Gratitude lightens the load for our travelers

— -- In honor of Thanksgiving, USA TODAY's travel staffers each share one travel experience from 2011 for which they're grateful.

Fresh air breeds fresh perspective

Touring hotels all year long means that more often than not, I'm "stuck" indoors.

Now, don't get me wrong — some of the indoor spaces I've seen this year have been amazing. But thankfully, some of my recent hotel stays — even in cooler cities such as Chicago and New York— have involved exhilarating, fresh air.

One morning at the Park Hyatt Chicago in July, for example, I grabbed my laptop and set up shop at a table on the hotel's new seventh-floor rooftop deck before the lunch rush descended. Other favorite outdoor hotel experiences this year have been swimming in a rooftop pool in the middle of New York City at the Gansevoort Park, which has a direct view of the Empire State Building, and taking a Zumba exercise class on the 18th-floor helipad of the InterContental Century City hotel in Los Angeles.

Somehow, no matter where you are, fresh air can make a hotel experience all that much more memorable.

— Barbara De Lollis

Stingray medical trip ends without a sting

Medical treatment was the last thing on my mind as I headed for a beach vacation on Mexico's Caribbean coast. Yet I found myself contemplating it after I felt a searing pain in my foot less than a minute after stepping into the tropical waters near Puerto Morelos.

As the pain — perhaps the most intense of my life — continued to worsen, it was clear I needed medical attention.

My hotel summoned a taxi to whisk me to a physician's office in town. Off I went, with cacophonous fears playing in my head: Would the doctor speak English? Would I need to return home right away? How much would this cost?

Fortunately, Dr. Ramirez spoke nearly perfect English, confirmed my suspicion of a stingray sting and quickly neutralized it. And he charged a reasonable fee for my after-business-hours appointment.

So the traveler in me is thankful that an unexpected good foreign medical experience gave me a great story instead of a travel horror tale.

— Ben Mutzabaugh

Losing (weight) while cruising

The average person gains a pound a day on a cruise, or so the saying goes. In my case, the weight gain wasn't nearly as rapid — maybe just a pound or two a voyage. Still, as USA TODAY's full-time cruise writer — a job that lands me on a ship as often as once a month — I've watched the needle on my bathroom scale creep up.

Until this year, that is. As it turns out, cruise ships can be just as good at helping you lose weight. Think cruise ship salad bar. As a growing connoisseur of salad bars everywhere, I can tell you few are as elaborate as those at the typical ship buffet. Little tomatoes in every color, chopped up red peppers, broccoli crowns, arugula, spinach, chickpeas — all beckoning you to be good.

In less than a year, I've dropped nearly 30 pounds and am back to my pre-cruising weight of more than a decade ago. In fact, I'm even a few pounds below it — for which I'm grateful, indeed.

— Gene Sloan

Online bidding can mean winning

Like other budget-conscious travelers with a one-upsmanship gene, I've been a longtime fan of Priceline, the online agency that lets you "name your own price" for deep discounts on hotels, flights and cars. But while I've snagged some terrific hotel deals over the years, the necessary legwork of calculating free re-bid zones and checking previous travelers' wins at message boards like Betterbidding.com and BiddingForTravel.com can be daunting.

Then I found TheBiddingTraveler.com, a year-old website that calculates and executes hotel-bidding strategies for you. Its AutoBid feature (which requires Internet Explorer) takes your "lowball offer" and automatically raises it in increments until a bid is accepted or your "final offer" is rejected.

Neither The Bidding Traveler nor Priceline is foolproof; I found an even cheaper $45-a-night deal in Milwaukee this fall through rival Hotwire. But the same month, I saved a pal several hundred bucks over a three-night Manhattan stay by using The Bidding Traveler to score a $200-a-night room at the four-star Intercontinental Barclay. She — and I — had plenty to be thankful for.

— Laura Bly

New zeal for emergency clothing

My suitcase and I had a parting of ways a few weeks ago. I flew to New Zealand. It lingered in the San Francisco airport, then made a jaunt to Australia before joining me a few days later in the city of Nelson on the South Island.

I was wearing a jersey dress (selected primarily for its properties as a street-legal nightgown) and suede boots. The apparel worked fine for the marathon 20-hour-plus journey from Washington, D.C., to Nelson but wasn't going to carry me through a kayak and hiking outing in Abel Tasman National Park.

Enter Tracy, an employee at Nelson-Tasman Tourism, who got wind of my predicament and delivered a care package of suitable day and night attire (even shoes!) that carried me through until my wayward bag arrived.

Sometimes, the kindness of strangers is the best kindness of all. Heartfelt thanks to my new Kiwi friend!

— Jayne Clark

Duty-free can be fun, too

Getting there is not half the fun — at least flying economy on 2011's packed planes.

So my expectation on a flight from Charlotte to Aruba was a frazzled four hours before enjoying the sun. I was seated in front of a cougher, to boot.

The game-changer: David Harper. No hiding in the galley for him. The 27-year US Airways veteran, with a Robert Redford look and infectious grin, chatted with fliers as he served. He made the boring task of pushing the duty-free cart into an entertaining QVC star turn.

Golfing? He pulled out just the sunglasses to help your game. Want your man to smell great? Buy Chanel cologne. He uses it.

No surprise that this year he's the No. 1 duty-free seller of the airline's 6,800 flight attendants, which his boss, Charlotte in-flight services director Wendy Stockton, told me when I called. "He is one of our top all-around flight attendants," she said.

Amazing how an enthusiastic crewmember can make a trip fly. And usually pitch-resistant me ended up buying some Chanel Bleu.

— Kitty Bean Yancey