London: Hotel rooms for under $2

Paris is known for its palace hotels—dens of luxury that conjure up an earlier empire and carry price tags upwards of €800 ($1000) per night. Of course, not everyone wants to roll like Marie Antoinette, and many travelers would rather have Google Talk (with Internet-based phone calls) than a gilded chandelier. In 2008, the hotels grabbing headlines don't have heated marble floors. They have iMacs, MP3 players, and graffiti artist design. They're also priced (gasp!) under €100 ($125). Here are two of my favorites: Hôtel AmourFun, funky and entirely free of frump, the twenty rooms at Hôtel Amour are among the most hyped in Paris. Each one has a unique design—there's a surreal storybook in 202, a sex-disco in 401, and 204 is entirely covered in leather. Graffiti artist (and hotel partner, along with nightlife scion Thierry Costes) has filled 405 with compromising images of Batman and Robin. This signature room is more expensive, at €150 ($186) per night, but other rooms start at only €90 ($112). In addition to eye-popping design, they all have the same comfy mattresses you'll find at the Hôtel Ritz. In trade, the hotel has ditched the TV and telephone, assuming that their clients have a Blackberry (or at least some mobile phone) and better things to do… like hanging on the fashion-haunted outdoor terrasse. 8 rue Navarin, 9th arrondissement, 011-33/1-48-78-31-80 Mama Shelter This hotel is the newborn love child of interior design star Philippe Starck, French philosopher Cyril Aouizerate, and the founder of Club Med. With its iMacs and Superman-shaped lamps, Mama Shelter appeals to a young and tech-savvy clientele. Rooms start at only €79 ($98), leaving plenty of cash for nocturnal fun. Just downstairs, the hotel bar is already pulling a crowd with its creative cocktails, and the neighboring Flèche d'Or is one of the city's best venues for live rock and electro. Hotel guests even get to jump to the front of their line for live shows. 109 rue de Bagnolet, 20th arrondissement, 011-33/1-43-48-48-48, mamashelter.com MORE FROM BUDGETTRAVEL.COM Paris at a Price That's Right

It looks like we're not the only fans of TripIt.com. LinkedIn.com, a networking site for professionals, has just launched a partnership with the free online travel organizer. As of this morning, LinkedIn members will be able to add a TripIt application to their profiles; anytime they want to share information about a trip they're taking, they can just add the info to the TripIt app. The advantage? Assuming a good chunk of your LinkedIn network adds the TripIt application, too, you'll be in tune with where and when everyone you're connected to is traveling. That way if you're planning a trip to, say, San Francisco, and you find that a few of your LinkedIn connections will be there at the same time, you can arrange to meet. Both TripIt and LinkedIn appeal to business professionals, so the companies see this primarily as a way to stay connected within your professional peers. But we think the application is just as valuable for leisure travel. Sure, your LinkedIn network might consist of people within your field, but chances are, a lot of those people are also your friends. As has always been the case with TripIt, when you upload a trip, you can choose whether or not to make it available to the public. In other words, if you don't want your colleagues knowing about your trip to Vegas this weekend, you can choose to keep that one under wraps. EARLIER Our earlier TripIt review

Now open at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H.: Andy Warhol: Pop Politics. The exhibit showcases more than 60 of the Pop Art phenom's political works—some highlights are images of the Kennedys (including Jackie), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Queen Elizabeth II, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon, in Warhol's signature cartoon-y color palette. To add some context to the artist's pop culture references, there are archival materials from Warhol's "time capsules". Turns out he was quite a packrat—by the time of his death, he had collected more than 600 boxes of papers, photos, records, and correspondence. The significant materials have been displayed in relation to the exhibit—for example, there's a letter from President-Elect Nixon for administration recommendations. As we approach Election Day (finally), this exhibit presents a timely, relevant way to look back on how we got here. What would Warhol make of politics today? Who knows. But if you get a chance to stroll through his political works, it might be fun to imagine the possibilities. The Currier also has European and American paintings, decorative arts, photographs, and sculpture, including works by Picasso, Monet, O'Keeffe, Wyeth, and LeWitt. Manchester is about an hour's drive north of Boston. 150 Ash Street, Manchester, N.H., 603-669-6144, ext. 108, currier.org. Closed Tuesdays, adults $10, kids 18 and under free, admission is free for all ages between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturdays. Exhibition through Jan. 4, 2009. Read about Andy Warhol on pbs.org. MORE TO DO IN MANCHESTER Take a walking tour of downtown. And here's a handy map. MORE TRAVEL BLOGS Visit travel.alltop.com

The first peak-to-peak gondola in North America opens at Whistler Blackcomb Resort in British Columbia, Canada, on December 12. Its 28-person cabins will zip 2.73 miles from Whistler Mountain to Blackcomb Mountain in 11 minutes—saving skiers valuable time that they can use to tackle over 8,000 acres on both mountain faces. The aptly named Peak 2 Peak gondola operates at a record breaking white-knuckle height; it's suspended 1,427 feet above the valley floor. Daily lift tickets, which include rides on the gondola, start at $66 (U.S. dollars), depending on the time of year. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has also been thinking big and will unveil a faster, spiffier aerial tram (the TramFormation, nicknamed the "Big Red Box") on December 20. It will transport 100 people from Teton Village to the summit of Rendezvous Mountain in nine minutes. That's 50 people and one-and-a-half minutes better than the original tram, which closed for renovations in 2006. From the top, a staggering 10,450 feet above sea level, thrill-seekers can ski one of the largest vertical drops in the United States: 4,139 feet down snaking black-diamond trails. The tram is imprinted with Wyoming's iconic silhouette of a bucking bronco, and it has large glass walls on all sides that offer dramatic views of neighboring Grand Teton National Park. An $82 lift ticket gives skiers unlimited access to the new tram, all the slopes and lifts for the day, while a $20 sightseeing tram ticket lets non-skiers scope out the magnificent views. —Helen I. Hwang