How To Spend 24 Hours Without Leaving A Las Vegas Resort

A quick visit to any world-class city can be enlightening. Sitting in an airport lounge during a layover is a perfect chance to ponder how we could enjoy the city just steps away for just 24 hours. It's a fun exercise in imagination and little planning. This is perfect for high-traffic cities (i.e. lots of delays) like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. Each is fabulous in its own unique way, offering a busy day's worth of eating, drinking, and sightseeing, but we know which city would be most ideal: Las Vegas. We may be local experts, but we chose a 24-hour stay just beyond the neon and explored the Palms Resort and Casino, recently acquired by the Station Casinos Group.

After dropping our car with the valet and walking to the front desk, it already had a different vibe than in years past – brighter and more convivial. Being that we had just one day, the staff at the Palms happily checked us in early to give us time to really see what's happening under the new ownership. We have visited the Palms on numerous occasions over the years. Immediately, we headed for the Ivory Tower, home of the renowned Alize restaurant and our 21st floor suite. Walking into our accommodations, we were impressed with the bright vibrant colors of greens, purple, and yellows framing a large comfortable king-size bed with a bird's-eye view of the Palms Pool and its cabanas. It wasn't even 11 a.m. yet but we were ready for our 24 hours of adventure. First item on the agenda: lunch.

The Palms and Palms Place have very nice lunch venues, and our timing was perfect. The Palms newest venue, Lucky Penny, was opening the next day. We were invited to a preview of its menu and bar program. Lucky Penny was not what we expected from a 24-hour café. It was open, bright, airy, and welcoming. Just looking at the menu, the choices were certainly elevated from a typical café with many healthy organic options to enjoy. For breakfast, start off with Penny Bennies featuring poached eggs, ham, and garlic toast topped with hollandaise. For old-school breakfast purists, you can't go wrong with the classic chicken-fried steak and eggs. This country-fried steak, two eggs any style, country gravy, crushed breakfast potatoes, and toast is a hearty way to start your day. Keep it healthy by adding protein powder to its Energize juice, a perfect blend of kale, carrot, apple, beet, and ginger.

For your midday meal, the mezze board with hummus, baba ghanoush, marinated olives, pita, red peppers, and tzatziki provides a nice vegetarian option. Dive into a gyoza with pork, shrimp, green onion and chinkiang dipping sauce. The chopped kale and apple salad with Belgian endive, grapes, candied walnuts, and miso-lime vinaigrette is a perfect vegan and gluten-free choice. Juicy and medium rare is the way to enjoy the Dirty Burger, a decadent combination of Cheddar, grilled onions, pork belly, charred tomato jam and mustard sauce on a poppy seed Kaiser roll. Finish the Lucky Penny experience with the Red Velvet Lava Brownie on a red velvet chocolate cookie, double chocolate brownie, molten chocolate ganache, vanilla bean ice cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream. You must experience the rich and flavorful Inverted Key lime pie. This fresh Key lime custard, graham cracker crust, meringue and lychee chocolate truffle will satisfy your cravings. And yes, it is inverted! Back up to our 21st floor suite it was time to change for our next Palms adventure. The clock is ticking.

We were drawn to our suite's floor-to-ceiling windows by the faint sound of techno bass. We looked down on a sea of humanity enjoying the pool and cabanas while a guest DJ spun. We knew a closer look was in store. Our timing was perfect again. It was Friday and that meant the Palms has one of the best excuses to skip work or school.

Palms Pool and Day Club features over-the-top bottle presentations, champagne spray guns, and much more. [Ed Note: The pool has closed for the season, but keep an eye open for its return!] Pulling up a seat at the poolside bar and ordering a libation it was time to fully immerse ourselves in the Day Club culture. Guests frolicked in the many pools and tossed beach balls on the deck. Others were enjoying bottle service in their glamorous cabanas. By early afternoon, the pool kicked into high gear with a celebrity DJ producing mixes and vibrations that had guests dancing in the pool, deck, and in their seats. Enjoying our time at the pool, time was slipping away from us as it was time to move on to our evening Palms adventure.

The neon lights signaled it was time to explore the resort's evening options. Out first stop is the currently-closed-for-rennovations N9NE Steakhouse. Executive chef Barry S. Dakake has created a plethora of gastronomic delights featuring USDA prime aged beef selections, as well as fresh seafood, innovative side dishes, creative desserts as well as impressive wine list and hand-crafted cocktails. Popular with celebrities, this renown restaurant was named a Top 100 Restaurant in the World by Conde Nast Traveler.

We had other dinner plans, but we just had to take a seat at the beautiful bar and enjoy some happy hour bites and cocktails. Dakake's filet mignon sliders with mushroom and onions, aged Cheddar, Crispy shoestring potatoes, and baby gherkins were a perfect way to start. We also just had to indulge in a pepper-seared tuna with seaweed salad. Knowing that we had a dinner reservation in a mere 30 minutes, we finished our cocktails and our happy hour nibbles and moved on to the top of the Palms for yet another iconic dining venue. 

Higher and higher we ascended, ears popping, to the very top of the Palms and the renowned Alize. Chef Andre Rochat created this bastion of French culinary excellence in collaboration with celebrated chef de cuisine Mark Purdy. We've dined at Alizé on numerous occasions over the years. It is French cuisine at its absolute finest. Alize is not just famous for being a Michelin-starred restaurant but is also known for its award-wining wine selection and the largest cognac collection in Vegas.

After a stop for a last nightcap, we retired to our suite reminiscing about our Palms experience over the last day. Drifting off to sleep in our comfortable bed, we knew we would have to return soon. Twenty-four hours provided a nice overview but we realized we had just scratched the surface of what the new Palms Resort and Casino has to offer.