Mandalay Place takes the shopping experience to a higher level. An eclectic mix of over 40 upscale boutiques, some of the finest retail stores in the world and restaurants are located here. Built on the sky bridge connecting the Mandalay Bay and Luxor resort-hotels, it doesn’t feel like a shopping mall.

A one-of-a-kind shopping experience. You will find a very large and singular space under high ceilings, fabulous lighting, sparkling floors, and window displays that seduce more than just a glance. You can’t help admiring one-of-a-kind items you simply never see elsewhere. It is like an in-flight duty-free catalog--you just keep saying, "How cool is this?" Designer eyewear, leather goods, unique selections of quality toys and gifts, jewelry, and fashion wear are found in diverse edited collections.

Mandalay Place provides the unforgettable experience, Vegas venues strive to deliver. Boasting 100,000 square feet of the finest names in the world, there seems to be something for everyone! Here’s a glimpse of some very cool places we found.

The Art of Shaving is the man’s luxury. Appointments should be made well in advance. Experience a hot-lathered straight-edge shave that is taken to artform level. (Hint for the ladies: Gift certificates for that special guy!) Don’t miss the finest men’s grooming products available for purchase. Take your time, guys, and plan a tasting test at the Chocolate Swan gourmet bakery and chocolatier, because the women are going on a purchasing picnic!

A Robert Cromeans Salon provides spa treatments, great cuts, color, and mani/pedicures. Need to improve the skin itself? Check out skinklinic . Founder Kathy Dwyer—former president of Revlon USA—carved a niche here, improving the spa experience. Shoe Obsession’s unique women’s footwear will accessorize contemporary clothing purchases from Max & CO. (MaxMara’s) or Fornarina ahead-of-the-curve clothing selections sate the appetite for hip Italian fashions.

Nike showboats its first shop dedicated solely to the fairways and green, the Nike Golf Store. Urban Outfitters apparel, houseware, and gift selections trek into Nevada for the first time. Slip into Samantha Chang’s (drag him in, ladies!) exquisitely hot lingerie boutique and then run him across the way to Elton’s Men’s Store for a great sweater and blazer combo.

The list goes on, but the "sport of shopping" carves an appetite. The Mandalay’s reputation for fine fare upholds at:
The Burger Bar under Chef Huber Keller of Fleur de Lys
Caffe-Ristorante Giorgio under Luciano Pellegrini, Best Chef-Southwest 2004
r-bar-café for a great seafood lunch or dinner

55 Degrees Wine+Design : Taste test top-shelf labels at the wine bar. It is complimented by a wine accessory store claiming exclusive products available nowhere else in the country, a must for the connoisseur. And then there is the Chocolate Swan, not to be missed for dessert.

These are but a few of the many choices you should afford yourself in an afternoon of extravagant browsing at Mandalay Place.

Normally I wouldn't consider shopping one of my favorite activities while on vacation. But shopping at the resort hotels on the Las Vegas strip is not your ordinary shopping experience. To be more precise, window-shopping in these locations is a treat in itself as you can explore a virtual reality that could only exist in Las Vegas. We did not visit every hotel resort on the strip, but the ones we did visit were a visual adventure.

Our first stop was at the Aladdin Hotel’s shopping area called the Desert Passage. This is a mall that is designed to look like a bazaar from the Middle East. Every 15 minutes, there is an area set aside inside this mall that has a thunderstorm build up and end with a rainstorm for a few minutes. No one gets wet, but you can't help, but feel as if you have been through a storm.

We next visited the Venetian's Grand Canal shops, which are designed after Venice, Italy and its canals at the turn of the 20th century. You can literally step onto a gondola and go from one place in this mall to another or to the door of a restaurant. At the time we visited, St. Marks Square was being used for the filming of a Sandra Bullock film Miss Congeniality 2. Mostly, we saw just a lot of the crew setting up for shots. Not much action here.

We next visited the Forum shops in Caesar’s Palace. As the name implies, the motif here is ancient Rome. Again the attention to detail is marvelous as you feel you've stepped back in time. The main attraction here besides the shopping was a fountain in which animatrophic statues come to life and decide the fate of this ancient world.

Our next stop was the Bellagio, which is modeled after an Italian village. To put it simply, this shopping area was beautiful.

To call these places shopping malls is a misnomer. These areas could be destinations in their own right. For us, the merchandise was secondary in these shops as style was everything. That is not to say that their quality of goods is second rate. On the contrary, it is all upscale and pricey. But oh that style!!