This room is as big as my house! And with the balcony, even bigger!

Panorama of Vegas Strip

So if you read my previous story about our invitation to stay at the Encore, that stay was the just the first half of our trip. The second half of our trip was an invitation to stay at The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. I love the Cosmopolitan, and again, if you read my posts from July, you’ll see that we stayed at The Cosmo this summer, including dinner at Momofuku. This hotel is geared towards the millennials and jetset crowd with a penchant for the naughtier side of luxury. The overall color theme of the hotel is purple and gray with wood and steel trim and accents. I really dig the hotel, it does have a cool hip vibe that screams La Dolce Vegas. The visual aesthetics of the hotel make it an eyeful to just walk around and take it all in. Think a grown up version of Hard Rock Hotel exuding the Vegas high-roller life.

The hotel also has some great restaurants, like I said before Momofuku, Egg Slut, and Holsteins are some of my favorites. (when there’s not a line to get in) A large casino, an awesome party pool, and an ice skating rink!. Yes, In the winter time, they freeze the Boulevard Pool, situated above three stories above the Las Vegas strip facing planet Hollywood, and turn it into a skating rink. I need to do that next time, especially after watching I, Tonya, and start working on my triple axel. The Chandelier Bar is just an amazing installation. It’s one of those objects you look at … and you look at, and the more you look, the more you see. 30 feet of crystals is awesome enough from ceiling to bar, but the expanse of the chandelier, it covers around 600 sq ft or so, stretching from one side of the bar to the other. Can you imagine the clean process to keep this thing sparkling? Whoa!

So back to the story of this current visit, we had upstairs  to the room and upon opening the door, we are met with gray walls, outlines of a couple of doors, artwork on the walls and a long hallway. I thought to myself this is really weird what is going on here as I thought walked down the hall, where’s the room? When the room is revealed to me, I’m faced with a massive living room area, a huge bedroom, a wrap around balcony on east and south sides of the corner room. This was huge! I will be honest with you, I’ve stayed at some nice hotels, but nothing ever on this scale. Two 60 inch TVs hanging on the walls, one in the living room, and one in the bedroom, a huge kitchen area, although devoid of oven, fridge or microwave. But it did have a wine fridge for our planned mimosas. I just wish I had more friends that I could’ve invited over and we could’ve had an awesome party here!

The bath…area, for lack of a better word is a huge open-floorplan-esque layout. Japanese soaking tub, a separate shower sits in the middle of two good sized vanities. A water closet, towel heater and large closet make up around 200 sq ft. of space. A glass wall separates the bath from the sleeping area. Large comfy king bed with night light and table stands. The full glass wall also includes sliding glass doors to step out to the balcony. As a matter of fact, there are 3 doors for balcony entrance: one from bedroom and two from the living room. And what a balcony it is. Huge! Another 400 sq ft of balcony space, and on a perfect day like this, just sitting out here and over looking the strip is just incredible to experience. For the fact that this was December, the weather was absolutely perfect for sitting out and looking down a t the strip, over to the City Center, and out over eastern Vegas to the mountains. Look north, and you go from Planet Hollywood, Paris, Ballys, Flamingo, a part of the High Roller, Venetian, Palazzo and the Encore. Look south over Vdara, Aria, Veer, Mandarin Oriental and MGM. What views!

Looking back now, I realize that I have been spoiled for life. Not life as in time, but as in La Vita. I want to live more, take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. No more passing up on opportunities. No more being intimidated into failure. I want this life! A life that beautiful and thrilling and breathtaking. These two hotel stays have my head swirling with ideas and dreams of what the future could hold. Next time I see someone in a Ferrari, I’m going to ask him, what do you do to afford this. And then I’m going to start doing that. I love Ferraris! And double terraced balcony rooms. And traveling the world. And sharing my stories in hopes that maybe I’ll inspire someone else to reach for the stars.

As the rumors fly around the F1 world of Bernd Maylander’s retirement as the F1 Safety Car driver, I decided to through my hat into the ring of possible successors.

So I decided get behind the wheel of a Mercedes AMG GT S to get some feel for my new job. I did so by heading over to Exotics Racing in Las Vegas, and signed up for 7 laps in a MAMGGTS. Unfortunately, I had two points of failure: Turns out Maylander is not retiring, and this detuned MAMGSGTS was a bit of a disappointment.

Maybe disappointment is an overstatement, more like, I expected more and it just didn’t quite deliver. And you can tell by the fact that I really didn’t have much to say during the video. The whole time I was thinking, “Where is the real MAMG?” The GT S version is listed at 503hp. Honestly, it felt more like high 3’s or maybe just cracking 400. My GT550 plants me in the seat more than this.

