While you were away: This week’s top travel stories

The three-star Hotel Plaza Opera in Paris is one of five hotels that have signed up to a new pay-what-you-want concept during the peak summer season. Photo: CNN

From Paris with Love
Paris hotels are experimenting with a new honesty system CNN reports. For a limited time this summer, several lodgings in the City of Light are opting for a pay what you want strategy in hopes that it will give hotels honest feedback regarding their value. At last, we can now exact our revenge on snooty Parisian front desk clerks!

Southern strategy
Travel & Leisure magazine has compiled its annual best of survey and claiming the top three spots for best cities in the U.S. and Canada are Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans and Savannah, Georgia. Note to New York, Chicago and San Francisco (which also made the list), y’all need to be a little more charming now ya hear?

Fishy behavior
A diver experienced a close encounter with a a big fish this week. According to Yahoo!, a diver in Jupiter, Florida was attempting to remove a fish he had speared when a grouper heading straight toward him nipped at his fin and snatched the fish away from him. You think that’s crazy, you should see our pet Goldfish when he’s hungry.

Ready for takeoff
Airbus A350XWB did a test run this week of its new luxury airliner with a flight from Hong Kong to Singapore CNN reports. Features of the new aircraft include LED lighting, seat backs that canpower iPads and phones, a cabin pressurized to 6,000 feet (instead of 8,000) to reduce the effects of jet lag and two Rolls Royce engines. Lets hope those engines weren’t taken out of actual Rolls Royce’s (we imagine those people would be pissed).

Fin-tastic!
Several dolphins came close to the shoreline in Cornwall, England last Friday and put on a quite a show for beach goers Buzzfeed reports. The dolphins leaped repeatedly out of the water before being led back to deeper waters by lifeguards and a rescue chopper who were no doubt concerned the gentle mammals would be blinded if they caught sight of pasty British skin.

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