stunning rock formations, plants and wildlife, and even a campground to pitch a tent and take in the scenery.
Spend a Day at Lake Mead
One of my personal favorites, Lake Las Vegas and Lake Mead are filled with fun and athletic water activities to cool you down from the Vegas heat. The Lake Las Vegas Water Sports store offers unique experiences like tubing or wakeboarding on a zipline, paddleboarding, jet skiing, boat rentals, paddleboarding, or ‘flyboarding’, where you can literally float about the water with your own jetpack! You can also relax at any of the resorts bordering the lake, most of which have pools and other activities like biking, tennis, or, at the Westin, a two-story water slide!
Attend a Concert or Show
Vegas is known for its top-notch performers, and you have to check out a few of the incredible shows offered around the town. There are always plenty of big performers lined up to play in Vegas on any given weekend and some stars like Cher, Britney Spears, J-Lo, and soon Lady Gaga, have signed residency deals within the hotels. You can also check out Cirque de Soleil shows like Michael Jackson ONE or The Beatles LOVE, magic shows like Criss Angel or Mat Franco, or a variety of other shows like stand-up comedy. The venues around Vegas are all unique and interesting in their own right, like the large and modern T-Mobile Arena or the Brooklyn Bowl, which is both a concert venue and a bowling alley!