This guide forms part of our complete USA Travel Guide, featuring scenic road trips, iconic destinations, practical travel advice and honest first-hand travel experiences from across the United States.
This article is also part of the Ultimate Guide to Nevada, exploring the Vegas Strip, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Area 51 and even Getting Married. Read the complete itinerary here.
We have provided our feedback on our travel and experiences in Vegas. Look for the Ticket Rating for each one.
From the Las Vegas Strip to extraordinary desert road trips, discover our favourite Nevada experiences
Las Vegas is the world’s most famous entertainment city, a place where spectacle, luxury, and excess are turned into an art form.
For visitors, Las Vegas is about choice and scale. Whether you’re drawn by world-class performances, themed hotels, fine dining, shopping, or simply the energy of a city that never slows down, Vegas offers instant excitement and reinvents itself constantly, ensuring no two visits ever feel the same.
Rising from the Nevada desert, Vegas delivers an unmatched mix of iconic resorts, headline shows, celebrity-chef dining, casinos, and nightlife, all packed into a single, electrifying strip.
For visitors, Las Vegas is about choice and scale. Whether you’re drawn by world-class performances, themed hotels, fine dining, shopping, or simply the energy of a city that never slows down, Vegas offers instant excitement and reinvents itself constantly — ensuring no two visits ever feel the same.
From resorts like Mandalay Bay with its 11 acres of sand & wave pool with 6ft waves to Caesars Palace Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis, there’s suntanning, swimming & drinks galore.
There’ve been incredible shows over the years with celebrities like Elton John, Celine Dion, and now Kelly Clarkson, even Backstreet Boys & the legendary Rod Stewart.
There’s lots of Cirque Du Soleil shows with incredible acrobats or magic shows (David Copperfield!), comedians (Carrot Top, David Spade) and plenty of nightclubs, if you’re ready to dance the night away.
There’s Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon or the Grand Canyon, if you’re looking for outdoor excitement. You can even kayak the
Colorado River!
Get your iconic Vegas photos at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, in front of the Fountains of Bellagio, and of course, along Fremont Street.
What would a trip to Vegas be without some amazing shopping experiences? Try the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace (Dior, Gucci, Prada) or Wynn Plaza Shops (Chanel, Hermes, Rolex). There’s the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian, which itself is spectacular!
Here’s a tip for free: wear extremely comfortable shoes as there’s A LOT of walking – but you’ll have a blast doing it!
Our Nevada Highlights:
Best Scenic Experience: Grand Canyon flight
Best City Experience: Las Vegas
Best Outdoor Adventure: Kayaking the Colorado River
Best Engineering Landmark: Hoover Dam
Most Unusual Road Trip: Area 51 & Extraterrestrial Highway
Best Entertainment: Las Vegas residencies and shows
Most Memorable Personal Experience: Getting married in Las Vegas
Nevada is enormous, rugged and surprisingly diverse
When most people hear Nevada, one place immediately comes to mind: Las Vegas.
We get it. We love Vegas too. We’ve returned several times and somehow always manage to discover something completely different. We’ve stayed in some incredible hotels, seen world-famous performers, eaten at restaurants we still talk about years later and even decided, rather unexpectedly, to get married here.
But some of our favourite Nevada experiences have happened after we’ve left the bright lights of the Strip behind.
Once you start exploring, the casinos and neon signs quickly give way to vast desert highways, red-rock landscapes, mountains, historic towns, enormous lakes and some of the most unusual roadside attractions in America.
We’ve stood on top of Hoover Dam trying to comprehend the scale of what was built across Black Canyon. We’ve kayaked the Colorado River, paddling through towering canyon walls to the beautiful green waters of Emerald Cove. We’ve flown over the Grand Canyon, seeing millions of years of geological history exposed beneath us, and driven deep into the Nevada desert along the Extraterrestrial Highway to see just how close we could legally get to Area 51.
That last adventure was definitely one of the stranger road trips we’ve taken.
And that’s what we’ve come to enjoy about Nevada.
You can spend one evening watching a world-famous performer in Las Vegas and the next morning find yourself surrounded by almost complete silence in the Mojave Desert.
There are ghost towns, abandoned mines, state parks, wildlife refuges, enormous engineering projects, historic highways and landscapes that seem to stretch forever. Nevada also has a fascinating history shaped by Indigenous peoples, mining, railroads, the construction of Hoover Dam, atomic testing, aviation and the extraordinary rise of Las Vegas from a small desert settlement into one of the world’s most visited entertainment destinations.
This guide brings together the Nevada we’ve actually experienced.
You’ll find our Las Vegas hotels, restaurants and shows alongside our road trips, outdoor adventures and day trips beyond the Strip. We’ll also share the places we’d return to, the experiences we’d only do once and the occasional Nevada adventure that left us wondering what on earth we’d signed ourselves up for.
Because Nevada isn’t simply somewhere we’ve visited. It’s somewhere we keep finding reasons to return to.
Continue Exploring The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas
- Kayaking the Colorado River with Desert Adventures USA: Glide through calm stretches of water framed by towering canyon walls. Ideal for first-timers or experienced paddlers.
- Antelope Canyon: A spectacular slot canyon famous for its colourful sandstone walls and incredible light beams. Guided tours are required.
- Hoover Dam: An engineering marvel spanning the Colorado River, offering guided tours and panoramic views over Lake Mead.
- Sedona: Renowned for its striking red rock formations, scenic drives, hiking trails, art galleries and vibrant downtown.
- Visit Fremont Street Experience: Enjoy the spectacular LED canopy light show, live entertainment, zipline and classic vintage Vegas atmosphere.
- Explore Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area: Just 30 minutes from the Strip, this spectacular desert landscape offers scenic drives, hiking, rock climbing and incredible photography opportunities.
Nearby Attractions And Things To Do In Las Vegas
- Walk the Las Vegas Strip: Experience the world-famous resorts, themed hotels, dazzling fountains, nightlife and free attractions that make Las Vegas unlike anywhere else.
- Visit Fremont Street Experience: Enjoy the spectacular LED canopy light show, live entertainment, zipline and classic vintage Vegas atmosphere.
- Stay at the Venetian Hotel: One of the city’s top hotels. It is a little pricier, but the environment, rooms, and the feeling of Venice is steps away. Quite a magical stay!
- Try out Nine Fine Irishmen and Gordon Ramsay’s Pub & Grill: There are so many restaurants to choose from. We enjoyed both, great food and fantastic hospitality.
- Get Married!: On the Strip you will find numerous opportunities to tie the knot. It all can be arranged in a day. Even get the marriage licence on the day! We did it!
Planning Your Trip?
Before you go, don’t forget to book the essentials:
- 🏨 Hotels & unique stays
- 🚗 Rental cars
- 🎟️ Top-rated tours & attractions
- 📶 eSIMs for easy connectivity
- 🛡️ Travel insurance
- 🎒 Packing Lists
- 🎒 Travel gear from The Venturio
With every trip, we offer feedback to travel companies along with honest views for you, the reader. We rate adventures on a scale of one to five tickets, judged on quality, service, memorability, and price. A perfect ‘Ticket Rating’ of a five-ticket score means the experience was flawless and we’d eagerly return. Your desire to go back is the ultimate measure of a trip’s worth. Exclusive to My Return Ticket.
