Recently I discovered How I Met Your Mother, which means I was the second-to-last person on Earth to get obsessed with it. This show nails what it's like to be a young adult in the city. And so far my favorite episode has been "Murtaugh." In it, Ted says he has a list of things he is now too old to do, like pull an all-nighter or drink from a beer bong. The list is named after the main character in Lethal Weapon, Roger Murtaugh, who famously says, "I'm gettin' too old for this sh*t." But the item on Ted's Murtaugh List that resonated the most with me was: Crash on a friend's futon for the night instead of getting a hotel room.

It's 2007. Post-Katrina travel to New Orleans is just too cheap to pass up, so I jump on the discounted opportunity to cross Mardi Gras off my travel to-do list. I hop on a flight from Dallas to the Big Easy with a few friends, and stay at the historic Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. Supposedly, the hotel is haunted. But it's fabulous and affordable, so I take my chances. This is where the story gets a little weird.

We spend the evening sucking down Hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's and getting to know the locals and tourists before we go back to the supposedly haunted hotel for some shut eye. The powerful libations send me into a restful slumber, but I awake suddenly to a deep voice in the room.

As someone who works in the travel industry, I often feel a lot of pressure to do anything, see everything, and be everywhere when I travel. This past trip to Hawaii, in between Aloha Festivals activities, it was very important to me that I made some time to do absolutely nothing at all. For the sake of “research,” I wanted to park myself on that world-famous Waikiki beach and zone out to the horizon, holding a pulpy paperback in my hand, and reading snippets in between swimming like a buoyant fish. After all, isn’t the beach the reason so many people come to Waikiki in the first place?

I'm all about getting sporty on my trips. When I was training for the NYC marathon, I had to visit Washington, D.C. at a crucial point of my training. Instead of halting training or spending hours running on the hotel treadmill, I hired a running guide through City Running Tours who took me on a sightseeing run through our nation's capital.

So when I heard about a physical fitness event  -- again, in Washington, DC -- coming up on October 11, I thought I would share it with you. Bike for the Heart is a day-long event put on by the Sister to Sister organization, a group dedicated to educating women about heart health and risk prevention and providing free heart health checkups.

The day consists of four events:

 - a family-friendly five-mile bike ride around our nation's capital (this would be my choice)

Hotel gyms run the gamut from sparkling to shoddy, and it's not always easy to know what you're getting into. One hotel might define "fitness center" as a muscled Olympian palace, while another interprets it as a humid single-machine cell. One offers a pool and personal trainers, while another won't even throw in a towel. So how do you cope with the disparities? And what if there's no gym at all?

Your best bet is to build an exercise routine that doesn't involve a gym (or a hundred-pound suitcase). Work with the room around you and try these adaptations of standard gym exercises next time you're on the road. And don't worry--you don't need to be an Olympic lifter to pull them off:

Labor Day weekend kicks off in less than two weeks, and what we're seeing for the holiday comes to no surprise. Keeping with the trend of 2009, airfare is down year-over-year as are hotel rates. In fact, Labor Day weekend is the cheapest three day travel holiday that we've tracked so far this year.

But, where can travelers go to nab the best deals for the holiday? I've been conducting interviews with media outlets across the country to talk Labor Day travel and have been asked this very question countless times. To find the answer, I looked to Travelocity booking data to analyze the top 25 vacation spots. Here are the big deal destinations that I found:

Domestic Deals for Labor Day Weekend

New York City - airfare down 18 percent, hotel rates down 20 percent

Honolulu - airfare down 13 percent, hotel rates down 21 percent

Who knew that the little honeys who opened the door for me everyday at Hotel Monaco in Seattle could inspire an entire blog post? It was the doormen's dashing good looks and mannish abilities to pull off the color purple that won them a spot on my 17 Things I Love About Kimpton Hotels list from a few weeks ago. However, it was brought to my attention by our readers that I neglected to include one key element in my post: proof that "a piece of eye candy will open the door for you."

Well, ladies, here's your proof...

These Kimpton folks...they got it going on! If you've never stayed in one of their hotels, you absolutely must put it on your travel to do list. Cross my heart, it will be a treat. I've enjoyed sipping complimentary wine at 70 Park Avenue in New York City.

This week's question comes from Katherine in Fort Resolution, Canada, the oldest documented community in the Northwest Territories:

Don't get me wrong -- discounted room rates are great. Like a moth to a flame, I'm drawn in by percent-off promotions when I shop for a hotel deal. And these enticing deals are everywhere -- 25% off! No, no wait, there's another one -- 40% off! Wait - 60% off!

And then I stop to think -- 60% off what, exactly? If you don't know the starting price of a hotel room, the discount may not mean much to you.

Personally, I like my discounts in dollars. Resort credits offer a specific dollar amount for you to spend while you're at your hotel on cocktails, food, spa treatments -- you name it. It is one of the most popular hotel trends in a down economy and, depending on the amount, can add a great deal of value to your vacation. Here are three  resort credit offers available right now: