We has 6 days in Las Vegas, then went on to drive around the Grand Canyon.

Hotels:

While there we stayed in the Flamingo hotel, which was a fairly mid rang hotel, cheap enough but still had a pool, gardens, casinos and a fairly decent sized room.

All the major hotel in Vegas have a theme to them. The flamingo is fairly obvious what its theme is by the name. They even have real Flamingos in the garden. 

The hotels are more like resorts and tourist attractions with rooms upstairs. Its normal to wind in and out of them as part of sightseeing, Some of our favourites were the Venetian, Caesars palace and the Bellagio. 

The Venetian, was probably my favourite in terms of beautify and design. You walked along and genuinely felt as though you were walking along the streets in Italy. The canal that's used for the famous gondola rides runs through the inside shop lined streets in the hotel. 

Caesars palace is a must go as well, we visited on the first night just for somewhere to eat as we knew there was a cheesecake factory and we were far to jet lagged to think straight. The second we walked in in our jet lagged state our jaws just dropped. I think this was the moment it clicked in our very tired brains exactly where we were and what Las Vegas had in store for us. We went back later in the week to explore properly. It has rows of shops, which links up to a restaurant area, and in the middle is a large fish tank with all types of exotic fish and even a mini shark swimming around. As you walk though the shops of the hotel, it is set out to resemble outside shopped lined streets, even with a ceiling made to look like the sky. It was all very beautiful and even tricked you in to thinking you were actually outside at some points. 

The Bellagio was a more classic beauty hotel, with one of its main attractions being a greenhouse garden area full of sculptures made from flowers, some being made into giant flowers, birds and even a person. It is absolutely breath taking to see, next to here was a shop selling Christmas decorations, which obviously we got one (I am determined now to find a tree decoration everywhere we go in the world)
Outside has he Bellagio fountains, we watched these on our wedding night, which was perfect as they play Elvis along with it (we got married by Elvis ) it is really beautiful to see and worth stopping to watch.

Things to do:

Shooting range:

We wanted to try this out while in America. We found a place that was just a short ride of the bus to the end of the strip. It was called the Las Vegas Shooting Centre. They were very friendly here and made us feel so welcome. They have different packages that you can choose that includes several different guns to try and were very informative with everything. 

Casinos:

Casinos are EVERYWHERE in Vegas. This is the most obvious thing to do in Vegas. Most hotels have a casino and you can find pretty much anything you want to try from slot machines to black jack tables. We mostly stuck to the slots and roulette tables. The minimum bet for these in The Flamingo was $5 but it does range depending on the table and the hotels. . If you do sit at these tables though a plus is that you get free drinks, the waitresses will just come round to take your order.

Food:

Honestly for breakfast we mostly lived off Mc Donald's, although we did venture out to Denny's which is definitely worth a try for breakfast, cheap, cheerful and tasty. 

For dinners we tried Gordon Ramsey's Fish and Chips which is located down the small street between the Flamingo and The LINQ hotels. This was reasonable priced, quick and tasted great. We took it away to eat by the water fountain further down this little street. There was quite a few little bars and food places down here too, well worth a visit if you're close by.

We ate in the Cheesecake Factory the first night we were there ( mainly just to see what all the fuss was about - as we don't have them in England) I was a big fan!!! The food was lovely, the service was great and the cheesecake was absolutely incredible!!!!!!!!!

For our wedding meal we booked a table at Hells Kitchen as we are both massive fans of the show. We had the set 3 course menu, and had scollops, beef wellington and sticky toffee pudding. Although it was expensive, it was worth it because it was our wedding dinner and a once in a lifetime thing for us to do but I would say may not be worth it if you've never seen the show.

Zip lines and big wheel:

Vegas has quite a few zip lines, and rides. 1 even went past our window in the hotel. This was the zip line that went over he street between the LINQ and The Flamingo. There was also the LINQ wheel at the end which we did go on. You can get tickets for pretty much any time of day, although the night is more expensie. We chose to go in the day as it was quiet and cheeper. We had a whole pod to ourselves and the views from the top were pretty incredible and definitely worth doing. 

There is another zip line going down Freemont street that I am dying t try when I eventually manage to go back. We didn't do any zip line as we already had one book for over the grand canyon.

BUS and monorail:

DO NOT try to walk everywhere in Vegas, it is hotter than our English brains realise and the strip is over 4 miles long. There are a few options for getting around, my favourites were the bus and the monorail

The Deuce was our mode of transport for most of our stay. It was $8 for the day and $20 for 3 days and ran the entire length of the strip ending in Fremont street and stopping at almost every hotel along the way, we also never had to wait longer than around 10 minutes for a bus and they were all fully airconditioned (thank god)

On one of the last days we decide to try out the monorail as we were going to the New York hotel for a show. The monorail was just behind out hotel and took us to just across the road from the New York-New York hotel. It was very easy and I would defintly use it more on my return visit.

Freemont street:

Freemont Street was amazing!! Unfortunately I was very Jetlagged and overwhelmed by Las Vegas in general, I wish I had have spent more time here and I would definitely go back for more. We visited as it was a few streets down from where we needed to pick up our marriage licence so we visited on day 1. It is like a mini versions of the Las Vegas strip. It is the original Las Vegas and you can really tell. As you walk down the street there are casinos, shops and hotels along the street and with a LED light celling to the street that puts on different light shows throughout the day. This itself is memorising even without the live music and everything else going on. 

Wedding

We decided to get married while we were there, both if us being people that didn't like the idea of being up in front of everyone and having to spend thousands on a traditional wedding. Instead we kept it a secret and eloped to Vegas. We called our family and friends a few hours before the wedding, with some very shocked but exited responses. 

The limo that was provided by the venue came to the Hotel to pick us up and take us to the Little Vegas Chapel. We booked the Elvis wedding package which included the limo, photographer who also acted as our witness and of course an Elvis impersonator. It was a lot of fun and honestly the best thing we would have done for us. We went to Hells Kitchen for dinner and enjoyed the night watching the Bellagio fountains and drinking some strawberry daquaries just the 2 of us. There a lot of wedding venues in Vegas, all providing you with pretty much whatever type of wedding you could ask for and ranging in price, ours only cost around $300/$400 in total. If this is your thing then its defiently worth thinking about doing while you are there.

All in all, Las Vegas should be on everyone's bucket list. There isn't something you could want that Vegas couldn't provide you with and this over-the-top city is really an amazing place to visit.