According to a2zdirectory, Las Vegas is the largest city in the state of Nevada in the United States of America. Commonly called The Entertainment Capital of the World, it has become one of the main tourist destinations in the country thanks to its commercial and vacation areas, but above all thanks to its casinos.
History
In the 18th century, the place where the town now sits was called Las Vegas after a natural spring that gave greenery to the arid desert. The city was founded in 1905, but until the 1930s it remained a remote town. However, in 1931, gambling was legalized and the city began to take on its current character. Initially it attracted crews of construction workers for the nearby Hoover Dam, but it soon became a gaming and leisure mecca with illustrious visitors such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Liberace.. It also attracted the mob, an aspect of the city portrayed in numerous films such as Ocean’s Eleven (1960 and 2001), Casino (1995) and Bugsy (1991). In the 1960s, the city’s reputation began to improve. Gambling continued to be the main attraction, but casinos began to fall into the hands of large corporations and the city became a family destination. Today, golf courses, shows, theme parks, shopping centers and a growing number of museums such as the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History or the Liberace Museum abound.
The city was created by a famous bandit. In December 1946, the famous bandit Bugsy Siegal built the original Las Vegas hotel complex, the Flamingo, in the desert lands of Nevada. He dreamed of creating a new city in the middle of the desert. Unfortunately, Bugsy was shot to death in Hollywood in 1947, so he could never see his dream come true. Today, this gambling oasis located in the middle of the desert has more than a million residents and more than 28 million visitors per year.
Las Vegas is sometimes known as the Sin City (Sin City in English) due to the popularity of legal gambling and gambling, the availability of alcoholic beverages at any time of the day (as in all of Nevada), the legality of prostitution in neighboring counties (Nevada law prohibits prostitution in counties with more than 400,000 residents).
Population
The census bureau estimates a population of 518,313 in 2003. Las Vegas has been the capital of Clark County since its birth in 1909. Recent studies (2005) put the population of the metropolitan area at around 1,950,000 people. It is estimated that it is usual that there are around the same number of tourists during the holiday season as there are residents: either by American trips that are going to spend a weekend or by world tourism.
Transport
Buses
Most tourists who come to Las Vegas do so to visit its famous casinos, staying in hotels near the area, which allow easy access to them on foot or through the private buses that the casinos put at the service. of your customers. This makes public transportation quite limited. However, there is a continuous bus service 24 hours a day, connecting the citycenter with the Strip.
Tramways
The Strip Trolley runs down the Las Vegas Strip. It has four rounds or routes, a schedule from 9:30 in the morning to 2:30 in the morning; and the other links the city center with the Stratosphere from 7 in the morning until 11:30 at night.
Airport
The McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas is one of the busiest airports in the USwith nearly 1500 flights per day including direct flights from major cities in the US and many foreign countries. It has numerous daily flights to and from Los Angeles, Phoenix, and many other Southwest cities. McCarran Airport is unique in that it has more than 1,300 coin operated gaming machines. Even after midnight, this terminal and its huge baggage claim floor are buzzing with thousands of tourists arriving or departing. The airport is five miles from the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard, known as “The Strip.”
Trains
Amtrak does not have direct service to Las Vegas, but does provide connecting service with Greyhound, using all three Greyhound routes. The closest tour is the SouthwestChief Tour, which stops in Kingman, Arizona, an hour and a half from Las Vegas.
Monorails
There are several monorails and monorails that take tourists from one hotel on the Stripto another. Free monorails only have connections between casinos of the same corporation. The Las Vegas Monorail is the longest and quite expensive, but the Las Vegas Strip Bus is very cheap. The Las Vegas Monorail is the longest monorail. It has stops at seven hotels on its route that runs along the Strip on its east side. The Monorail stops at Sahara Station and MGM Grand Station.
Taxis
Taxi drivers know Las Vegas very well and can get you to your destination quickly. But they can also try to take you “the long way” (like taking I-15 instead of the quicker and cheaper way that is taking Industrial Street). When you get in the taxi, tell the taxi driver where you want to go and which route you want to take.
Bikes
There are local businesses that rent bikes for tourists, but biking on the Strip is not recommended. The traffic is very heavy and there are thousands of pedestrians, so it is almost impossible to ride a bicycle, both on the street and on the sidewalk.
