Flying to Las Vegas and getting to the Strip and other Las Vegas, NV Transportation Tips

'Mode': TO
Category: Airplane
Getting TO/AROUND: After spending 8 nights in California, we were then going to Las Vegas. We toyed with the idea of driving there, but after advice from the travel forum suggesting there wasn't really much worth seeing along the way, we decided to fly.

We dropped our hire car at San Francisco Airport and flew from there, with Virgin America. The flight took around 1 hour and 15 minutes. We enjoyed flying with Virgin, and I thought that their safety demonstration video was one of the best I have ever seen. It was funny, which kept my attention, and seemed to explain the safety procedures more clearly than usual. I also liked that I was able to choose our seats when I booked the flights, and online check in was easy too.

As we approached Las Vegas McCarran International Airport I was very excited to be able to see the Strip from my window seat on the plane. The airport is located really close to the Strip. After landing, we walked into the terminal and I was amused that one of the first things I saw were slot machines! We really were in Las Vegas.

Once we had collected our bags, we followed the signs to the taxi rank, which had a well organised queuing system. In no time at all we were on our way to our hotel, the Bellagio. The fare cost about $20 including tip, and the journey took around 15-20 minutes, and much of that time was spent sitting in a traffic jam just off the Strip.

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Website: http://www.mccarran.com/ http://www.virginamerica.com

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: If you find that walking the streets in the baking sun is too much for you, as I did, you may want to use the monorail, which runs along the rear of the Strip, stopping at various hotels. While it may not be the cheapest public transport option (buses are much cheaper), we enjoyed the air conditioned ride.

The monorail runs between the Sahara and the MGM Grand, with several stops in between. It runs from 7am - 2am Mon to Thu, and till 3am Fri to Sun. A single ride (regardless of distance) costs $5, or get a Day Pass for $12 or a 3 Day pass for $28 (Oct 2008).

As the monorail doesn't stop at all the hotels, we did find sometimes that in the time it took you to walk to a monorail station, usually located at the rear of one of the mega hotels, and then walk through the hotel at the stop you disembarked to get to the hotel you wanted to visit, that it would have been faster just to walk there along the Strip.

See the website for a map and details of all stops.

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Website: www.lvmonorail.com