I've been to every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip — but there are just 5 that I'll always revisit.
Mandalay Bay has some of the best pools in Las Vegas.
Mandalay Bay may be a bit south on The Strip, but it's still worth a visit. I love that it offers plenty of activities, like the on-site Shark Reef Aquarium.
This hotel's 11-acre "aquatic playground" is also one of the coolest pool complexes in the entire city. You'll find a lazy river, wave pool, and more — but my favorite is the Moorea Beach Club, an adults-only, tops-optional pool complex with cabanas and daybeds for rental.
The real draw for me, though, is that even the most basic-level rooms feel big and bright, with 550 square feet of space and floor-to-ceiling windows.
I love that NoMad has a sleek aesthetic and a quiet, private pool.
A luxurious "hotel within a hotel," NoMad spans the top four floors of Park MGM. Compared to Park MGM's cheery and bright decor, NoMad has a darker, moodier aesthetic.
The rooms include original artwork, hardwood floors, and beautiful small touches throughout. Whenever I stay here, I feel like I'm in a luxe, big-city apartment instead of a hotel room.
One of my favorite amenities is the quiet pool reserved for NoMad guests, who can enjoy all of Park MGM's pools and cabanas even when the pool is closed.
Vdara is a great casino-free pick for families.
Vdara is a rare Vegas resort without any casinos, making this a great option for non-gamblers, families, and business travelers. (Still, if you're looking to visit a blackjack table, you can easily visit the nearby casinos at the Aria, the Bellagio, and Cosmopolitan.)
The modern suites with full kitchens provide an apartment-style experience. Plus, Vdara offers large windows with the best views of the Bellagio fountains and bright Vegas sunsets.
My favorite budget hotel is the Flamingo.
This is the best of the budget options on The Strip — and it's located right in the middle of all the action. Whenever I'm here, I can easily walk to the monorail, High Roller Ferris wheel, and shopping hubs, like the LINQ Promenade.
When it comes to the hotel itself, I love the Flamingo's outdoor garden and Wildlife Habitat (which, yes, features real Chilean flamingoes).
I also enjoy visiting the adults-only GO Pool. Offering the atmosphere of a day club, pool enthusiasts line up well before it opens to claim chairs and daybeds. Music blasts all day and there are waterfalls, small lounging islands, and even outdoor craps tables.
Finally, the Flamingo has several stellar restaurant options. One of my favorites is Bugsy & Meyer's, a steakhouse with vintage decor and a facade that resembles an old general store.
Out of all the hotels I've visited, the Wynn is my favorite.
The Wynn Las Vegas (and its sister hotel, Encore) is my absolute favorite hotel complex in all of Las Vegas.
The rooms are modern, spacious, and comfortable. Plus, I love that they include thoughtful touches like nice stemware and tablets for room controls, room service, and more.
I'm also consistently impressed by the Wynn's food options. You'll find tons of high-quality restaurants here, including one of the few buffets on The Strip.
Personally, I always look forward to having a sumptuous dinner at SW Steakhouse — and then, visiting the lakeside patio for a quirky light show.
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Business Insider
7 hours ago
- Business Insider
I've been to every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip — but there are just 5 that I'll always revisit.
Mandalay Bay has some of the best pools in Las Vegas. Mandalay Bay may be a bit south on The Strip, but it's still worth a visit. I love that it offers plenty of activities, like the on-site Shark Reef Aquarium. This hotel's 11-acre "aquatic playground" is also one of the coolest pool complexes in the entire city. You'll find a lazy river, wave pool, and more — but my favorite is the Moorea Beach Club, an adults-only, tops-optional pool complex with cabanas and daybeds for rental. The real draw for me, though, is that even the most basic-level rooms feel big and bright, with 550 square feet of space and floor-to-ceiling windows. I love that NoMad has a sleek aesthetic and a quiet, private pool. A luxurious "hotel within a hotel," NoMad spans the top four floors of Park MGM. Compared to Park MGM's cheery and bright decor, NoMad has a darker, moodier aesthetic. The rooms include original artwork, hardwood floors, and beautiful small touches throughout. Whenever I stay here, I feel like I'm in a luxe, big-city apartment instead of a hotel room. One of my favorite amenities is the quiet pool reserved for NoMad guests, who can enjoy all of Park MGM's pools and cabanas even when the pool is closed. Vdara is a great casino-free pick for families. Vdara is a rare Vegas resort without any casinos, making this a great option for non-gamblers, families, and business travelers. (Still, if you're looking to visit a blackjack table, you can easily visit the nearby casinos at the Aria, the Bellagio, and Cosmopolitan.) The modern suites with full kitchens provide an apartment-style experience. Plus, Vdara offers large windows with the best views of the Bellagio fountains and bright Vegas sunsets. My favorite budget hotel is the Flamingo. This is the best of the budget options on The Strip — and it's located right in the middle of all the action. Whenever I'm here, I can easily walk to the monorail, High Roller Ferris wheel, and shopping hubs, like the LINQ Promenade. When it comes to the hotel itself, I love the Flamingo's outdoor garden and Wildlife Habitat (which, yes, features real Chilean flamingoes). I also enjoy visiting the adults-only GO Pool. Offering the atmosphere of a day club, pool enthusiasts line up well before it opens to claim chairs and daybeds. Music blasts all day and there are waterfalls, small lounging islands, and even outdoor craps tables. Finally, the Flamingo has several stellar restaurant options. One of my favorites is Bugsy & Meyer's, a steakhouse with vintage decor and a facade that resembles an old general store. Out of all the hotels I've visited, the Wynn is my favorite. The Wynn Las Vegas (and its sister hotel, Encore) is my absolute favorite hotel complex in all of Las Vegas. The rooms are modern, spacious, and comfortable. Plus, I love that they include thoughtful touches like nice stemware and tablets for room controls, room service, and more. I'm also consistently impressed by the Wynn's food options. You'll find tons of high-quality restaurants here, including one of the few buffets on The Strip. Personally, I always look forward to having a sumptuous dinner at SW Steakhouse — and then, visiting the lakeside patio for a quirky light show.
