When anyone asks me where to stay, eat and play while in Vegas, I answer the question with a question: "How much money do you have to spend?" Let's face it, money is the reason Vegas exists. There is something fun for every budget, but before I can dispense recommendations for a French restaurant, I need to know if we're talking Guy Savoy at Caesars or the Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich at Arby's.

What if you had $1 million to spend in Vegas and 48 hours to do it? It's easy enough to put that chunk of change on the roulette wheel or play a few hands of high stakes poker, but that's a few minutes of fun and then what?

Here's some of the best ways to blow your noveau fortune:

WHERE TO STAY
First thing you need to do is find a suitable suite to brush your teeth and gussy up before heading back out to the tables or clubs. If you actually find the time or energy to sleep, good luck, but in any case, you have a million dollars, the money isn't going to spend itself and you have appearances to keep.

Vegas' most opulent suites used to be reserved exclusively for invitation-only casino high rollers -- "whales" with multi-million dollar credit lines and minimum bets of $100,000 a hand. Now, a lottery scratch-off winner, reality show winner or anyone with the cash, can reserve one of these neon palaces.

The most expensive suite in Vegas, and perhaps the world, is the $40,000 a night Hugh Hefner Sky Villa on the 34th and 35th floors of the Palms Fantasy Tower. For the $.46 you're spending each second, you may want to invite 20-30 friends to hang out with you in the cantilevered outdoor pool jacuzzi (pictured). The suite is modeled after the Playboy Mansion in California and also features a round, revolving bed with mirrored ceiling and artwork including Hef originals and prints of the Marilyn Monroe and Pamela Anderson Playboy photo shoots.

If $40,000 a night seems too extravagant, try some of the Palms Fantasy Suites. The more modest Hardwood Suite houses a basketball half-court, a bar, a locker room, an oversized bed and great views for only $25,000 a night. For $15,000 each night, you can bowl naked in the Kingpin Suite which features two bowling lanes, a bar and plenty of room to spread out.

If you want to divert even more of your lodging funds to your gambling budget, try the Crib Suite (pictured above) for $4000 a night. You can hire a star DJ for a few thousand dollars and throw a great party. In keeping the hip-hop theme, the hydraulic beds make for a great time, but will ruin you for regular, non-Craftmatic beds. The Crib Suite also has one of the fantasy suite Show Showers which translates "a pole in the shower with windows." You can figure out the uses.

If you're looking for something more classic Vegas, try the Verona Suite at Las Vegas Hilton which has more than 25 televisions, six fireplaces and his and her jacuzzis. The nightly tab is $17,500 which is a little more than $1 a square foot.

TOYS & OTHER VICES

Exotic Cars at Caesars Palace has more than 40 cars priced more than $1 million and it is the only Koenigsegg dealer in the U.S. As such, this hot rod heaven is the only place around here to get the Koenigsegg CCX, the U.S. version of the world's fastest production car. The highly sought super-car will set you back around $700K before options so trick it out a little bit, but keep a little cash so you can afford the continually rising gas prices.

Whether it's suites or cars, Vegas casinos are competing for high rollers from Macau to Dubai and if one of the luxury casinos gets an exotic car dealership, chances are they'll all get them. Wynn Las Vegas has a Penske Ferrari Maserrati dealership and in the last couple of years, a Lamborghini dealership opened nearby and King of Cars has a Rolls Royce Bentley dealership.

Feeling active? Treat a few friends to $500 rounds of golf. If you're staying at Wynn Las Vegas, you can play the only course on the Strip (above) even getting a suite right on the links. If you're pimping it up at Bellagio, the Mansion or the Sky Lofts at MGM Grand, you're eligible to play Shadow Creek and if you're at Caesars or any of its sister properties, go to Cascata.

Before hitting the links, head over to one of the Davidoff shops in Vegas to grab some stogies. Spend 1 percent of your fortune on a $1,000 box of Fuente OpusX cigars and for added effect, you can either light your cigars with $100 bills or splurge on a $40,000 lighter.

If fashion is your passion, you can probably unload one-third of your million dollars on clothes, shoes and accessories, easy. Your first stop should be The Forum Shops at Caesars. There, you can clean out Jimmy Choos with shoes about $500 a pop. You'll probably spend the rest of the day at boutiques like Armani, Versace, Gucci and Robert Cavalli, but if you have the time, stop by Harry Winston's for a $12,000 watch.

If you still have a shopping bug, cross the Strip and swing into the Esplanade at Wynn Las Vegas. Cartier, Manolo, Gaultier, Chanel and Vuitton will help your mission by taking some of that cash off of your hands in exchange for luxury goods. The quintessential mall in Vegas is Fashion Show Mall and while there are some high-end options there, you only have 48 hours so it's better to stick in the boutiques where it's much easier to drop $20,000 for a couple of outfits. If you do make it Fashion Show Mall, focus on the Sharper Image for the $1,000 Connoisseur Collection of Trump Steaks, a $4,500 robot massage chair, a $5,000 Lord of the Rings pinball machine, a $5,000 7-foot Superman statue and a $9,000 Harley-Davidson jukebox. This might put you over your carry on limit for your flight home, so you may need to set some cash aside for shipping.

