Spotted by Locals offers an insiders guide to top travel spots

Lonely Planet is currently polling readers about their favorite travel blogs and websites. The nominations closed out last week and voting has already started — there are a variety of categories and anyone can vote.

Curiously, most of the nominees are not sites that I had heard of before. If you’ve been living under a rock like me, there a quite a few sites in the list that are worth checking out.

One in particular caught my eye. Spotted by Locals (which is nominated under Best Group Authored Blog) offers some nice insider tips from locals living in popular destinations.

The idea is that writers with a passion for their hometowns offer various insights for visitors — restaurant tips, street celebrations, bars, clubs and other info about out-of-the-way places that the guidebooks miss.

Much of what’s on Spotted by Locals could probably be discovered by combing through dozens of separate blogs, but Spotted By Locals offers a nice, all-in-one-spot overview.

The only downside is that the site is limited to large European destinations. Of course in some cases that might be the very sort of place where local tips are even more valuable since they can help you avoid the tourist hordes.

Naturally if you’re aware of similar sites for other areas of the world share them with your fellow vagablogging readers in the comments. (And if you feel like helping Spotted by Locals, you can contact them and see if they’ll add you to the list of authors.)