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. Ranging further afield, the metropolitan area is very large, so driving is the only practical way to explore it in any detail, while all the excursions to the vicinity of Las Vegas require the use of your own vehicle.
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. For trips on which speed is your main priority, it's usually worth using
I-15
where possible, even for short hops. The fastest east-west route across town tends to be
Desert Inn Road
, which passes under the Strip and over I-15, with connections to neither.
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.
Typical
car rental
rates in Las Vegas, including taxes, are $30 per day, $150 per week. All the major chains have outlets at the airport, and nearly every sizeable hotel is affiliated with at least one car rental outfit. Among the most ubiquitous are Dollar (tel 1-800/826-9911,
) and Avis (tel 1-800/822-3131,
); Allstate (tel 1-800/634-6186,
) is an inexpensive local alternative. To search for the best car rental rates online, visit
or
.
