Things to do in Las Vegas

Paris, New York, Venice: Las Vegas has a penchant for recreating entire cities in miniature form. Perhaps the most delightfully bonkers is the Venetian hotel, where singing gondoliers row through replicas of famous sights from Italy’s most romantic city. Festooned with dazzling frescoes, it is loved by kids, clubbers and culture vultures alike.

Calling all daredevils: the top of the 1,149ft tall Strat tower - that’s short for Stratosphere - serves as the launching point for several terrifying thrill rides that must be the most exciting things to do in Las Vegas. X-Scream is a sort of giant boat that tips upside down a thousand feet above the Strip; Insanity is a crane that spins riders out over the abyss; Big Shot is a glorified sofa that free falls a couple of hundred feet. Best (or worst!) of all is the SkyJump, in which harnessed jumpers step off a platform to fall 855ft.

What better place to look for dead bodies than a giant pyramid? The Luxor resort makes an obvious home for this exhibit, where what look like brightly coloured mannequins are actual dead bodies that have been “plastinated” for permanent display. Some are posed as though in life, playing sports in perpetuity. Certain sections, like that in which an entire circulatory system, down to the tiniest capillary, has been teased out and dyed in different colours, have an astonishing beauty. Gruesome but uplifting.

If you’ve always wanted to drive a bulldozer, or play basketball using a giant digger, Dig This! is one of the best things to do in Las Vegas. On a patch of desert waste ground, a mile west of the Strip, you get to operate your very own piece of heavy machinery. Anyone aged 14 and over can drive either a bulldozer or an excavator for 90 minutes; that’s a Big Dig, while a Mega Dig lets you do both. The point, of course, is that it’s all fantastic fun.

It’s showtime! Your list of what to do in Vegas has to include a spectacular show – and for sheer spectacle and hair-raising acrobatics, you can’t beat Kà. There’s more martial-arts muscularity to this Cirque Light performance than to their other, more ethereal offerings, with set piece stunts enacted on its tilting, rotating stage. Paired with extraordinary puppetry and sumptuous costumes, Kà is certain to expand your horizons.

Rock your oversized shades and faux fur coat dahling – it’s time to hit the glamorous Forum Shops. Marble statues, fountains and a false sky that cycles hourly between day and night; is it ancient Rome or simply part of the lavish hotel, Caesars Palace? Foot-for-foot the country’s most money-making mall, the Forum Shops likes its designer brands. Although, whisper it, you’ll find the likes of Gap and H&M as well as Versace and Armani.

You can hardly come all this way without seeing America’s most iconic natural wonder. A trip to the Grand Canyon will make your Las Vegas holiday even more mind-blowing. To see the Grand Canyon in all its glory, you have to visit Grand Canyon National Park. This is the area familiar from a million movies. Studded with mighty red-rock buttes and pyramids, it measures a mile deep and eleven miles wide. It’s possible to fly there and back in a day – but a weekend road trip is really the way to see it. Not least because that will give you the chance to spend some time beside the canyon at sunset and dawn, when its colours change through gold and pink.