Ever since I found TripAdvisor.com a few short years ago, I have been enamored with this website. While at first the site was difficult for me to navigate, once I got the hang of the different resources available (and learned to ignore the many ads) I was able to delve into a plethora of useful information on seemingly every destination worldwide. TripAdvisor allows me to research vacations, scope out things to do while on business trips, and most importantly, tag along with other people’s experiences and live vicariously through their travel.
I mainly use this website to look at hotel reviews and read the forums. From my experience using TripAdvisor as a resource for my trips to Hawaii, Aruba, and Taiwan, the advice on the forums and hotel reviews have been spot-on. You do have to take all the reviews, discussions, and advice with a grain of salt, of course, but after spending some time on the website, it becomes pretty easy to tell who is really helpful and who has an agenda.
Below is my TripAdvisor travel map, which shows all the places I’ve visited around the world. I was going to just put this as a permanent widget in my sidebar but I don’t know how, so if you do know how please tell me. 🙂
I’ve often remarked to my husband that many people probably think I am a travel agent because I do so much research on travel. My real job is actually very different from the travel industry, as I work in Finance. But my secret weapon for travel research is actually TripAdvisor!
Travels with Sandy 
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