Las Vegas on Your Own Terms

Las Vegas is the most obedient city in America. It will be whatever you ask of it, which is why the visitors who suffer there are the ones who never decided what to ask. The regulars long ago solved the place with a simple system, one good hotel, a short list of reservations, and a firm refusal to see all of it, and taken on those terms the city delivers a weekend of food, spectacle, and unembarrassed pleasure that no other American town can match. Everything below assumes two nights, which is correct, and three, which is pushing it.

The hotel is the whole decision, since on the Strip the hotel is the neighborhood, the restaurant row, and the pool club all at once. The Wynn holds down the polished end of the argument, all cream and flowers and a standard of quiet the Strip otherwise refuses, while the Bellagio remains the classic, with its conservatory changing by season and the fountains conducting the lake out front every half hour into the night. Choose one, stay loyal to it, and let the rest of the Strip be theater you visit rather than endure.

The city quietly assembled one of the country's great restaurant rosters, since every famous chef eventually opens here, and the returning visitor builds the trip around two serious dinners booked weeks ahead. The correct rotation is one marquee room and one specialist, with a long resort breakfast and a counter lunch somewhere unglamorous in between. Off the Strip, Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road feeds the cooks themselves after their shifts, which tells you what you need to know.

Daytime belongs to the pools, which the hotels run as resorts within the resort, and to the spa, and to precisely as much gambling as entertains you and not one hand more. The regulars set a number before arriving and treat it as the price of a show. The other show, the actual ones, are worth one night, since the residencies and the theater productions here operate at a scale no other city attempts.

The desert is the city's unadvertised amenity. Red Rock Canyon sits half an hour west, a scenic drive and short trails through rust-colored sandstone, and taking a morning there resets the whole system before a final evening on the Strip. The regulars consider it the secret to lasting three nights.

Come in spring or fall, when the pools and the desert are both usable, and book the dinners and the show before the flight. Walk the Strip once at night for the spectacle and take taxis or the monorail after, since the distances are a famous lie. Set the gambling number, keep the last morning slow, and leave wanting one more dinner, which is the sign the system worked.

Fly out over the desert in daylight if you can manage it. The city sits in the middle of a magnificent nowhere, doing exactly what it promised, and from the air the whole improbable bargain makes sense.