My husband and I are doing a road trip from Atlanta to Savannah and on to Charleston. We discovered the hotels in Charleston are very pricey. Any suggestions of moderately priced hotels? Is there such a thing?

I was in Charleston in the fall with a group of friends. We rented a house through the Airbnb.com website and we were very pleased with the place and the price. I suggest you have a look.

King Charles Inn.

Town & Country Inn and Suites is one of the best Hotel in Charleston. But they are expensive, so if you have enough budget then you could stay there.

What is pricey to you? have you looked at hotels.com? When are you coming--if it is during a festival in Charleston, it is more expensive.

Check out the Hyatt Place near the airport or the one in North Charleston. As Gretchen notes during Spoleto and other festivals prices in Charleston skyrocket.

OR even look in Mt. Pleasant. There's a Holiday Inn just across the bridge that I've stayed at and is nice.

How would you define expensive?

We have had the same problem, particulary at the weekends with places asking $500 for a "nice" town house type hotel but with limited facilities. They also force you to take two nights minimum.

In the end we usually opt for the Old Post House, Mount Pleasant, its around $150 including a very good breakfast. It is a period property with a good evening restaurant. There's nothing better than wandering round the avenues of MP on a Sunday morning, down to the old pier which looks out onto Sullivans. Still a little puzzled why the bridge had never been re-instated as a foot/cycle way over to Sullivans Island.

We had dreams of opening a decent B&B south of Broad in the historic area, there just don't seem to be that many. That is until we discovered the prices of suitable houses. The one we thought looked great was $13m.

Charleston is never cheap, but there are some times cheaper than others. The hotels in the historic district are pricey since you are paying for the convenience of walking out the door into the part of town you famed to see. Driving in and parking wastes valuable vacation time.

The traffic between the HD and North Charleston, and to a lesser extent West Ashley, can be heavy during rush hours.

If it's your first trip I highly recommend you stay in the HD. I think you'll be glad you did.

The one thing that has surprised me about Charleston is the traffic and how there is no simple driving from point A to point B. And that's in the off season.

JanetKMR, it's always on-season in Charleston!

So it seems.....we just can't get used to "oh, this is 1.2 miles away" and that means roughly 20 minutes to get there on a good day.

I know! I don't miss that at ALL.

We have spent many a hour wondering what the town planners think about.

The city's geography will always create problems but the routing of some of the roads makes no sense. Drivers are sent into a problem traffic areas, which they don't actually want to be in, then have to travel out again to be where they want to be.

There was one day last October when the fog descended with 50 yards visibility. It took us 3 and a half hours to drive from Edisto to SeeWee and missed the Bull Island ferry by two minutes.

Bad day.

BC, I think we have different definitions of "bad day". A bad day for me would have been if you'd made the ferry and it had sunk.

I don't think area planners were prepared for the numbers of people "from off" who have moved there.