When it comes to landmarks, Las Vegas cranks the dial to 11, creating attractions that win international renown. But beyond the marquee destinations, there’s a Vegas that’s toned down, nuanced, and equally memorable. Put the two sides together, and you’ve got the ultimate package deal.

Star: Fremont Street Experience

If your daily life involves standing cheek by jowl with thousands of fellow humans, some sober, under a canopy of 49.3 million LED lights, you may skip the Fremont Street Experience. Otherwise, this boisterous pedestrian zone is required viewing, at the very least, to see just what civilization is capable of these days: the world’s largest canopy screen, a quarter mile of pulsating pixels that, every hour starting at dusk, organize into captivating free shows set to thundering music. As thrill-seekers fly overhead on zip lines, onlookers taking in the spectacle hear hits by homegrown stars Imagine Dragons and watch as a city explodes in flames and the sky melts like a heavenly lava lamp.

Secret: AREA15

Think of this expansive entertainment destination west of the Las Vegas Strip and the I-15 freeway as a modern amusement park with a wacky streak. The main complex opened in 2020, followed by Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, a whimsical art experience that combines an all-ages playground and an obtuse science-fiction treasure hunt (if you have the patience). The experience begins in a bizarre “supermarket” with made-up products that provide subtle, biting commentary on modern capitalism. To get from the market into the rest of the attraction, guests must climb, walk, or crawl through secret tunnels, including one that goes through a freezer case. A second section of AREA15 opened in 2025, anchored by Universal Horror Unleashed, a year-round, live-action haunted house attraction from Universal Studios. The chilling show features four different themed areas where people dressed as monsters, ghouls, and goblins pop out to elicit jump-scares. Other options inside AREA15 include a circular bar that ascends 130 feet into the sky while you’re strapped in and enjoying a beverage, a zip line-style ride that blasts you around a track suspended from the ceiling, and an escape room that loosely follows the plotline of the movies in the John Wick trilogy.

Star: Hoover Dam

The pictures don’t do it justice, partly because the dam thing won’t fit in the frame. To visit this concrete behemoth about 30 miles southeast of Vegas is to behold not just an engineering marvel, but a historical one. The Hoover Dam’s surprisingly elegant construction conjures a different era in the nation, when massive public works projects happened regularly, and deco flourishes made them downright pretty. Park your car on the Nevada side and walk southeast across the dam to Arizona. Here, you’ll confront the scale of the structure and the reservoir it created: Lake Mead is so heavy that, as it filled during the late 1930s, it moved the crust of the Earth, setting off thousands of small earthquakes.

Secret: Black Canyon

A short drive south of the dam, the throngs vanish, and it’s just you and the tremendous Colorado River. Make arrangements with one of a handful of outfitters, and soon you’ll be cruising solo or on a tour in a kayak, canoe, or motorboat deep in Black Canyon, designated the Southwest’s first National Water Trail in 2014. The 30-mile stretch carves its way from the foot of the dam to Eldorado Canyon, cutting through rugged volcanic rock walls set with rings once used to winch steamboats upstream. With luck, you’ll spy desert bighorn sheep grazing and bald eagles alighting on their riverside nests. Anglers regularly hoist monstrous striped bass from the Colorado here, and occasionally swimmers dive in. (Then, they commence cursing: The water is breathtakingly cold.) And all along the way, you’ll see sublime views of the surrounding Mojave Desert.

Star: Fountains of Bellagio

Leave it to Vegas to make Old Faithful look staid and unambitious. As many as 32 times a day, the 8.5-acre artificial lake in front of the Bellagio explodes into a mesmerizing ballet of dancing water. Synchronized with tunes ranging from Sinatra’s crooning to Tiësto’s high-energy electronic dance music, more than 1,200 pressurized shooters send water geysering hundreds of feet into the air, while 4,792 lights illuminate the sight. Thanks to movies like Ocean’s Eleven, the attraction has become synonymous with Las Vegas glitz and glamour, and visitors line up two and three deep to catch a glimpse (and capture it with their phones). In recent years, the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix has set up its awards ceremony with the fountains as a backdrop, even though the finish line is more than a mile across town.

Secret: Wetlands Nature Preserve

Vegas might sit in the middle of North America’s driest desert, but 20 minutes to the east, an oasis appears. On 210 acres of willows, cottonwoods, and meandering waterways, the Nature Preserve at the northern tip of 2,900-acre Clark County Wetlands Park boasts 20 crisscrossing miles of flat, lush trails. From the nature center at the main entrance, one path heads east to a gentle stream murmuring through cattails and bulrushes; another leads west to a small pond. The hiking here is scarcely more strenuous than a stroll through the Venetian Resort, which leaves you with plenty of energy to look for beaver, fox, and coyote. Much of the water flowing through the preserve is clean, reclaimed municipal wastewater, a touch of restoration in a city more famous for its consumption.

Star: The Strip

The Strip’s embrace of celebrity chefs turned a steak-and-potatoes town into a destination for big-name restaurateurs: Joël Robuchon, Gordon Ramsay, and so on. Perched right at the edge of the Bellagio fountains is Lago by now-retired Julian Serrano, an Italian restaurant from the two-time James Beard Award–winning chef. Sleek and colorful, with a mirror-tiled pizza oven for a centerpiece, the place is playfully futuristic, and its sprawling menu features small plates both traditional and contemporary.

Secret: The Strip Malls

Culinary miracles come in all shapes and sizes, and sprinkled around town are countless strip malls whose plainness belies some lovely gastronomy inside. To the west of the Strip, on Spring Mountain Road, Las Vegas’ Chinatown buzzes with restaurants that range from dim sum to izakaya and more. The city’s newest official neighborhood, Filipino Town, is east of the Strip and comprises dozens of eateries with East Asian delicacies such as lumpia and adobo.