So you have booked your low-priced flights to Las Vegas, made certain you have finished the online ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation) to make certain they allow you in the United States of America, booked a hotel and rented a car, and now you are wondering what an Earth you will do when you get there!

Well No.1 on the record is evidently the casinos, otherwise why bother going away to the World's gaming capital in the first place? But to be entirely blunt with you, once you have set eyes on one casino floor, all the others are pretty much a replica. However it is still worth visiting numerous casinos to scrutinize what is on the others floors with places like The Venetian being built comparable to Venice including the canals!! Circus Circus is wonderful for kids, and a trip up the Stratosphere offers exceptional views of the Las Vegas valley, together with the beautiful Red Rock Canyon to the West, well worth a visit if you have hired a car.

Other hotels worth a look are Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay, while those at the upmarket end, such as MGM, Bellagio, etc are nothing special from a visitor's point of view.

One area though a lot of folk think of is the Grand Canyon Las Vegas. However many visitors from around the world fail to realise the real size of the USA, as Las Vegas is in Nevada, while the vast amount of the Grand Canyon is situated in Arizona. If you View at a map it appears barely a couple of centimetres away, no challenge travelling to it then eh? Wrong. First of all you have to cross over the Hoover Dam into Arizona, and if you are leaving from midday onwards this can take you a while to get through due to elevated traffic loads (unless the new road has opened since I wrote this!).

From the dam you take part in to drive South some way along Highway 93, which is not such a bad trip but will have plenty of roadwork's till around 2011.

Unlike the hotel car parks in Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon is pretty well sign posted, and it is a left turn onto Highway 145, towards the Skywalk. Whatever you do, don't ignore the junction; it is miles prior to the next one. The further along this road you move, the more rugged the terrain, with the road reaching more than 5000 feet in places, supplementary oxygen is not necessary though! The more along this road you go the more you realise that Las Vegas seems a different world away.

A lot of the trip is across an Indian Reservation, and the final leg involves driving on an unpaved road, although they have promised to build a good smooth one for the tourists who don't like the rugged natural feel of the desert. Although car hire companies state you are not allowed to drive off-road, the roads to the Grand Canyon are official roads even if they may possibly appear off-road to a number of people.

The whole travelling distance from The Strip is in the region of 120 miles, and can take anywhere between 3-4 hours to complete, so you are looking at a complete day, so start off early. Just a separate suggestion, this is the desert, take a load of water, energy food, and ensure you have a full tank of fuel, tourists have died in the Nevada, Arizona and Californian deserts in the past, do not join the list.

If you have not rented a car, or do not plan to drive so far yourself, many other options are on hand to view the Grand Canyon.

You can obtain coach tours to the area, and these are comfortable and air-conditioned with toilets, and are good value, but again you are still caught with the travel time and it is longer on these tours. You additionally will not be stopping every 10 minutes to take photos and video as you would if you drive yourself.

One other option that is much faster is to take to the air. You may well think this is expensive, well in nearly all cases it is. Going by helicopter is certainly not low-cost, and will put you back at least $200 per person, but it is a fantastic experience hovering in the Grand Canyon itself, and soaring over the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, as well as beautiful views of Las Vegas. A lot of folk are not aware though that you may find cheap flights from Vegas to the Canyon and that is by using a prop aeroplane. As with the helicopters, they take-off from McCarran Airport, and pick you up, and drop you off at the hotel, but the price is much lower. I haggled them down to $80 each for a 3 hour flight.

The only downside is that you can't hover for photos, and it is noisier than the helicopters, but for the money and experience it is well worth it, and the views are just as spectacular from the air.

One final thing, if you have flown in from Europe, or Eastern USA, as you leave Las Vegas, if it is a clear day, the pilot generally flies over the Grand Canyon, so you get a free view, although it may be a little misty from the altitude, and you do require a right-hand side window seat.