Coming onto the main straight, you roll onto the throttle, and the car limps up to speed. So next lap, you punch the throttle, and it’s the same thing. The turbo lag was huge! The disappointment immense. But I’m not sure if this was a detuned safety feature, or if the real MAMG suffers through this as well. Guess I’ll have to go buy one and find out. I actually found one here in L.A. for $94k. Only 25k miles and gray. Great, cause I did not want a black! A black AMG is so L.A.

The car is, as expected, well balanced, but I probably was not going fast enough to really get a proper feel of under/over steer. But at the same time, that back-end did step out ever so slightly on the off-camber turn 5.  Way too soft for a racer. Also, at the end of the straight, you slam on the brakes, and unlike anything I’ve felt in the $150k+ supercar range, I feel the ABS kicking back and squirming under the pressure. With those huge slotted AND cross-drilled rotors, I figured this thing would stop on a dime. But closer inspection reveals a lack of Brembos or even the home grown Mercedes 6-piston calipers. So again, maybe part of the detuning is to not allow the car to stop on a dime, and thereby keeping novice drivers from overstepping their limits.

The interior of the car was quite nice though. All sorts of chrome knobs to turn and switches to flick. Starting the engine, that rumble is beautiful! The sound is something that, now that I think about it, sounds weird. The car is a front engine, but when you start it, the rumble comes through as if its coming from the rear. Maybe some audio piping? Maybe just the acoustics of the cabin. And why not, since it’s a 2-seater. This gives it a racers edge as if its a mid engine. The V8 sound is low and rumbly, contrary to a Ferrari purr or a Nissan scream. It sounds more NASCAR oval racer than F1 road car.

The steering wheel is a plump handful of suede to grip. I was intrigued as to how full uniformed it was, all the way around the hand grips. No thumb bulge to provide that extra leverage. Guess they never had an issue getting this thing around Monaco. The paddle shifters have interesting inscriptions: Up and Down. Well, if you’re paying $200k for a new MAMGGTS and you need inscriptions telling you which way to shift… then inscriptions you shall have. I just thought this the one of the more weird things I saw on the car. But again, maybe this was for the novices at the track. Something Exotics had inscribed for them. Who knows? Let’s head down tomorrow to confirm if this is on the public cars 🙂

Recently we were invited by the Wynn Group for us stay at their follow up hotel to the Wynn, The Encore. Both buildings stand as icons anchoring the north end of the Las Vegas strip. When the Wynn was built, it stood out as a beacon of new design for Las Vegas properties. On the spots where the mid-century art deco properties of the old Flamingo, Stardust, and the Sands, they were being replaced by replicas. Treasure Island came along with it’s Caribbean island theme, the Mirage came along with this desert island theme, Harrah’s celebrated a Mardi Gras theme. Then the Wynn came along and stood on it’s own look. Not following the old trend of Las Vegas mimicry, it’s large reflective, metallic brown monolithic design stood in stark contrast to the other Las Vegas hotels. And still does. It even faced a different direction, facing south-north, whereas most hotels faced east-west or west-east, depending on which side of the strip they were on. It was beautiful and it was completely different. Even the roof line was interesting, the way the building had a swoop to replicate the swooshing wind of the desert sands blowing your money out of your pockets.

The Wynn quickly became the standard for luxury on the strip. It was given a 4-diamond rating by Forbes and 4-Diamond by AAA. (although the Tower Suites are 5-star and Diamond, so step it up!) Not even the Bellagio gets that! The Wynn opened so well, and made so much money, that they decided to build a sister property to follow it up 2 years later. And appropriately, they called it the Encore. Although the Encore follows the Wynn theme, it did so in a slightly different manner. The Wynn has a slightly less overt statement of luxury which adds to its luxurious statement, a perfect case of less is more. But the Encore, was designed to capture the younger wealthy crowd. Where as the Wynn stood out to the old school high rollers, the Encore dealt to the new nouveau riche. The younger crowd with the same amount of money to burn for a bottle of Veuve Clicqout or Dom Perignon in the night club. The thirtysomethings with a couple grand to drop on a weekend in the high rise suite, a cabana by the pool, and black chips at the table. This is going to be a little livelier, a little more rambunctious. And it does so ever so slightly. That’s what I like about the Wynn: its understated luxury appeal. It’s not over-the-top trying to wow you with design. It’s calm cool design simply lulls you into a clean sense of comfort and the notion that it takes a fine eye to recognize luxury.

So we took the Encore up on its offer to come stay for a couple of days. Upon arrival, we leave the bags to the Bellman, and we hop inline to check in. I still wish somebody would come up with a better check in process than standing in this bank teller line waiting to be called next!  Standing there, I noticed an awful lot of children here. It seems there are an awful lot of families checking in at this time, but then again, it was the day after Christmas, so why not. The kids are out of school, the parents are out of work, make that away from work, and why not bring the family down. That is one of the more appealing aspects of the Wynn and the Encore properties is that they are mature enough to make it safe for families and children. You don’t have to worry about walking through the crowd with a couple of under-dressed, under-aged girls walking through or the local bros chugging beer in the walkways blurting out obscenities.

