Downtown, we savour the Freemont Street Experience, beginning at dusk to midnight on the hour. The unique pedestrian promenade, boasting four landscaped mall blocks, throbs with a one-of-a-kind display derived from over two million lights and 550,000 watts of exquisite concert quality sound.

May 2005 marks 'Las Vegas' entry to the hallowed century club. So, when did sultry 'Sin City' morph into a playground for anyone but the greatest gamblers, wonders Meher Marfatia, who describes a family holiday and raises the curtains on the year-long, extravagant celebrations coming up.

It’s official. It’s out. The biggest, longest birthday bash ever just kicked off in the glitziest spot on the globe. Roaming its pleasure paths mere months before, we’re privy to all the excitement of planning how Las Vegas, desert jewel of the state of Nevada, is currently celebrating its centennial. Home to gaming glamour galore, the splendid Strip of the most famed casino hotels on earth dazzles on, lustre intact, after the first hundred years of turning heads, pushing limits and splashing headlines for making or breaking fortunes. Hot to hotter, this Strip has developed from desert mirage to paradisiacal dream come true for millions. Officially introduced by a railroad town-site auction in 1905, now May 15 marks Las Vegas’ entry to the hallowed century club.

The calendar is crammed with commemorative highpoints shining the spotlight on the city’s historic side, including a time capsule, centennial quilt, 100 murals and public art projects, original theatrical productions, restoration and rededication of heritage precincts and markers at strategic locations of community-shaping occasions. A Folk Life Festival at the Clark County Government Centre focuses on various ethnic cultures’ foods, crafts, music and dances.

Vegas being Vegas, it cannot possibly hold itself to a day’s shenanigans, so throughout 2005 rolls forth the red rug (sequin-studded to boot, in this case), inviting visitors and residents alike to explore its guts-and-glory reputation. Plenty more opportunities for revelry are revealed…pioneer wagon processions, gala balls, film fests, 100 weddings to mark the same number of years, a record-setting 'largest birthday cake baked in the world’, an air show flying 100 vintage planes over the Strip and the revival of the rollicking Helldorado Parade – a longtime city tradition from 1934 to 1997, hoping to become an annual affair again with trademark rodeo, wild carnival and mind-blowing luminous fireworks.

Verve contributor, Meher Marfatia, is a Mumbai-based freelance writer with a special interest in the arts. She enjoys being bitten by the travel bug between penning books for children.