By Olivia Flight Finder Olivia is a San Diego native, splitting her time between there and Seattle. When she’s not at her local coffee shop writing about slow travel, you’ll find her hiking or road tripping along the West Coast.

When you touch down at the Las Vegas airport, you’re immediately greeted by dinging slot machines in the terminal.

And what do you expect? It’s Vegas. You came here to gamble, drink, and exist in a pocket outside of reality where it’s always party time. The last thing on your to-do list is… learn.

But get out of Paradise, off the main tourist track, and into VEGAS Vegas. Here, things aren’t as commercialized or sanitized, so they get a little more interesting. And when I say “interesting”, I mean interesting.

Fremont Street is rougher around the edges and doesn’t shy away from the city’s grittiness. Here you’ll find the Mob Museum. This is one of the nicer museums in town, and it shows — in-depth history, impressive artefacts, and theming to make your head spin. The speakeasy downstairs (free entry with museum admission, or if you can find someone to give you the week’s password) sells jars of moonshine and serves its Old-Fashioned in a hollowed out book. It’s all a bit Disneyland-esque, but even just acknowledging the history of the mob’s role in Vegas is a big step up from anything on the Strip.

A few blocks behind S Las Vegas Blvd, in a nondescript brown building, we find our next stop: The Atomic Museum. It also deals in history, but takes things in a different direction. Before names like Bugsy Siegel and Moe Dalitz set up shop here, the US government was bombing the ever-loving nonsense out of Southern Nevada. This museum provides a history of those tests, along with America’s journey through the Atomic Age in general. The dissonance between melted shards of Hiroshima’s windows and Kix cereals’ “collectible Atomic Bomb ring” is jarring, to say the least.

Go just north of the Strip, where the glitz drops off and becomes a sea of strip malls, and you might end up somewhere like the Erotic Heritage Museum. Interested in sex ed but fully disinterested in notions of classiness, this museum is built in what appears to be an old storeroom and houses objects like adult film props, vintage peep show boxes, and historic undergarments. Signs politely request that guests do not “grope, lick, fondle, or otherwise—” *ahem* the exhibits. An entire segment is dedicated to advertising the Chicken Ranch, Nevada’s most famous licensed brothel.

While it’s probably not the kind of place you take your mother, and it could probably use a little remodelling, there’s an authenticity to it that much of Vegas seems to lack these days. It makes the corporate sanitization of the Strip that’s been increasing for decades seem all the more noticeable. Underneath the glitz, there’s a complicated, often dark, and more-than-a-little crazy city still trudging on below.

Further north again, squarely between the Strip and DTLV, we have our final stop: Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum, straddling the line between “genuine attempt at preserving history” and “ P. T. Barnum in the 21st century.” The push and pull between authenticity and showbiz antics is on full display here.

The TV paranormal investigator has long been accused of everything from faking ghost evidence to using dead celebrities for clout, but nonetheless, his museum full of serial killers’ possessions, horror memorabilia, and (allegedly) several ghosts, draws quite a crowd.

While some of the artefacts are of… dubious authenticity, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. I haven’t had a chance to visit, but I spoke to many visitors and locals alike who have, and they claimed it was well worth the $58 (!) admission fee — even if the tour guides (allegedly) keep the rooms hot and deny water to guests in the hopes they pass out and provide “proof” of the artefacts’ power. They’ve got quite the macabre collection, and in 2018, the city’s mayor presented them an award for historic preservation.

We could sit here and criticize each of these museums for their overblown attempts to draw the crowd with a bit of a show, but how else can it really be done in Vegas? People visit precisely to be blinded by the electric glow of the casinos, overstimulated by extremes, and pay too much for drinks served in random household objects.

Perhaps the best solution is indeed to keep the Atomic Kix Cereal next to pieces of bomb shrapnel — that way you pull them in with the fun and flashiness, and then you make them face the sobering reality of what goes on behind the scenes.

Last week, Detour reader Jim asked for your help picking his next trip as a mature solo traveller. As always, we received a range of great suggestions from like-minded JFC-ers, so we’ve picked out a few that really fit the bill.

Reader Nia had not one but three destinations in mind, starting close to Jim’s favourite city, Rome:

And that’s just scratching the surface of all that Naples has to offer! Having spent a lot of time in the city, flight Finder Fran previously shared her Neapolitan highlights with us. As well as being a favourite city break destination, she gives it top marks as a base for visiting glorious Sorrento or the island of Capri.

Next on Nia’s list:

Slovenia gets a resounding thumbs-up from us here at JFC HQ. Editor Katy has visited Ljubljana twice and would go again in a heartbeat. The leafy riverside walkways, local eateries and second-hand book stalls sit against a backdrop of quirky street art and an imposing hilltop castle (complete with a funicular railway and mountain views!).

However, you’ll find the best outlook in town atop the Nebotičnik Skyscraper. We’d suggest soaking it all in from the comfort of the rooftop terrace, and washing it down with a cocktail and a slice of honey cake.

Last but not least, Nia’s taking us deeper into the Balkans:

Fun fact about Skopje: it’s kind of fake. That is to say, there’s not much there that’s truly old or historical, with 80% of the city having been destroyed in an earthquake in 1963.

In a bid to give Skopje’s streets a new lease on life, the North Macedonian government spent much of the early 2010s erecting fancy statues and baroque facades around the city centre. The result is a city that divides opinion—some say it’s kitschy, others say it reminds them (for better or worse) of Vegas or Disneyland. Either way, it’s pretty intriguing!

We know from Jim’s message that he’s no stranger to a bit of long-haul travel either, having spent time in both Venezuela and South Africa. So, for something completely different…

Our reader didn’t even manage to touch on the lush islands and moreish cuisine. Frankly, the variety of things to see and do in Thailand and Cambodia could see you planning another 3-month stint abroad, Jim! But if there’s a specific aspect that interests you, our community is almost certainly talking about it already.

Hopefully that’s given you (and at least a few others!) a healthy dose of inspiration, Jim. And if we didn’t quite hit the nail on the head, let us know. JFC won’t rest until you’ve all found the next trip that excites you enough to click ‘Book Now’!

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• Bring in May the Celtic way, with fire, flatbread, and faux human sacrifice.
• This weekend marks the Thai new year, AKA Songkran—but why on earth do they celebrate with nationwide water fights?
• Here’s how an obscure tax loophole is responsible for changing the way US airlines charge for checked bags.
• And finally, it turns out all those movies where castaways write “HELP” on the beach weren’t a wasted watch, after three fishermen were rescued from the uninhabited Pikelot Atoll in Micronesia on Tuesday.
  The trio were stranded on Pikelot when a motor on their skiff died, and spent a week living off coconut flesh and sleeping under a DIY shelter. Who knows, if they’d stayed there any longer, maybe a volleyball would have washed ashore…