FINE DINING & THE $6,000 COMBO MEAL
Some of the most expensive meals can be found at the top French restaurants. Both Guy Savoy at Caesars and Joel Robuchon at the Mansion will lighten your wallet by about $300 per person so be a hero and buy dinner for the whole restaurant. You're on a timeframe here and need to rack up the receipts.

You can head back to the Palms and order the $6,000 combo meal (above) from room service. It's actually a juicy $6 Carl's Jr. hamburger with a juicier $5994 bottle of '82 Petrus. Oh, you also get a side of fries.

If your spending spree could last more than a weekend to drop $1 million you could 104 straight days worth of non-stop dances at Scores Las Vegas or watch Cirque du Soleil's 'O' every day for the next 28 years or enter every event in the World Series of Poker for $194,000, but that's for a different story.

Happy spending.

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As city after city bans or limits smoking in public, they used to say Vegas would be the last haven in America for cigar smokers.

Well, Sin City enacted a smoking ban in the continuing 'Californication' of Vegas and another vice bites the dust.

The ban doesn't totally outlaw stogies here, but it's a slippery legislative slope. OK, I can see why smoking at 7-Eleven and the grocery stores is bad. I'll give you that.

However, as evidenced from photos over the last 10 decades from random cowboys to the Rat Pack to conventioneers, the cigar garners as much lore as anything else in Vegas. Smoking a great cigar is a leisurely pasttime and hey, that's what Vegas is all about.

There are still puff palaces where the cigar is celebrated and here are five places to smoke a cigar in Vegas.

1. Playboy Club -- With every visit here, I get more convinced that this must be like what heaven is like. On a recent trip I chilled in a booth and watched a few celebrities play big money blackjack while sipping on straight gin and smoking a cigar. Not to mention the bevy of bunnies all over the place. The decor (above) has this classic, sexy vibe that's perfect for bringing old-school Vegas alive in a modern environment with a cigar, a cocktail and a bunny tail.

2. Casa Fuente -- This cigar bar is an interesting concept located at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. If you recognize the name, it is affiliated with the Fuente family and in fact they roll a special cigar just for this location.

The ban forced smoking from the patio inside the shopping mecca to the inside confines of the cigar bar, but it's still a welcome oasis. Think about this, while your partner shops, you can chill, light up and even order a mojito. Brilliant.

3. Foundation Room -- If you're the exclusive type and you have a membership to the Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay, you can take the private elevator 43 stories to the top, head to the outdoor balcony and light up while enjoying too-cool-for-words views of the Strip (above).

Since it's a private club, I could have easily substituted the public views at VooDoo at Rio or ghostbar at Palms or even the carbon copy of the Foundation's balcony next door at Mix at THEhotel, but Foundation Room opens its doors to non-members on Monday nights for the Godspeed party. If you go and you got 'em, smoke 'em.

4. Scores -- This isn't your typical gentlemen's club. Sure, there are familiar sights, but the focus here is on indulgence. As an example, the club focuses on wine and champagne instead of the $2 kamikaze shots at other joints and cigars are part of that indulging luxury. In fact, Scores has a 'robusto' section for cigars on their Web site.

5. Havana Cigar Company -- There's a lot of testosterone on this list, so the last spot goes to a chill location at Lake Las Vegas where we can commune with man-made nature. Chicks with sticks are some of the more enticing sights known to man and this location at Montelago Village (they also have a location on Paradise) is a perfect place for unisex smoking.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Hard Rock -- The rocking places to smoke a cigar here are out by the pool and in the sports bar.

Fremont Street -- If your schedule allows a trip Downtown, wait until dark and then light up, walk around and soak in the neon (below) for an old-school Vegas vibe and live entertainment.

Golf Courses -- There are 50 in the area and the temperature isn't in the 100s yet, so enjoy.

BEST PLACES TO BUY A STICK
Most casinos have a humidor or a kiosk with cigars for sale. Davidoff (five locations) stands out, but one of the best casino stores is Cuba Libre at Hard Rock. If I'm hitting Nobu, Body English or a concert at The Joint and caught without my stash, I can duck into there for one of the classiest selections in town.

If you're going off-off-Strip, places like Tobacco Leaf (Southeast), Ideal (McCarran area) or Tinderbox (Northwest) have better pricec and pretty deep inventory on accessories. And all have some sort of online ordering.

