There are so many options, so many varied and varying possibilities in the Las Vegas hotel area of choices for visitors and tourists that my choosing only one to crow and gush about seems unfair.  But I have to start this piece with a huge nod of kudos to my favorite Las Vegas hotel: the Paris.

The Paris Las Vegas hotel is affordable.  It is even “cheap” or inexpensive, to use a nicer word, when you take them up on a non-weekend offer—a package deal of casino gambling coins/cash, a coupon or two for discounted dining, and even, in some luckier cases, an airline ticket price reduction.  The Paris Las Vegas hotel is also clean, quiet, well-maintained, and staffed by clever, courteous, and accessible people.  But the best part for me of the Paris Las Vegas hotel is downstairs in the Paris casino.  The walk to the entrance of the Paris is a cobbled walk of shops and eateries on either side and a ceiling painted like the Paris sky (must be “painted).  Inside the Paris is really outside:  the décor, temperature control, ambience, and furnishings all contribute to the feel of being outdoors in Paris, near and under trees and, even, in some parts of the casino, under the Eiffel Tower!  From the outside of the casino building, you see the Tour d’Eiffel to scale, built as it is around and atop the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino.  Inside, you are at the ground floor of inside the legs of the great and one-of-a-kind architectural phenomenon.  

 Maybe, though, I should digress before I start speaking in tongues I have no business (or skill) speaking.  Other Las Vegas hotel delights abound.  As you likely have read about, seen, or heard about, many of the Las Vegas hotel and casino accompaniments and structures simulate a place somewhere in the world.  The Las Vegas hotel that does this is usually on the strip (in the center of town, that is), and boasts such thematic likenesses that when you drive or walk through the center of the area, you feel as if you are a world-traveler, visiting modified or reduced countries, cities, and cultures.  New York is represented in black and white and post-mod pop (and when I was there, after 9-1-1, sadly, the New York, New York had constructed a long fence of donated t-shirts belonging to firefighters, victims, and survivors of any treatment such as chemotherapy or laser eye surgery and residents.  The t-shirts, numbering in the thousands, had signatures and sayings and notes of thanks and empowerment…making for the whole viewing and visit experience one of true realism, not just imitation Las Vegas hotel-style).  The Bellagio is water wonderful; the Luxor is mystical Egyptian; the Monte Carlo is classic; and the Venetian is Italian magic. 

Of course, to visit Las Vegas hotel history, one must not be so dazzled by the new that one misses the Rat Pack and Elvis days recapitulated at every older Las Vegas hotel and casino from the Flamingo to Ceasar’s top the MGM to The Sands.  But I tell you what: I bet if Frank and Elvis and Sammy and George were alive and in town, they would swing by to catch an O show or drop in at the Paris for a quick spin of the roulette.  Mais oui.