Tom's Guide
2 days ago
- Tom's Guide
I've been using Nespresso's spill-proof iced coffee cup, and it's the best $25 you'll spend this summer
TikTok loves Nespresso's Nomad Iced Coffee Cup. It's probably why it's never in stock. So when I saw the brand had introduced its viral $25 tumbler in a summery pistachio shade, I ran to the checkout to get my hands on it. Two weeks in, and I get the hype. This thing really is spill-proof, and I'm so confident that it won't leak that I've been happily throwing it in my work bag every morning, right next to my laptop and my Kindle. Now that's trust. Best of all, because of Nespresso's new Samra Origins collab, the cup is currently available to buy at for $25. But if the pistachio collection is anything to go by, I'm expecting it to sell out any minute now. Here's why the Nespresso Nomad iced coffee cup is the best purchase I've made to help me survive the sweltering heat of my commute this summer. The Nespresso iced tumbler is spill-proof, dishwasher-safe, and infinitely reusable. The limited-edition Samra Origins colorway also comes with fun illustrations along the bottom of the cup. It's finally iced coffee season, and from now through to September, you won't find me without a frosty coffee in hand. But there's an art to iced coffee, and I much prefer the strong, flavorful stuff I make at home over the glorified milkshakes you can buy at some coffee shops. And many Nespresso users agree, opting to make a coffee to-go every morning over stopping in for a Starbucks on the way to work. Which is why Nespresso created the Nomad tumbler, complete with an 18-oz capacity and a smart straw cap that is totally spill-free. I've even tipped this thing upside-down to see if it can survive a chaotic car ride, and I didn't lose a drop of my precious iced vanilla latte. Assembly is easy, and cleaning is intuitive. Plus, the cup can go through the dishwasher to prevent any lingering smells or nasty residue. The real magic is in the plastic cap which sits over the straw. This blocks any iced coffee from leaving through the cap around the straw insert, and it stays securely in place no matter how much you shake the cup. I also really love the ribbed section around the middle of the cup, which provides some grip when your plastic gets slippy with condensation. Now I've been using this coffee cup for two weeks, I don't think I could phase it out of my routine. But the one thing I wish it had was a little insulation. The lightweight tritan body won't provide any support in keeping your ice cubes intact if you're taking your morning coffee on the go, which means my drink gets a little watery if I take my iced coffee on the sweltering London Underground and wait until I get to the office to take a sip. Nespresso's travel mugs are my go-to for hot coffee, and they keep my Americanos piping hot all through the morning. So Nespresso, if you're reading this, would you consider making a double-walled iced coffee cup to help me keep my cool?
