Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

VINTAGE CLOTHING 239
THE RIVIERA The Riviera has a fairly extensive shopping arcade comprising
art galleries, jewelers, and shops specializing in women’s shoes and handbags,
clothing for the entire family, furs, gifts, logo items, toys, phones and electronic
gadgets, and chocolates.
STRATOSPHERE The internationally themed (though in a high-school
production kind of way, compared to what’s over at Aladdin and The Venetian)
second-floor Tower Shops promenade, housing more than 40 stores, is entered via
an escalator from the casino. Some shops are in “Paris,” along the Rue Lafayette
and Avenue de l’Opéra (there are replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe
in this section). Others occupy Hong Kong and New York City streetscapes.
TREASURE ISLAND Treasure Island’s shopping promenade—doubling as a
portrait gallery of famed buccaneers—has wooden ship figureheads and battling
pirates suspended from its ceiling. Emporia here include the Treasure Island
Store (your basic hotel gift/sundry shop, also offering much pirate-themed merchandise).
The Crow’s Nest, en route to the Mirage monorail, carries Cirque du
Soleil logo items. Cirque du Soleil and Mystère logo wares are also sold in a shop
near the ticket office in the hotel.
THE VENETIAN The Grand Canal Shoppes are a direct challenge to Caesars
Palace’s shopping eminence. As in the Forum Shops, you stroll through a
re-created Italian village—in this case, more or less Renaissance-era Venice,
complete with a painted, cloud-studded blue sky overhead, and a canal right down
the center on which gondoliers float and sing. Pay them ($12) and you can take a
lazy float down and back, serenaded by your boatman (actors hired especially for
this purpose and with accents perfect enough to fool Roberto Benigni). As you
pass by, under and over bridges, flower girls will serenade you and courtesans will
flirt with you, and you may have an encounter with a famous Venetian or two, as
Marco Polo discusses his travels, and Casanova exerts his famous charm. The stroll
(or float) ends at a miniature (though not by all that much) version of St. Mark’s
Square, the central landmark of Venice. Here, you’ll find opera singers, strolling
musicians, glass blowers, and other bustling marketplace activity. It’s all most
ambitious and beats the heck out of Animatronic statues.
The Shoppes are accessible directly from outside (so you don’t have to navigate
miles of casino and other clutter), via a grand staircase whose ceiling features
more of those impressive hand-painted art re-creations. It’s quite smashing. The
Venetian’s “Phase Two” hotel addition will eventually adjoin the Shoppes at the
far end of St. Mark’s Square.
Oh, the shops themselves? The usual high- and medium-end brand names:
Jimmy Choo, Mikimoto, Movado, Davidoff, Lana Marks, Kieselstein-Cord,
Donna Karan, Oliver & Col, Ludwig Reiter, Kenneth Cole, Ann Taylor, BCBG,
bebe, Banana Republic, Rockport, and more, plus Venetian glass and paper
shops. Madame Tussaud’s waxworks (p. 182) is also located here, and so is the
Canyon Ranch Spa Club.
4 Vintage Clothing
The Attic The Attic shares a large space with Cafe Neon, a coffeehouse that
serves Greek-influenced cafe food (so you can raise your blood sugar after a long
stretch of shopping), and a comedy-club stage; it’s also upstairs from an attempt
at a weekly club (as of this writing, the Sat-night Underworld). The store itself,
former star of a Visa commercial, offers plenty of clothing choices on many