You know that hungover look on nearly everyone’s face walking down the aisle of a Sunday afternoon flight out of Las Vegas? Or the jokes that friends tell one another at the beginning of a decadent, celebratory Vegas weekend about how they will ‘pay later’ for health transgressions to which they blithely agree? With the city’s many recent wellness developments, the hangovers and headaches of Vegas visits past are entirely optional. Las Vegas’ healthy dining innovations, fitness openings and many superlative spas make it easy to leave Las Vegas feeling as energized as when you arrived.
It takes more than a single shot of wheatgrass to balance out wine-paired dinners or after-dinner nightlife, sure, but with some light planning a ‘balanced’ trip is completely in reach. And might even put an unexpected twist on the next bachelorette weekend or post-conference stay. From sweating out the previous night’s Nobu omakase dinner at SoulCyle to indulging in the best in plant-based dinners, here are Sin City’s top destinations for an energized, health-spiked and very Vegas weekend itinerary.
Setting up for Success
My first stop in Las Vegas after a five hour road trip from Los Angeles was a Desert Detox spa treatment at the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas on the North side of the strip. The casino-free, non-smoking hotel is smaller than most of the others in the area at 424 rooms, and a visit to their spa makes for a gentle entree into the crowds and noise that will fill the remainder of the weekend. The Desert Detox, I was told, is more popular in the mornings on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons - when people are on their way out of town. But I found that a 90-minute scrub, algae wrap and massage with body butter was just the thing I needed to decompress from hours of travel.
Checking In
The Nobu Hotel Caesars Palace is one of the quietest, most serenely decorated properties in Las Vegas. It’s also located within Caesars Palace so the action is just an elevator ride away. In-room washrooms are stocked with Natura Bisse toiletries and Toto toilets. For luxe digs with a nod to wellness and major convenience - it’s hard to top Nobu’s first hotel outpost.
Getting the Lay of the Land
For a visual overview of the area, and a chance to get some fresh air, I ventured on a 15-minute, nighttime helicopter ride looping around the strip with Maverick Helicopters. For all of the overwhelming tourist pricing on the strip, the ride feels like a steal at $100 per person. Getting to see the Strip from above - the classic developments alongside the shiny and new - with just the whirring of machinery as a soundtrack, is breathtaking.
The Healthiest Prix-Fixes in Vegas
Staying at Nobu Hotel means at any given time while onsite, you are no more than 50 feet from dining at Nobu Las Vegas, purveyors of one of the best vegan meals in town. Its signature vegan omakase is constantly changing and even if you chose to dine on-premises each night you’re in town (how dreamy!), a completely different tasting experience will await each time.
Across the street and south a few blocks are the Wynn properties, home to Las Vegas’ best-known vegan meals. Los Angeles’ Tal Ronen is a consulting chef at Wynn properties, ensuring all vegan fare is thoughtful, creative and excellent. The Wynn’s Costa di Mare, a restaurant better known for fresh seafood than the eatery’s impressive plant-based options, serves a prix-fixe option with a wine pairing, where vegan options include vegan-Italian menu of fresh vegetables, pillowy ravioli and a rainbow of sorbets, all served lakeside. If you’re after a large helping of people-watching and scene-y vibes with a side of dinner, Beauty & Essex serves up a number of vegan options and delicious cocktails inside one of the Strip’s chicest, buzziest spaces.
Mornings are for Sweating
The Wynn Plaza is a new shopping center that’s just opened in Fall of 2018, now home to Las Vegas’ first SoulCycle location. Teachers have been imported from the brand’s major markets to teach alongside locals and the music is impressively appropriate for a city who is setting the bar in EDM with its celebrity DJ residencies. Other options include Sweat 60 at the Cosmopolitan and Fawnia Monday’s famed Pole Fitness pole dancing fitness studio.
Serene Spas
In addition to the Four Seasons calm, intimate spa, many other casino hotels offer decadent, smart options for spa-goers. The new Waldorf Astoria offers a large treatment menu, including a classic European facial, a thorough, old school-meets new combining classic facial techniques with beauty devices made by local beauty-tech startup FOREO. The treatment includes cleansing, extractions, massage, masking and some lymphatic drainage around the eyes - all with the help of FOREO’s silicone-covered facial devices and OSEA’s clean beauty products. For post-treatment soothing, all 16 treatment rooms have views of the surrounding desert. The spa has endless number of experiential wellness rooms, from a laconium to herbal steam rooms and an ice fountain. Closer to Nobu, within the Caesars Palace grounds, Qua Spa offers offers treatments in a large spa complex, where well-trained therapists offer effective therapies for soothing away muscles tired from SoulCycle or a night of dancing.
Preparing for a Night Out
Engaging the help of beauty app BeGlammed to assist with an in-room blowout and makeup application in preparation for a night out is a blessing from the technology and VC gods for the time-crunched and those of us who spend most of their days in leggings and a ‘no makeup makeup’ look at best. With four hours notice, BeGlammed’s local stylists can be in your hotel room getting you ready while you mentally prepare for a marathon evening of dining, drinking and dancing. Alternatively, if a true salon experience is more your speed, Cosmopolitan’s Sahra Spa and Hamman offers it in spades. The salon at the youngest feeling luxe casino on the Strip is filled, seven days a week, with women and men fixing up manicures, going for ‘Vegas glam’ makeup applications and sitting for blow outs that can withstand the desert heat. The sparkling wine and local gossip is flowing while a combination of veteran and up-and-coming stylists work their magic, a recipe for an afternoon well-spent.
Between Dinner and After-after Dinner
Did you really go to Vegas if you leaving without seeing the the city’s homegrown, world-class theater productions? Currently, it seems that Cirque du Soleil and Spiegelworld run this town - and there’s a reason why. For impressive physical feats by some of the most talented performers in the world, any show by either of these producers will not disappoint. If bawdy, variety show-style humor is more your speed then Spiegelworld’s Absinthe or Opium shows might be the ticket. If elegant acrobatics and stunning backdrops are what you’re looking for then any one of Cirque’s shows will do the trick.
Late Night
The volume and quality of music happening across Las Vegas can easily overwhelm even the most jaded aficionado of EDM. During the spring and summer months, especially, choosing the ‘best’ show is a fool’s errand. That said, as a place to start, Wynn’s XS nightclub is celebrating its ten-year anniversary, and hosting a series of residencies to mark the milestone. As part of my own healthy Las Vegas research, I stopped by a recent Chainsmokers show to do a 30-minute dance floor ‘drive by’ and ended up dancing for four hours. Similarly, the following night I stopped by the new On The Record nightclub at the Park MGM with the same 30-minute ‘get a peek’ and go plan, and after ducking into the club’s chic little speakeasy for a craft cocktail walked out into Wyclef Jean performing an ‘only in Vegas’ style show that delayed my early-to-bed plans for a few hours.
Even with late nights out dancing and taking in the best in Las Vegas entertainment, some basic planning (book workouts in advance, try a plant-based meal) can keep you hangover-free and fully energized for an entire Vegas weekend.
