Results tagged “Valentine's Day” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Need a perfect place to get away this Valentine's Day? The owners of the deserted 27-acre island, formerly called Galesnjak and located off the Croatian coast, have changed the name to Lover's Island, and rightly so. Ever since the aerial photo appeared on Google, romantics all over the world have been requesting to say there.

Reports the Telegraph:

[Owner] Vlado Juresko said: "It has been incredible. We think it is the most perfect heart-shaped island in the world. Nobody lives there so if lovers really do want to spend time alone it's the perfect desert island.

"We always thought it looked a bit like a heart but since it's been on Google Earth everyone else has seen it too and the whole world seems to want to stay here."

Happy Valentine's Day from IT!

Photo: Google Earth

Your mind went there. Don't deny it. What I'm talking about though is a deal from Omni Hotels. Beginning Valentine's Day weekend and continuing through the end of 2009, the hotel chain is offering its "French Kiss" package from $139 per night.

The package includes: Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne upon arrival, deluxe accommodations for two, and a French toast breakfast in bed. Upon reserving accommodations, guests will also receive a call from the hotel's "romance director" (really, the concierge, but wouldn't you milk a title like that if you had one?) to coordinate romantic activities during your stay. Omni Hotels has many locations throughout the U.S., meaning you don't have to travel far for a luxe romantic getaway.

For more information about the French Kiss deal, click here.

Photo: Omni Hotels

Still looking for a place to go for Valentine's Day? We've just put a map of some great romantic weekends up online to get you inspired. Check it out...

 

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, hopeful Oberon instructs Puck to place pansies on Titania's eyes to make her fall madly in love with him. "The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid/ will make man or woman madly dote/ upon the next live creature that it sees," Shakespeare wrote, but Oberon's plan fails and poor Titania falls in love with Bottom instead. Though Shakespeare is credited with inventing this love potion, many love-struck hopefuls around the world have used heaps of other elixirs--from common vegetables to tree bark and herbs--to try and woo the opposite sex.

• When mixed with herbs, the eggs of Uganda's gray crowned crane--a bird that mates for life--are said to increase affection and monogamy.
  
  
• In Africa, the bark of the yohimbe tree is said to have certain aphrodisiac qualities when steeped in hot water and consumed as tea.
  
  
• Rum, honey, and red wine are mixed with tree bark and herbs to create mama juana, an aphrodisiac for men and women of the Dominican Republic.
  
  
• The people of Madura Island in East Java are known for their jamu ramuan, a concoction of herbs that, when ingested, restores youth to women and makes them more desirable to their husbands.
  
  
• On Dragobete day, the Romanian day of love, frozen snow is collected and its water used as a magic potion by young girls. The water is said to ward off illness for the rest of the year.
  
  
• The Lappish Love Potion in Finland is an alcoholic brew made from blueberries instead of yeast.
  
  
• Chocolate--used by the Aztecs as an aphrodisiac--has high levels of serotonin and Phenylethylamine, mood-lifting agents found in the human brain that increase energy and produce certain euphoric effects.
  
  
• Eat your veggies: In the 19th century, asparagus--known for its aphrodisiac qualities--was served to grooms before their wedding night; in ancient Greece, carrots were consumed by both men and women to make them more desirable to each other.
  

Check out Traveler's special Valentine's Day quiz for other interesting love facts.

Photo: Bianca Redelinghuys via Flickr

We obviously love travel here at the magazine, so we're happy to announce our special online Valentine's Day travel package highlighting some of the best places to celebrate all things amour. Click through to find out where Tiffany & Co.'s recommendations on places to propose, a sampling of romantic books that will whisk you away to foreign lands, an international playlist to woo your one love, a quiz to test your romantic acumen, and our personal favorite, a list of all the special cupcake bakeries across the country (and their V-day recipes), so you can grab a treat for your sweetie.

We accept deliveries here at the office if anyone it interested...

Photo: Thomas Fahey 

This year, National Geographic Traveler partnered with BedandBreakfast.com editors to give you a dozen romantic places to take your sweetheart this Valentine's Day. To make the trip even sweeter, BedandBreakfast.com is offering a ten percent discount on its Getaway Gift Card to Traveler readers from January 26 to February 28.

The card can be used at over 4,000 B&Bs in the United States and Canada, including the ones below, and is the perfect excuse to whisk your love away for some much needed R&R. Just enter the code NGT10 during the checkout process for your discount, then use the money saved to buy flowers or chocolates for your Valentine.

Click through to the jump to see the picks.