you are here: Date Night: Around the World
At Home
by Jennifer Good
This week's date night idea takes you and your partner on a romantic escape to virtually any destination in the world, even locations that only exist in your imagination. LYC readers have given their ideas for their favorite romantic destination adventures at home, including all the extra details to make it a night neither of you will soon forget. When you're ready for an intimate night for two, grab your virtual ticket and start planning with the ideas below!
Choose Your Own Adventure
Knowing we could not afford a romantic getaway, I decided to bring the world to my significant other. I used my computer and created a country, with him as the king, of course, created a language, some laws, designed some money, created a passport with a visa to this country, designed a visitor's book detailing all of this. Then I created a "Welcome" sign and put it up in the room that was transformed into another country. The day before the "occasion," he was given a passport to this country along with clothing instructions. (He wouldn't want to stick out, pun intended, in the crowd.) When he got up in the morning, he showered, dressed in his bright red robe, and entered the beaded doorway to another world. There I fed him grapes, poured drinks, massaged him and pampered him the entire day. No TV, just soft music and total focus on him. He had a great time being king!
--submitted by Angel
Create an evening of international travel right in your own home: pick a country your partner would like to visit and recreate it in your house. Do some research on the country to find out about the culture. Start out with a handmade (or computer made) "ticket" that you create. Play music of the region and serve romantic food and wine of the culture. You can even rent a travel video of the locale for additional atmosphere. Decorate with posters, flowers or plants. You can also dress in clothing from that area (leis from Hawaii, a beret from France, etc.). Make your love think that they are truly in another land for an evening (or a weekend, if you can pull it off!).
--submitted by Lee V.
My husband and I have a creative night that we do once a month that really celebrates our relationship and future dreams. One of us creates a great recipe from scratch that we'd like to try, and the other selects a great movie based on or about a place we'd like to travel to together. (The dish and travel place don't have to match, but they can if you want to do it that way.) We make the recipe together and serve it by romantic candlelight with wine while watching the movie near our fireplace. We name the new recipe after the place in the movie we'd like to travel to and log it in a recipe box we made. We write down the details of the memory from when we first made the dish, like the time and date and how long we were married at the time. Every time we make the dish, we remember where we want to travel together and all the fun we had making the dish the first time. We plan on saving them till we're old and gray and putting the dates of when we traveled to each place on the cards as we go to them. The recipe book will be a great gift to hand down to kids eventually, too.
--submitted by Miss Meliss
Paris
For my 20th birthday, my beloved planned a France-themed birthday. He told me to arrive at his house at a certain time, then he led me into the kitchen where there was romantic music playing. The kitchen table was set with his nicest dishes, two candles, and a single red rose on my plate. He then served me some fine French cuisine and to top it off, a pie with French chocolate shavings. For my actual gift, he gave me an All Around Paris travel guidebook with everything you need to know about Paris. After dinner, he put in a French film called Amelie. It definitely set the mood for a romantic evening after the movie!
--submitted by Beth
Italy
My boyfriend and I love to travel, and we constantly talk about places we want to go and see. Unfortunately, because of his job and me finishing school, traveling gets put on hold. To make the most of it, I set up destination theme nights. We choose a place we would like to visit, such as Italy. Then make Italian food, listen to Italian music, decorate the dining room to look like a cozy Italian restaurant, and drink wine. Every time we get in the mood to travel and are unable to we have one of these theme nights. It's fun, romantic, and inexpensive. Plus you don't have to pack!
--submitted by Sabrina
If your lover has access to the Internet or they don't mind a little detective work, I went to Dictionary.com and wrote my love a love promise and translated it into Italian. I told him if he could figure out what it said by Friday, then I would follow through with the promise. I also cooked an Italian meal on Friday, and turned it into a very romantic night with Italian music and Italian dessert. Even if they don't figure it out, the anticipation will lure them in.
--submitted by Cortney
Hawaii
My husband had a wonderful evening planned for me one night. After a stressful day of tending the children, I walked into our bedroom and was amazed to find a tropical paradise. He had gone to a local party supply place and bought a cardboard palm tree, a sign that said Aloha, and plastic leis, and he had also gotten bananas, coconuts, and pineapples from the grocery store. He told me to sit on the bed and we watched a travel video about Hawaii. We ate cut-up pineapple and he gave me a massage with tropical oil. It was a wonderful evening!
--submitted by Natalie
Egypt/Middle East
Every year we celebrate my husband's birthday with an intimate dinner at home. I always choose a theme to make it fun and interesting and focus the evening dinner and fun around the theme. Last year, I went all out for a fun and festive Arabian night. I cooked up some great food from the middle east, couscous, lamb, simmered dates, almond desert and honeyed figs. I decided also that this was a great time to do a little house cleaning. So, I threw out our old sofa and in it's place I set up a tent (I went out and purchased the netting that you can buy already fitted on a circular tube with a ring to hang), suspended it from the ceiling, used a few small wool carpets and took every pillow and cushion in the house and arranged it inside. From the center hook I suspended a great little beaded lantern votive candleholder I had gotten for Christmas and voila!!! A beautiful exotic evening for two. If you’re really daring you can dress up in a beautiful harem (I did) or genie outfit and whisk yourselves away to another place and time. Needless to say, we had a great time at very little cost...
--submitted by Anonymous
Suspend a parachute from the living room ceiling. Remove the furniture. Arrange it like a tent and put pillows in it and have soft music playing and feed each other finger foods and wine till...
--submitted by Mary
One Saturday while my husband was at work, I decorated the house like a Sultan's castle. I went to thrift stores and bought cheap decorations that looked Egyptian - bottles, glasses, bowls, etc. I bought gold coin chocolate candy, wine, grapes, and other food. I used a lot of candles and mosquito netting to decorate. I also bought a gold lamp and set that on a pedestal in the middle of the room. When he came home from work, he was so surprised! The best part of all was the note I put by the magic lamp telling him to rub the lamp. When he did, I pressed play on the CD player and came out from behind the sheet in the corner of the room that I was hiding behind. I was dressed like a genie and the music playing was belly dancer music. We drank wine and I fed him grapes all night long! We had loads of fun!
--submitted by Anonymous
The Amazon
One day before your man gets home from work, go and buy a bunch of exotic flowers, incense and some dry ice. Then at home, set up the bathroom: set out all the flowers (and any other potted plants you might have). In the corners, set up the dry ice and light the incense. If you fix the dry ice up just right, the floor should be hidden by fog. Fill the tub with a nice bubble bath. Then put several candles on the floor lighting a path to the tub. The light will be very cool through the fog. Put on a CD of the sounds of a rainstorm. When he gets home, hop in the tub and turn out the lights. When he calls for you tell him where you are. All you have to do from there is wait for him to find his tigress in her rainforest habitat.
--submitted by Anonymous
