Yo, New Yorkers. Need a last minute getaway? There is still a week left to take advantage of the New York State Tourism department’s weekend getaway promotion good at a plethora of the state’s independent inns. Through March 7th, over 160 participating inns are offering travelers a free Sunday night stay when they book Friday and Saturday night accommodations, and many are offering the same deal (stay two nights, get the third night free ) for mid-week stays, as well. You can search for deals at participating inns using the web site’s interactive map.

Book a Winter Getaway and Get 1 Night Free!

If ever a hotel were an icon, the Plaza New York is one. And with tomorrow’s reopening after two years and $400 million in renovations, the famed hotel will once again take a prominent spot on any list of Manhattan’s most luxurious lodging options. Featured in films from Arthur to Almost Famous, the Fifth Avenue landmark has downsized to just 282 hotel rooms from its former 805. Much of the building, which was given a roof-down overhaul, is now devoted to condo hotel units and private residences.

For nightly rates of $795 and up, guests may indulge in luxury perks like private butlers on each floor, bathroom fixtures plated in 24-karat gold and centralized room control panels that do everything from dim the lights to change the television channels.

Luckily, travelers who choose to stay elsewhere can enjoy the hotel’s lavish atmosphere with afternoon tea in the opulent surroundings of the Palm Court. By late spring or early summer, the hotel plans to open a high-end retail shopping area, a Caudalie Spa, a renovated Oak Room and Oak Bar, a Champagne bar and a Warren Tricomi Salon.

When I saw the Everglide Bike, a finalist in the 2007 Australian Design Award competition, it immediately snagged my traveler’s eye. The student who designed this fold-up bike describes it as, “an integrated solution for short distance travel and personal effects management.” But once you cut through the academic dork speak, you’ve got one seriously cool cycle that could - if it ever makes it from concept to reality - change the way travelers get around the urban destinations they visit. Not only is this clever invention completely collapsible and, therefore, easily transportable via airplane, but it also features a roomy backpack for stowing the rider’s gear or the bike itself. But wait, wait, there’s more. The bike has a built-in charging strip for iPods, cell phones and other handheld devices and allows users who don’t want to carry the collapsed version on their backs to wheel it around like a piece of rolling luggage. Let’s hope this one makes it to market.

Hooray for February 29! Only once every four years, folks. Now that’s special (unless you’re talking about your love life). And as with any holiday, travel deals celebrating the day’s rarity abound. Problem is, most of ‘em are only good for travel taking place today. Not so with the Frontier Leap Year Sale, which is advertising reduced fares for travel on off-peak days for destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica. You have until March 3rd to purchase and May 20th to complete your travel. Some sample roundtrip fares:

Chicago Midway to Denver - $138

Denver to Las Vegas - $138

Sacramento to Oklahoma City - $160

Milwaukee to Phoenix - $178

El Paso to Los Angeles - $198

Whatever you do, we hope you have a nice Friday, Feb. 29th. You won’t see another one of those until 2036.

Traveling abroad as an exchange student can be a life-changing experience, but it can also be a harrowing one, especially when your home stay family’s cultural traditions and lifestyle differ drastically from your own. For most students, small traumas (like my friend who ended up sleeping in a room above the livestock in her Nepali host family’s home only to wake up one morning covered - head to toe - in itching bites courtesy of the bugs inhabiting the animals’ living space) build character and teach independence. When I was 14-year-old exchange student staying with a family in France, my personal traumas involved embarrassment over not understanding how to shower in the curtain-less bathroom without causing a flood and discovering I had unwittingly eaten gizzard one evening thanks to a gap in my vocabulary.

Unfortunately for one Maine teen, the experience of being a foreign exchange student involved real trauma. Jonathan McCullum, a 17-year-old student, reportedly dropped to a scant 97 pounds from his starting weight of 155 lbs when he ended up with a family that failed to feed him adequately. When McCullum returned home from his year living abroad in Egypt, his family was understandably shocked to find their son had lost one third of his bodyweight. Not the AFS organization is in hot water over the mess. As for the host family, their religious practices apparently involved a great deal of fasting. The story below also suggests that the host family balked at having to feed a strapping American boy, whose appetite exceeded that of the daughter they sent to the United States as part of the exchange program. Whatever the truth, it’s a sad story and a cautionary tale for anyone considering a study abroad home stay program.

Student Starved During Egypt Stay

Today San Francisco celebrates the opening of its first newly built hotel in three years. With a location next to the Moscone Center, the 550-room InterContinental San Francisco will be prime stomping grounds for the hoards of convention-goers the center attracts each year. Leisure travelers will find themselves near popular SoMA attractions like Yerba Buena Gardens, the SF MoMA and the massive Westfield Centre shopping complex.

The hotel stands out for offering floors with just 22 rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows in every room and an indoor lap pool. Both the hotel’s Luce Restaurant and lobby-level Bar 888 have been getting a lot of hype in all the local foodie and drinkie publications, so we expect both venues to be pretty happening over the next few months.

Several stories I’ve read pegged the hotel’s rates at $200+, but I found a standard king available on a Saturday night in April for $170 with advance payment and $189 for a flexible reservation.

Today Sofitel announced that it will embrace wind power at its nine U.S. locations. But don’t expect to see windmills whirring away in the parking lot. The company will purchase its blustery new power source in the form of renewable energy certificates from wind energy supplier Community Energy. The move will allow Sofitel to offset approximately 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually and makes it the first hotel chain to become an EPA Green Power Partner. We applaud Sofitel for going green!

Sofitel Hotels Become First Hotel Chain in the U.S. to Choose Wind Power and Become EPA Green Power Partner

If you’re going to be in New York this weekend and you love travel, consider checking out the New York Times Travel Show, a veritable smorgasbord of travel information from resorts, hotels, spas, cruise lines, tour operators, tourist agencies and adventure travel companies from around the world. Along with vendor booths and live entertainment performances representing a vast array of cultures, the show features a Taste of the World Pavilion filled with international cuisine and cooking demonstrations, a Spa Pavilion offering sample treatments and discounted packages at spa resorts, travel author appearances and special travel deals offered to folks brave enough to book their next vacation on the spot. And with travel experts Rick Steves, Arthur Frommer, Ian Wright and Stephanie Abrams - among many others - leading seminars, the show offers a rare chance for face-to-face learning from leading peeps in the industry. Cost: $15.

In case you were in any doubt that getting poop-canned wasted and acting up on a flight can land you in the big house, may we present the fate of Jose Roman, a traveler who just got sentenced to 10 months in the slammer for threatening the crew during a JetBlue flight last summer.

Man Gets 10 Months for Flight Disturbance

Picture it. You’re on vacation, contentedly minding your own business. Suddenly, you turn and realize you’re sitting at the table next to Nicole Kidman. Or maybe you look up from your beach towel just as Cameron Diaz plunges into the waves with her surfboard in tow. And like any self-respecting celebrity-obsessed, tabloid-reading traveler, you do what travelers do best: you whip out the camera. You snap away like a paparazzo beside a red carpet.

Do that, as a recent Wall Street Journal story The Rise of the ‘Citizen Paparazzi’ points out, and you’re likely to end up with more than some shots to dangle in front of your envious friends. These days, you could end up cold, hard cash. Read the article to find out how travelers are selling their vacation pics to companies who thrive on celebrity photography. Not that we needed the WSJ to tell us that regular citizens are the new celebrity photogs of the day, but the newspaper tends to say everything so much better than everyone else….