My new book Getting Into Guinness, was released by Harper Collins on September 16th, and ever since, my life has been a frenzy of radio interviews, plus the occasional book signing and television appearance. This activity, in turn has taken me places I might never otherwise go-- like Philadelphia!

Philly is a great tourist town, and I can’t say why I haven’t been in about 15 years, other than that I grew up in New York and went to school in Washington, D.C., and always just sort of took it for granted. But its attractions are many, and packed into a very user friendly pedestrian downtown. From one of the world’s greatest art museums (and for film fans, the steps Sylvester Stallone ran up while training as Rocky) to an American Icon, the Liberty Bell, downtown is full of tourist sights worth seeing.

Today, September 16th, is just another Tuesday for most people, but it is a huge day for me. After more than two years of research, interviews, writing, and editing, my new book Getting Into Guinness is being released by Harper Collins! For that reason, I am back in my hometown, New York City, for the book release itself, and for a book launch party my sister was kind enough to throw for me this past weekend.

I grew up in New York City, and despite having been to most of the “major” cities of the world, from San Francisco to Paris to London to Sydney, I still love New York whole heartedly. I just couldn’t ever live here. But I love to visit, and in the nearly 20 years since I moved out and relocated to the bucolic Vermont countryside, I have become the consummate tourist in my old haunts.

I’ve loved Australia since the first time I visited, and have returned as a travel writer for many reasons, including wine country visits, Scuba diving, epicurean “research,” and more, but to me, golf Down Under will always stand out in my memories. In fact, in a very real sense, golf in Australia changed my life.

Australia has a disproportionate number of the world’s great courses, but then again, so do Scotland and Ireland. What makes Australia so special to me is something that happened on a single day, February 18, 2004. That is the middle of summer in Australia, and I woke up early that morning at a Sydney hotel, in the vibrant and touristy Rocks neighborhood in the shadow of the famous Harbour Bridge. I proceeded to the legendary New South Wales Golf Club, one of the top 50 ranked courses on earth, where I played, then sped to the Sydney airport and boarded a non-stop Qantas flight to LAX. As soon as I arrived, I grabbed a rental car, drove to Newport Beach, and played golf again, at Pelican Hill, a Top 100 US public course. Thanks to the International Date Line, it was still February 18th when I wrapped up a very long day, one lasting more than 24 hours.

For a lot of people I know, one of the hardest parts of a vacation is just deciding where to go. After all, the world is a pretty big place. But a new fast growing trend is making the decision more difficult than ever – not only do you have to figure out where to go, but what to do when you get there. And once you have all that lined up, you even have to break a sweat. It sounds complicated, but millions of people are doing it. In fact, not so long ago, it was a challenge to get notoriously sedentary Americans off the couch and burning calories. All of a sudden, we can’t get them to stay home.

I’m talking about active, sports related travel, and for some reason people cannot get enough. In May I signed up to ride the annual Commerce Bank 5-Boro Bike Tour in New York City, a one-of-a-kind event that closes major Big Apple roadways like the FDR Drive and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to traffic and allows bikers to enjoy these highways for one Sunday each year. I did the ride out of a sentimental urge to see my native New York from a perspective usually reserved for bumper-to-bumper drivers stuck in gridlock. Apparently I was not the only one who had the same idea: last year, the event, already the nation’s largest group bike ride, attracted about 30,000 people. This year, 42,000 showed up, a new record by a huge margin. They came from all over the country and as far away as Europe and Australia to ride a 45-mile route through the city that never sleeps.

Over the past several years dining has gone from something travelers do on vacation to something they vacation to do. The travel industry is expanding programs and offerings catered specifically to these consumers, such as culinary tours through Spain, Italy, Mexico and Napa Valley. Resorts around the globe also have created culinary-friendly options for guests and locals through on-site cooking schools offering half-day and full-day cooking classes. From gourmet tequila tasting classes in Mexico to drive-by tastings on the Vermont Cheese Trail, consumers traveling to please their bellies in 2007 have a wide variety of options.

The biggest and most obvious sign of this food trend is the explosion of farmers markets. Today it is difficult to visit any city, town or region that does not have a version of a regular market. In rural settings, farmers markets are often held weekly or twice weekly and recently began expanding their season into ‘winter farmers markets.

Last time I stopped skiing long enough to type up some thoughts, I extolled the virtues of spring skiing, and gave four great reasons to get off the couch and hit the slopes in March and April this year: better weather, more snow, the choice of going where the best conditions are and lower prices.

But five is such a round number, and I realized I had left out another big advantage of spring in ski towns: it is when residents start to go stir crazy after a long winter and roll out the parties. In fact, almost all of the biggest festivals in ski country are held in the spring, often with big name entertainment, free activities, and general craziness that adds to the ski experience. It’s like après ski squared.

Skiing is universally considered a “Winter Sport,” but when it comes to ski vacations, the smart money is on spring, as in spring skiing. If you can only take one big trip a year, it can be hard to hold off until March or April when you watch the Weather Channel and see blizzards pounding the country, but as they say, patience is a virtue, and there are good reasons to skip over December, January and February. In fact, I can give you four excellent reasons to spend the cold winter months working out indoors in anticipation of your big trip.