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
This Ultra-remote Destination in Chile Has Stunning Vistas—With Snow-covered Peaks, Fjords, and Lush Forests
After Germán Genskowski and his family decided to set up a homestead on the island of Tierra del Fuego in 1985, it took him four years to build a cabin using hand-sawn timber from the surrounding mountains. He brought tools and appliances into the area bit by bit, traveling two days by boat from the port city of Punta Arenas, on the mainland, to the jetty at Caleta María, where his father, an immigrant from Poland, had worked as a logger in the 1940s. From there, Genskowski would lug materials another full day east along the Azopardo River, nearly to the border with Argentina. From the cabin, the nearest settlement was a three-day horseback ride away. His wife and children would return to Punta Arenas each winter, but Genskowski would remain at the cabin, often cut off from the world by several feet of snow. Today, he is considered one of the last settlers on the sparsely inhabited Chilean side of the island, part of the rain-lashed archipelago where the South American continent ends. I met Genskowski, now 80, on a weeklong trip across Tierra del Fuego led by Explora, a company that leads expeditions throughout South America. He told me how, when a gravel road finally reached his property in 2004, he met the change with a shrug. 'I didn't like it much,' he said. 'I was happy with things as they were.' Things have gotten easier in this isolated part of the island, certainly—a welcome development for Genskowski since a riding accident a decade ago left him unable to mount a horse—but ease was never the point. Our expedition leader, Nicolás Vigil, summed it up when he recited an old Chilean saying before we embarked on our journey: Quien se apura en la Patagonia, pierde su tiempo—'who rushes in Patagonia, wastes their time.' On the first night in Punta Arenas, at Hotel La Yegua Loca, our group of four travelers gathered around a map of the area while the Explora team discussed what the upcoming days would hold: crossing the Strait of Magellan (which separates Tierra del Fuego from the rest of the continent) on a small ferry, a long drive through open pampas, a ride on a fishing boat into the fjords off Admiralty Sound, and hikes up snow-covered peaks and through sprawling forests in Karukinka Natural Park. The latter is a 735,000-acre conservation area that receives just 900 visitors each year. Each excursion would take us deeper into the scarcely touched landscapes in this part of the world. Explora opened its first lodge 30 years ago in Torres del Paine National Park, in Chilean Patagonia, and has since expanded into northern Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Rapa Nui, often called Easter Island. The company quickly gained a reputation for nature-forward design and a commitment to ecological conservation. In 2023, it launched Explora Expeditions, which aims to take small groups into some of the world's least-populated environments. The Tierra del Fuego itinerary was the first of this kind to launch; Sebastián Navarro, an expedition manager with the brand, worked on it for more than a year. Early the next morning, we took a ferry two hours east to the fishing town of Porvenir, the principal settlement on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego (the other half is part of Argentina). We then drove south through austere countryside, where llama-like guanacos grazed in grassland beside the slate-gray water. I saw tortured ñires, a native shrub, bent over sideways, as if pushed into place by the wind. Before long, colors bloomed across the landscape; it felt like stepping out of a dark room into obliterating sun. Forests of lenga beeches blazed in auburn and ocher—it was autumn in the Southern Hemisphere—and wisps of lichen, draped over their branches like gauze, glowed celadon green. Just below one rocky summit, Roberto de la Cerda, one of Explora's guides, showed us how to read the mountainsides as open ledgers of geologic time. Twilight lasted hours. Even the grayscale of distant fog seemed luminous. As the landscape came into focus, so too did its contrasts—between the ageless and the ephemeral, an ancient topography and a changeable climate. The green clover, purple lupine, and bone-white yarrow that grew along the roadside, Vigil explained, had been introduced by sheep farmers in the 19th century. Within decades, the settlers' brutal expansionism had decimated the Indigenous Selk'nam, who'd arrived some 10,000 years before. We arrived at Genskowski's property and settled into one of the three cozy timber cabins he had built by hand, which Explora staffer Ariel Ramirez had spruced up with sheets, towels, and toiletries from one of the brand's lodges. Over the course of three nights, Emanuel Mellado, chef at Explora's lodge in the Atacama Desert, prepared decadent meals of seared guanaco steaks and snow-crab pasta. The next morning, in the slow inky hours before dawn, we boarded a repurposed fishing boat, the Alakush, and sailed west against the wind into Admiralty Sound and down into Parry Bay, both lined with snowcapped peaks that looked as if they had been thrust up from the water's edge. The sky, miraculously clear all morning, clouded over as we veered into a narrow fjord where frigid winds gusted off the barricade glaciers at its southern end. Stepping ashore, we followed the banks of a rushing river, opaque with minerals and sediment, until we reached its glacial source; I could see the ice calving into a metal-gray lagoon. Back on the Alakush, I stood on deck with Danilo Bahamonde, who assists on chartered excursions from spring through fall. When he first came to this area as a teenager some 40 years ago, the glacier extended as far as the fjord, about half a mile away. 'This place changes every year,' he said, stoic about the obvious impact of climate change but still unmistakably awed by a landscape he's known most of his life. 'You get used to seeing things disappear.' That evening back at the cabin, Genskowski told us about a time, not so long ago, when it wasn't uncommon for heavy winter snows to begin in April; that April, autumn foliage had just started to emerge. Not all change means loss. In recent years, new national parks have opened in the archipelago. In September 2023, the remaining descendants of the Selk'nam finally won formal recognition as one of Chile's 11 First Peoples, a profound reversal of the narrative. That gravel road near the Genskowskis' property is still advancing, albeit at barely 3,000 feet per year. He fears the influx of tourism it might eventually bring. Still, on our final night, gathered around the fire where he had spent the better of the day spit-roasting a lamb culled from his flock, that future seemed mercifully remote. The next morning, we headed back north, crossing the winding mountain passes that separate the Genskowskis from the rest of the world, past the rocky summit where, the day before, we'd climbed through fresh, ankle-deep snow under a blazing sun and bright blue sky. Back down in the pampas, we boarded a turboprop to return to Punta Arenas. During our brief 40 minutes in the air, I kept my forehead pressed to the window, watching the mountains as they dissolved into grassland. The hours and days that had dilated so spectacularly on the ground snapped into metronomic order—too fast, too rushed, each second a lost opportunity to look more closely. Below, rivers so blue they were almost black meandered across the pampas: a reminder, perhaps, that the long way is always more beautiful. A version of this story first appeared in the July 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Living on the Edge." Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