For now it looks like cigar smoking and smoking in general are still tolerated. If the De-Vice Squad outlaws half-yard margaritas Downtown or slot machines in grocery stores, then there may be room for concern. Until that happens, I'm just going to keep on with my Fuente 858s and my Romeo y Julieta's Maduro Reserves and smoke 'em while I got 'em.

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When Justin Timberlake performs "Sexy Back" at MGM in January, the song won't have much meaning in Vegas, because the sexy never really went anywhere. Sex has always been served in the Vegas vice buffet from ye olde dam-building days through the Rat Pack era and into the '80s, '90s and the current climate of The Playboy Club years.

With the traveling billboards and cab ads featuring babes showing their bums, it feels like Vegas should get an extra "s" added to its name, or at least officially add "Skin City" to the list of nicknames.

At the heart of the skin trade in Vegas are the sexy shows. Proving that sex sells, and keeps selling, it was back in the '80s when two current shows began sexing it up. Crazy Girls (pictured below) started in 1987 at The Riv. The show was built from the bottoms up, literally. The award-winning ad of the girls in a rearview line-up even became a bronze statue that stops foot traffic on the Strip.

Donn Arden's 'Jubilee' (pictured below) is another sexy show celebrating a long run -- 25 years this year. Except for headliners like Wayne Newton or Tom Jones, 'Jubilee' is probably the closest that any show comes to that old-school Vegas magic. The show is full of production numbers with classic Vegas showgirls in all of their plumed, bangled and fleshed glory.

Another classic showgirl show is 'Folies Bergerie.' It's been in some form at The Tropicana since 1959 and is the longest running show in the US. For those folks looking for something more modern, relatively new shows like 'La Femme' (celebrating year number five), 'Fantasy' and 'Bite' carry the flesh torch proudly. Even Cirque du Soleil has gone sexy with their 'Zumanity.'

Vegas is an equal-opportunity city and there's plenty of entertainment options for those looking for shows featuring sexy men. Chippendales at The Rio is always classic. If you go see the show and get worked up, you can always slide over to Club 3121 and work off some of that energy with Prince. Other hunky shows are 'American Storm', 'Men The Show' and the City's Best-nominated 'Thunder From Down Under.'

The Dark Ages for Stages

There were a few sexy setbacks this year with the closings of 'Splash,' 'Headlights and Tailpipes,' 'Bareback,' 'Skintight,' 'Buckwild,' 'Cover Girls,' 'X' and 'Erocktica.' As prices continue to rise for everything in Vegas, people have to make entertainment decisions. Deciding to spend $30 to watch a 75-minute sexy show over spending $30 to get into a nightclub where there are professional go-go dancers (many from the closed shows), celebrities and sexy singles with the hope of sex is a tough proposition.

It's that hope of something exciting, however you define excitement, that will always draw the crowds to the neon flames, but If these promiscuous productions continue to close, Vegas will need someone to help bring sexy (shows) back.

Related:
- Read More: Sexy Shows Photo Tour
- Vote Now: City's Best Adult Attractions

More Vegas City's Best:
- Celebrity Chefs
- Celebrity Spotting
- Best Casino
- Best Locals Casino
- Best Flair Bartenders
- Best Poker Room
- Best Hotel Pool

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Need a reason to play hookie during the holiday season? Help Sin City Brewery celebrate its one-year anniversary with dollar beers (four fresh brews to choose from) all day on Mon., Dec. 11.

Sin City Brewery is also up for a City's Best award for best beer. Vote Now.

Oh, and for Dec. 12, click here.

The 48-hour marathon opening weekend of the new Playboy Club, Nove Italian restaurant and Moon nightclub at the Palms resort-casino's Fantasy Tower was the ultimate in glamour, glitz and gorgeous girls. Already dubbed "cleavage central in the clouds," the Playboy triplex proved once again that Vegas is the ultimate city in the world for nightlife.

• Playboy king Hugh Hefner wiped away the tears "It's magic, its wonderful. The bunnies are back. The legend is re-born. I've had a lot of adventures in my life, but this truly is the cherry on top of the cake! This is as good as it gets."


• Paris Hilton, wearing Playboy bunny ears took just 10-minutes for a $100,000 shopping spree at the new Playboy Club, which included a Bunny belly ring, 3 Bunny necklaces and two of the largest bling-bling diamond-studded watches!
  
• Christy Hefner who runs the Playboy empire told me: "It is a dream come true. The feeling is euphoric as we recreate the classic cachet in the perfect town with the perfect partners for the next generation." At midnight as partners


• George Maloof and N9NE Group owners Scott DeGraff and Michael Morton declared their new 12,500 sq.ft nightclub MOON officially open, 52 stories atop the 3-story Playboy complex of the $300-million Palm's Fantasy Tower. The ultimate good-luck omen of a full moon shone down from the sky onto the dance floor revelers as the playpen's roof retracted wide open to show the stars and night sky.