Valentine’s Idea: Chocolate Tours

by Willy Volk on

What better way to celebrate this sweet occasion than by stuffing your face with the sweetest sweet on earth — chocolate!

  • Every Saturday, Boston’s Chocolate Tour takes guests on a trolley ride through Boston’s finest culinary landmarks. Of course, guests enjoy a sumptuous array of decadent chocolate desserts from the city’s best chefs, and are treated to the history, myths, trivia, and legends surrounding chocolate.
  • Chocoholic Tours has a variety of options for sampling Melbourne, Australia’s rich history and stunning chocolate. Bonus: since the tours are walking tours, you can burn off calories as you consume them!
  • Join culinary guide/pastry chef David Lebovitz, author of The Great Book of Chocolate, for a chocolate-y exploration in Paris. An expert on the chocolate shops and bakeries of the City of Lights, David treats guests to a memorable tour featuring the best of what France has to offer. Private tours are also available.
  • Chicago Chocolate Tours provides guided walking and tasting tours of some of Chicago’s finest chocolatiers. What’s more, they even have a special Valentine’s Package.
  • London’s Chocolate Ecstasy Tours offers 4-hour long tours (guided by a Chocolate Ecstasy Chocoholic Guide), through London’s side streets and alleys. Participants sample chocolates, enjoy chocoholic chats, take a lavish hot chocolate break, enjoy special prices on the ultimate chocolate luxuries, and receive a goody bag!
  • One day isn’t enough for your chocolate-loving mouth? InTrend offers 7-day Escorted Tours for real chocolate lovers! Spend a week in Brussels participating in chocolate-making demonstrations at chocolate factories, and sample chocolate desserts after sumptuous meals.
  • Looking for a more affordable option? San Fransisco’s Sharffen Berger requires a reservation but offers free walking tours through its factory.

Chocolate tours sound like my kind of holiday celebration. Yum!

Valentine’s Day: Fanning or Finding Love at an Art Museum

by Jamie Rhein on

Art museums make me feel amorous. It’s true. A walk through rooms filled with paintings, particularly if they’re from the Impressionism art movement, soften me right up. The sounds of shoes on marble or wood floors, the polite guards making sure people don’t get too close to the artwork, the creativity and genius of human beings in an outpouring of color and images. Yum!

Evidently, I’m not alone in my mushiness. According to a survey done by the 24 Hour Museum in the United Kingdom, 65% of the respondents said they would take a person to an art museum to make a favorable impression. (Hmm. impression. Impressionism. Is there a connection here?) Some (20%) said they had fallen in love in a museum. Was it in front of a Renoir, I wonder?

In this one research article I came across by Courtney Spousta, she points out that in the movie Play It Again Sam, Woody Allen’s character goes to the Modern Art Museum in NYC looking for love. Throughout the article, she cites examples of how certain nights at art museums are geared to help people mix and mingle. At the Milwaukee Art Museum there are even speed dating events. The last one was on February 2, it seems.

This month there are some art museums I came across that are capitalizing on the romance and love theme.

If you do head to a museum with that special someone or you’re out looking for that special someone at an art museum, it wouldn’t hurt to read “Cupid on the prowl” by Mary Louise Schumacher. She gives some tips on what to say to impress particular types of people and what not to say.

Oh, and the most romantic art museum in London according the the 24 Hour Museum survey? It’s the Victoria and Albert.

Luxury Valentines Day Aboard the Orient Express

by Neil Woodburn on

Train travel, when done properly, can be a very romantic venture; and there is no better way to travel by train than the Orient Express.

Thankfully, the folks over at the Orient Express are well aware of the magic that their luxury train service inspires and have put together a variety of Valentines packages for the sophisticated romantic.

Their Valentines Day lunch, for example, is a $440 affair aboard “Britain’s most romantic and historic train, the British Pullman.” The train departs London at 11:55 a.m. and returns four hours later–after passengers have been wined and dined with a five course lunch.

The train’s regular services, although not highlighted in the Valentine Specials are well worth looking into as well. Take a couple days off and jump aboard the famed Venice Simplon-Orient-Express through London, Paris, Venice, and Rome. Spending your nights aboard the legendary, historic train as it rumbles towards Europe’s most romantic cities will be a Valentines vacation you won’t ever forget.

Lastly, the Orient-Express trademark extends well beyond the world of trains. The company also manages hotels and cruises with the same luxurious approach to travel. Their Valentines Day specials therefore include some non-choochoo related packages as well–such as a swank getaway to Keswick Hall in Virginia which includes a “horse driven carriage to your hot air balloon to view the exquisite beauty of the gentle Virginia landscape over exquisite vineyards and stables as you enjoy a gourmet picnic lunch.” Throw in some spa treatment, a private butler, a fireside dinner, and a few other amenities and you’ll really get your date’s heart pumping–just as yours will be when you get the $4,660 bill.

Soak Your Way to Romance with a Hot Tub Spa Experience

by Jamie Rhein on

There’s something about a hot tub spa experience that makes a person feel warm. Add another person in the equation and you have the perfect Valentine outing. You can steam up some romance while basking in the steam-or if you haven’t had much time to talk lately. This is a terrific way to float stress away while muscles relax and you bask in uninterrupted time.

Here are three places I’ve been myself, and darn, I wish I lived closer to at least one of them. Our bathtub isn’t big enough for two.

Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe, New Mexico offers private hot tubs set out in the woods among the pinion trees. Everything is provided from plush robes to lotions to hair dryers after you soak for 55 minutes. Turn up the luxury factor by adding a massage or a spa treatment. You also can stay here. Not only are there Japanese style baths, but there are Japanese style accommodations.

At the Spring City Resort in Peitou near Taipei, you can rent a private spa room by the hour. The hotel website doesn’t list the hot tub only rooms, but I know they are available. I’ve been there. I’ve been in the hot tubs. Articles about spas in Peitou, a premier hot spring area of Taiwan, also list Spring City Resort as having hot tubs so I know this is something I didn’t imagine way back when. The mineral hot spring tub experience can be coupled with a feast afterwards. The buffet at the resort’s hotel is superb. I remember the eating part as much as I remember the soaking.

Glen Ivy Hot Springs’s Day Spa mineral baths aren’t exactly private. You sit in your private bath while your honey (or friend) sits in another and other people soak in theirs. Even so, the romance can build because this is a destination place where you can swim in the pool, get a massage or some other spa treatment, slather mud on each other, rinse off and then soak some more. Named oof the top “25 spas in North America” by the National Geographic Traveler Magazine, this place is located in Corona, California , a doable easy drive from Los Angeles. Glen Ivy has other locations as well.