Where to stay in Paris — the city's best areas

When you enter The Loutrel, the upscale hotel in Charleston, S.C.’s fashionable French Quarter, you might feel as if you’re on the front porch of someone’s grand old Southern home, instead of a hotel lobby. And that warm and relaxed welcome is exactly how the hotel wants guests to feel when they walk through its doors.

"Paris syndrome" describes the feeling of visiting Paris for the first time, only to feel disappointed that the city is not as beautiful or enchanting as you expected it to be.

Travel website, Trippy, has put together an awesome infographic showing prices for food, beer, taxis, and hotels in the most and least expensive countries. And the best part is that it updates daily, so you can see the average price of something when you’re planning a trip or once you’re in the destination.

Looking for a new museum to add to your travel to-do list? TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) has released the Travelers’ Choice Top 25 Museums of 2018, including the top 10 worldwide and the top 10 in the United States, with some surprising frontrunners. The findings also highlight bookable ways to see each winner—think VIP tours and scavenger hunts—with some offering the added perk of allowing you to skip the lines to get in.

Getting old has few benefits, but the occasional senior travel discount is one of them. Senior travelers can enjoy a wide range of discounts, but both availability and value vary substantially among different travel sectors and in different parts of the globe.

As we head into a new decade, let’s take some time to acknowledge the incredible events and momentous changes in the travel world since 2010.

If you want to stay at the best hotel in the United States, head to the French Quarter Inn in Charleston, South Carolina. And if you’re looking for the best bargain hotel stay in the world, it’s in a small town in northern Spain. That’s according to TripAdvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Awards, which just shared the best hotel ratings for multiple categories heading into 2019.

Review and booking website Tripadvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) is out with its annual list of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. It’s dominated by iconic attractions, some of which you’re guaranteed to wait in a two-hour line for unless you can purchase skip-the-line passes. It’s also worth noting that almost every attraction on the list is in Europe.

Slurping on scalding roadside pho and running your fingers through mountains of silks while incense wafts from sacred pagodas, everything about Hanoi is a sensory experience. In terms of where to stay in Hanoi, the Old Quarter (Hoan Kiem) places you in the midst of markets and street food spots. If you’d rather sleep away from the roar of motorbikes, check out accommodation in Hanoi’s French Quarter or the monument-studded Ba Dinh. North of the bustling center, the tranquil West Lake (Tay Ho) district is the best area to stay in Hanoi long-term. Overflowing with character, these Hanoi Airbnbs immerse you in the Vietnamese capital.

It was the shower for me. A shower convinced me that more luxury fashion brands should explore expansions into hotels and resorts. This particular shower was in my suite at the Bulgari Hotel Paris, one of the legendary Italian brand’s newer properties opened in December of 2021. For some reason, a lot of luxury resorts and hotels like to tout “rainfall” showers as a feature of their rooms, but for the most part, and in the hundreds of properties I’ve visited, such “rainfall” showers usually feel like a downpour let down. But not at the Bulgari Hotel Paris: this shower was transformative, the droplets so fine yet plentiful and luxuriously soft that I knew I had never felt real rain in actual nature like THIS.

“There is definitely a moment for every food style but having a simple, well executed meal within a great environment is a great pleasure and surely a form of understated luxury for any food lover.”