Activity Holidays, the Future Is Here
Unfortunately, only the thought of going to a place where most of the time I would go to a beach bores me to tears. Not even the fact that I could use hotel points makes it better. So I have made a decision to learn something during my vacation even if it might cost more. I have been doing some research (nice term for using Google) and there seems to be a plethora of sites for activity holidays (I would have been very surprised not to).
Some of these sites that I have come across:
www.travel-quest.co.uk
“Travel-quest is a human edited specialist travel directory, each entry is checked and reviewed by an experienced editor. We list adventure and activity holidays, vacations, trips, tours, residential courses and weekends away in the UK, throughout Europe, in the USA, North America and world-wide – try us for sports, action, culture, crafts, relaxation …”
Cricket, cliff jumping, archery, beer, ballet, embroidery, astronomy, ghost, etc. there seems to be something for everyone. 
www.facilitutors.com
“… I had the idea of Facilitutors – the education destination, which offers very reasonably priced advertising to venue owners, tutors and course providers and is a one stop shop for anyone looking for a course or a venue in France. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, I will do my best to find it for you, for free.”
One of the activities ‘pig keeping’ is not for me but ‘Savons-Fabrication’(soap making) could come in handy if the economy goes into recession or my job is off-shored. 
www.my-language-travel.com
You can learn a language and not only, and here is the beauty of it, combine it with an activity. For example I saw a course Spanish + Yoga in Ecuador, and not expensive but Yo puedo hablar espanol so I would like to learn French + Fitness/Bodybuilding. I would take a 2/3 weeks intensive course just to help me to get by in French and look like Jason Statham at the end :). Double – win. 
However, I could not find this combination so I might settle for French + Golf (I have never played golf before so this would be an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone = learn 2 things during the short vacation we usually have in North-America in comparison with Europe, but better to have a job and a short vacation rather than no job at all.