Women Who Travel Podcast: Bear Encounters in Nevada and Chasing Poachers on the Masai Mara

The beaches of the Azores have it all. On some islands you'll find ocean pools naturally carved in the rugged coast or perhaps soft black-sand beaches. Sometimes the best spot recommended by locals has a mix of both.

It’s inevitable: Every spring when we pull together the Hot List, our annual collection of the world’s best new hotels, restaurants, and cruise ships, a staffer remarks that this latest iteration has got to be the best one ever. After a year’s worth of traveling the globe—to stay the night at a converted farmhouse in the middle of an olive grove outside Marrakech, or sail aboard a beloved cruise line’s inaugural Antarctic voyage—it’s easy to see why we get attached. But this year’s Hot List, our 28th edition, might really be the best one ever. It’s certainly our most diverse, featuring not only a hotel suite that was once Winston Churchill’s office, but also the world’s largest cruise ship and restaurants from Cape Town to Bali. We were surprised and inspired by this year’s honorees, and we know you will be too. These are the Hot List hotel winners for 2024.

Nevada has set its sights on a different kind of tourism. Rather than tout the famous casinos of Las Vegas, the state’s tourism division, Travel Nevada, is pushing rural tourism and the natural beauty of the state. 

Flying in business class to a faraway bucket-list destination like Bora Bora and staying in an overwater bungalow can take years of planning and saving. But it doesn’t have to. With credit card points and miles, you’ll often find some of the best deals and availability for free flights and stays within a month—or even a couple weeks—of your travel dates, making a last-minute trip to a paradise in the South Pacific a lot more realistic than it sounds.

In his semi-autobiographical novel, Roughing It, Mark Twain called Lake Tahoe “the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

The shimmering beauty of Lake Tahoe makes travelers stop and stare.

When news first broke that Saturday Night Live comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost bought a retired 277-foot long Staten Island ferry boat in January 2022, reactions began with curious intrigue but quickly nosedived to comedy punchlines, even providing constant fodder on the sketch comedy show itself.

MGM Resorts CEO and president William Hornbuckle made around $38 million in pay in 2023, more than the CEOs of rival casino resort operators Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands, as detailed in recent SEC filings.

We are lounging on the terrace of Lapis Turris, a medieval watchtower high in the Sibillini mountains, taking it in turns to name films that remind us of the extraordinary landscape that wraps itself around us. Game of Thrones? Skull Island in King Kong? Tolkien’s Rivendell? It’s difficult to pick; this stunning, empty wilderness is Italy’s answer to all three.

With its impressive terrain of imperious mountains, volcano-ravaged landscapes and sumptuous rainforest, Washington State is understandably renowned amongst keen hikers.

Educational travel and voluntourism often serve as a conduit for experiential learning. An educational vacation or community service travel can enrich knowledge of places and customs in ways that can’t be taught via textbooks, especially for younger kids who tend to soak up hands-on lessons like a sponge. Through cultural exploration and immersion, students become enriched as global citizens, while developing a stronger knowledge of language and geography as well as an increased confidence and problem solving skills.

It’s being hailed as the “Great North American Eclipse.” The longest since 1806, in fact, the best since 2017 and the last until 2033 in Alaska, and 2044 in Montana and the Dakotas.