I had some free time this evening, so I decided to go check out Arte Museum Las Vegas at CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

My ticket was US$45.00, which included admission to the museum and a drink at the Arte Café experience. That was after a US$10.00 locals’ discount for being a Las Vegas resident; those without a Nevada identification would need to pay US$55.00 for the same access.

To put it simply, the Arte Museum was a light show experience with a combination of visuals, sounds, and scents. There were a bunch of different rooms, and although not many of them were literally interactive per se, it was interactive in the sense that you could immerse yourself into the exhibits and feel fully surrounded by the varying kinds of stimulation.

The first room was called “Waterfall Infinite.”

The second area was called “Flower.” This had a few subsections: “Rose,” “Roses – Vincent van Gogh,” and “Camellia Underwater.”

Next was “Whale,” a dancing whale surrounded by the waves of the sea. I’m not sure if this was an intentional part of this room or if it was just a coincidence, but I believe even the walls were shaking and vibrating in this room in synchronization with the crashing waves.

Down the hall and through an aisle in the corner was “Star: Raindrops,” a collection of color-changing paper lanterns of different sizes hung at different heights.

Outside of “Star” was “Giant Camellia,” another flower display, but all my photos of it somehow unfortunately came out blurry, so that is unpictured here. Next to “Giant Camellia” was “Live Sketchbook: Light Safari,” an interactive exhibit where you could draw and scan animals to make them appear on the screen.

The path led up to the upper floor where I entered “Starry Beach.”

The room I spent the most time in was “Garden,” a large space with screens or mirrors on all the walls, floors, and central structures. “Garden” had three different displays on rotation: “Threads of Connection,” “Beach Aurora,” and “Light of Las Vegas.”

As the series of museum exhibits neared the end, it was time to take a short break at the café. As part of my extended access ticket, I was able to order a free drink, so I selected the seasonal lavender milk tea. I enjoyed my drink at a special table with a projector overhead that detected and followed my drink cup around with a label containing my name.

The final display was “Jungle: Glow.”

They turned the exit of the museum into an exhibit as well—it was called “Sunset” and showed the transition of colors throughout sundown as you descended the stairs.

Each of the major rooms had a special scent tied to it to make patrons’ experience more immersive. Not many museums take advantage of all your senses like Arte Museum does, and that was one of my favorite aspects of this museum. After descending “Sunset” and making it into the gift shop, I was pleased to find that the scents used in the rooms were actually for sale, so that if there was one you particularly liked, you could bring it home with you.

I think US$55.00 for a non-locals ticket for the full experience is very pricey. I obviously don’t know what their finances look like, so maybe there are enough visitors that the steep pricepoint is justifiable, but compared to other museums I’ve been to, US$55.00 seems pretty high. I went on a weekday two hours before closing time and spent an hour and a half going through everything, and it was relatively empty and peaceful.

If you want this kind of experience, then a show at the Sphere may be something to also consider and research—even though it won’t have the scents and the movement-based interactivity and immersion, the light show aspect will be comparable.

With that being said, I had a good time at Arte Museum. I think the photographs I shared here don’t really do it justice, because they’re all zoomed out as far as my camera would let me go; in-person, the displays tower over you and truly make you feel surrounded.

As a side note, if you end up visiting, make sure to actually experience the exhibits in full. The animations and light shows are on a cycle and they have a beginning and end; I saw a lot of people casually walking through the exhibits without seeing the whole thing, so if you want maximum value out of your ticket, make sure you stick around until you’ve watched the full loop for each room.

I’ve been spending some time around the central Strip over the past few days because one of my friends is in town for a work conference; in her free time, we checked out some attractions that were conveniently in the area, one of which was the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens inside MGM Resorts’ Bellagio Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

The current set on display is called “Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake.” It’s usually very popular and congested, but it calms down and gets pretty empty overnight; here are some photos I took of the installation at approximately 3 AM:

A little while ago, I went on a tour of Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders.

I recently realized that, for some reason, I never posted photographs from my tour. Considering that I haven’t been doing much for the past few weeks and haven’t had anything particularly notable to blog about, I figured now would be a good time to share these pictures to fill in the lull.

The only sports I ever really watch are combat sports, so it was nice being able to get a behind-the-scenes look at a traditional ball sport stadium.

My main takeaway from the tour was that sports stadiums like this basically have the same premise as commercial planes, in that there a lot of “economy” seats where people are crammed together in a small space, but then there are extremely expensive, luxurious, over-the-top “first class” sections for people who are superfans and want to spend a ton of money. I got to check out the private viewing rooms, lounges, and clubs, and they seemed like pretty nice environments from which to enjoy some American football.

This tour didn’t convert me into a football fan, but it did make me realize that, as long as I’m not squished in a regular seat, I wouldn’t mind checking out a game sometime.

This is the second part of my two-part blog post series on Nostalgia Street Rods. If you want to see photos from the museum section and read my overall thoughts on the experience, I recommend checking out the first part.

Nostalgia Street Rods is somewhat known among us Las Vegas locals as being a hidden gem in the Valley. Although it might not make it to the top of tourist’s lists of places to check out while in town, it still has a very good reputation for those who are interested in cars.

In between my back-to-back hours of work, I decided to squeeze in a break and get some fresh air. The weather has been scorching hot recently and not too many other people have been out and about lately, so I figured now would be a decent opportunity to finally make my way over to the industrial area near the Boulder Junction neighborhood to check out the museum and car collection while it’s not that busy.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. There were only two other people in my tour group—they were a couple who generally kept to themselves—so it ended up being a very private and personal tour experience. I paid US$20 for general admission, but it felt like I got lucky and almost got the equivalent of a one-on-one tour that would’ve gone for US$50.

There were two sections to Nostalgia Street Rods, the museum and the automobiles. The museum was the smaller section, housed inside a single very large room, and had a lot of memorabilia. Most of it was centered around media and pop culture, but there were also some interesting historical Las Vegas relics. I was especially satisfied with the high volume of music-related items to see. The tour guide pointed out that a lot of care was taken to verify the authenticity of everything on display.

The main section of the experience was the vehicles. There were multiple rooms and warehouses of cars, in addition to larger vehicles being parked out­side in the lot. One aspect of the automobiles I found nice was that there was a breadth of condition of the exhibits. In simpler terms, car museums u­su­al­ly only have very well-maintained and polished cars, and even older cars have been restored to a pristine condition. However, even though Nos­tal­gia Street Rods had a lot of those, it also had a bunch of vehicles that had clearly been used and abused and milked of their functionality, and it was nice to see the more practical and realistic side of the vehicles as well.

I took a lot of photographs, so I decided to split it up into two blog posts—this one contains specimens from the museum, and the subsequent one will have photos of the automobiles and other vehicle-adjacent items.