If you're happy to see no more of Las Vegas than the Strip and perhaps downtown - and on a short visit, there's no great reason to venture any further - then it's perfectly possible to survive without a car . Bear in mind, though, that even the Strip is too long to explore comfortably on foot; walking more than a couple of blocks in summer is exhausting, so you can expect to make heavy use of taxis, shuttle buses, and the monorail links.

Las Vegas as a whole is plagued by severe traffic problems, and nowhere more so than the Strip. That said, so long as you're not in a hurry to get anywhere, driving along the Strip is an exhilarating sensory blast, and worth experiencing both by day and by night.

All the Strip casinos except Bellagio offer free parking to guests and non-guests alike, usually in huge garages around the back of the entire complex. The snag is that the walk from your car to wherever you actually want to go - your hotel room, for example - can be as much as a mile in places like Caesars Palace or the MGM Grand . If you're spending a day touring the Strip, you may prefer to go through the rigmarole of parking once only, somewhere central like Harrah's . Valet parking , usually available at the main casino entrance, can save a lot of stress; it's nominally free, although a tip of around $2 is all but obligatory.

Every casino has a line of taxis waiting at its front entrance. Standard fares are $2.20 for the first mile and $1.50 for each additional mile, but the meter continues to run when you're caught in traffic. Tip the driver between fifteen and twenty percent.

Several Strip properties are connected by means of free monorail services. There has long been talk of constructing a single light-rail system that would not only run the length of the Strip but also extend as far as downtown. All such plans were traditionally stymied by the refUSAl of the Desert Inn 's management to allow it to pass over their property, but now the project has finally got the go-ahead.

Text to go here. Several casino operators run free shuttle services either to connect different properties in the same chain, or between outlying casinos and the Strip.