When it comes to FOMO-chasing trip planning, one of the key parts is figuring out where to stay. Depending on the town you’re looking at, there may be a huge variety of neighborhoods to choose from. This is where the answers to your questions from this post about travel preferences come in handy once more.

If you have lots of tourist sites on your agenda, that’s an easy one: you’ll probably want to stay as close as you can to these, budget allowing. I’m about the opposite of that — no shade! I’m just not a fan of crowds — so I usually have to do some creative research. Here are some of the ways that I’ve narrowed down places to stay.

Torvehallerne, in Copenhagen (p/c Iain Cameron)

• Googling “Hipster [city name]” (Shut up, I hate myself)
• Looking for online neighborhood guides. Airbnb has a handy one, as does Fodor’s and TripAdvisor, though the guides aren’t on a central page, so you’ll have to hunt. Here are Paris ones from Fodor’s and TripAdvisor as a start.
• Reading through the New York Times’ 36 Hours In… series. I love these, though to be fair, they’re basically a combination of my Googling “Hipster [city name]” (see above!) and “Completely blowing my budget in [city name].”
• Picking a neighborhood based on its proximity to:
  • A restaurant, coffee shop, or yoga studio I want to check out.
  • Food markets, flea markets, or farmers’ markets. (The best one so far as been Torvehallerne in Copenhagen. Oh man, I’m drooling just thinking about it!)
  • Holiday markets, I can’t forget those! ChristmasMarkets.com is a great resource if you’re like me and are positively obsessed with mulled wine once there’s the slightest chill in the air.
  • Weird tourist attractions. I looooooove bizarre museums, creepy graveyards, strange statues (the Mary Tyler Moore statue in Minneapolis, anyone?): stuff that’s just generally off the beaten path. I’ll punch stuff into Google like “Weird things to do in [city name]” and inevitably find sites like Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, Cool Stuff in Paris, and so. Perfect Internet black hole material!
• Crowdsourcing on Facebook or Twitter. I’ll see if anyone else I know has been there and has recommendations on where to stay.
• Going analog. While my research is normally digital, I still love to go to the bookstore and browse the travel aisle. You’ll of course find the Lonely Planet and Time Out guidebooks, but Karen Brown’s Exceptional Places to Stay books are also hugely helpful.
• Checking out a map, plain and simple. I want to see the geography and get an idea of what’s nearby, how walkable it is (or how close public transport is), and if I’m around any neat spots that my research hasn’t turned up.

So those are the basics I follow for picking a neighborhood. I know, I know, it may sound pretty crazy to put so much effort into a trip you may not ever take (and don’t get me wrong, it totally is). But I’ve always found that the more detailed I get, the more excited I get, and the easier it is for me to forget about the FOMO in the first place!