We check in, which was rather effortlessly for our reservation. I was surprised in fact, that they didn’t offer us an upgrade, but it’s OK I would’ve said no anyway. The tower suite is fine for us and I’ll talk about that more in a second. Walking in, the room has a nice sleeping area with a swivel TV wall to separate it from the seating parlor. The Encore theme is cream, tan and brown accented with high gloss lacquer and gold trim. And again it’s very inviting, very comfortable, and feels quite elegant. I love the room electronic lighting controls. This allows you to simply press one button and all the lights in the room come on, the curtains open and luxury welcomes you. There are controls on the walls and bedside tablets to control the lights, temperature, order food, check bank account balances (just kidding on the account balances).

The bathroom is large, with a spacious shower, a rather long tub, dual vanity, bottom of champagne and separate water closet. Oh wait, that was our bottle, didn’t see Nancy put that there. I can’t wait to stay in one of the one bedroom suites with the Jacuzzi tub next time. The dual vanity has plenty of space, and Nancy’s favorite, in-wall TV to watch while doing make-up. Two plush bathrobes and slippers round out the bath luxury.

One of my favorite things about the Wynn room is one TV that swivels between the bed and seating areas. Just a cool feature, one of the things where you don’t really need two TVs that close to one another.  The room has some nice artwork to it, nothing that stands out so bold as as dogs playing poker on velvet, and the lighting fixtures are high end art pieces themselves. The high ceilings give the 745 sq-ft room an even larger feel and undermount lighting on the cabinets provide a nice warmth to the room.

After we call the Bellman up and gather our  bags, another totally polite fellow, we head down to further decompress. The Lobby Bar and Cafe is at the base of the elevators. This is great as it allows you to simply go down take a few steps and sit down at the bar. You don’t have to go trotting through the lobby, cross through the casino to get a drink. Again I like my luxury nice and easy. We grab a late night bite to eat to rejuvenate ourselves with a couple of cocktails to build up our courage to hit the tables. Short rib fries with caramelized red onions, some sort of exotic tasting sauce (sorry… I forget the details) and feta cheese (who could forget that!). Very tasty, was tempted to order a second round but decided to eat light at that point. I did decide to follow the lead of the Infomercial for Encore and try the Sinatra Smash. It’s a bourbon-based drink with extra grenadine and some juice. Sorry, but this was just a little too sweet for me. I couldn’t imagine Ol’ Blue Eyes taking something like this down. Maybe his date, I could definitely see Debbie Reynolds knocking a few back though. My wife orders a delicious St-Germain based Vodka Martini. Now that was nice. We hit the floor around 11 o’clock so things were just starting to heat up. Tables were crowded so I shied away and join my wife on some slots. We had a good time for a couple of hours and decided to call it a night. At the end of the evening I managed to keep my losses to a paltry $23. My wife refused to tell me how much she lost. I guess that’s why we got the room invite 🙂

The next morning we wake well rested. These beds are comfy, supportive, and super luxurious, making it very difficult to get out of. I wonder where do you actually find beds like this in the real world? Next time I’ve got a pull off the sheet to get the tag and model number because this was a wonderful night sleep. Tonight we dine at the Country Club restaurant. The SW, the steakhouse at the Wynn, is one of my favorite spots in the world to eat. The food is great, service is fantastic, and who can beat the lakeside show. Giant flowers, as in 30 feet in diameter popup out of the man made lake, dancing around to music. Bodies breach and submerge, colorful marionettes dance about, its an amazing dinner show.

So I wanted to try something new. The Country Club is  is what you would expect it to be a restaurant Located on a golf course. Wynn has the only golf course technically “on the strip”, but believe or not, there are 5 golf courses within a mile radius of the strip. That’s wild! Who knew!?! White linen tables, dark wood sculpted trim and attentive waiters make the interior. And great waiters they are. Very attentive, and get this, when I asked how many Scallops were in the order, he responded 4. Then my wife mentioned that she would give me a bite or two of her steak, and the waiter immediately offers to split the orders and make us both a mini surf-n-turf! Awesome! The NY Strip had the perfect char to it, the Scallops were plump and juicy, it was a perfect meal. It’s a medium size restaurant I would estimate it seats about 50, compared to Cheesecake Factory, I guess that’s actually small. But what it does is it creates a very cozy and intimate environment and provides the perfect background for a nice relaxing dinner. This is a nice breath of fresh air that let you sit back and relax for a bit and enjoy our wine. Dinner was delightful, dessert was wonderful, but now it’s time to head back to the tables!