If you have the itch to travel the world but your bank account won’t allow it, a destination date might be just what the doctor ordered. The idea is simple, everything you do on the date has to relate to a particular country you would like to visit. For our first destination date we chose Italy.

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SHE SAID:

Since creating our vacation box, I’ve been dreaming about ridiculously expensive trips to places like Italy, England, France, and Belarus. Okay, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea. Since my dreams cannot be realized just yet, I thought it might be fun to pretend a bit more and further delude reality by bringing those places home. Say what? Since we can’t go to any of those fancy destinations just yet, we thought we’d have a night devoted to the food and entertainment from one of our top dream destinations.

One of the hardest parts with this whole date was deciding on a destination that had both appealing food and entertainment, in our case, a movie set in Italy. Though we hope our next destination to be England, the food from Italy trumped the Queen’s and we rushed to the bookstore for more Italian food inspiration, which we thought would be an easy task. Not so, my friends, not so. It turns out Italian food is more than just pasta dishes and even those can be quite complicated when venturing beyond your standard spaghetti and meatballs. We eventually did end up finding one tortellini dish we thought we might enjoy and headed to the grocery store, where Brad almost lost the list of required ingredients. Gulp.

One thing this date does require is preparation, but don’t let that discourage you from giving it a try. You can shave off an enormous amount of time by simply ordering in Chinese or going out for sushi. If you can’t seem to find appealing forms of food and entertainment for one country, you could do an “around the world” approach that touches on several different destinations.

HE SAID:

My favourite date ideas tend to be ones that put a twist on a typical date and are inexpensive. The destination date fits both of those requirements. I loved the idea right from the get go because there are so many possible things to do to have a fun time.

For our first destination date we chose Italy. This was largely because the night was going to revolve around a meal. Although making the meal wasn’t too difficult, choosing which dish to make proved to be a little more work than was expected. In our Indoor Picnic post, we warned against waiting until you are hungry before beginning food preparation on a date. Though we didn’t exactly wait until we were hungry, it took so long for us to decide what to make, get the groceries, and prepare the meal, that we were on the brink of disaster by the time it all came together. If you want to make your destination date easier, you could always order in from your favourite international restaurant, but we enjoy the challenge of making a new dish.

Because the meal took so long, we didn’t spend the time decorating the living room to conjure up thoughts of vacationing in Italy. However, I took a few minutes and made some mini Italian flags to put in our dinner. If you do a destination date though, feel free to decorate your house based on the country you choose.

We chose to do a destination date by having dinner and watching a movie. If that’s not up your alley, feel free to try other activities. You could play a sport that is popular in a certain country, an art form that derived from your destination of choice, or try to find new and interesting music from another part of the world. The point is to bring the culture of that country to your own home for much less money than it would take to travel.

I really enjoyed our destination date. We’ll definitely be doing it again with a different country because there are so many fun options for things to do. If you dream of travelling the world but don’t have the cash to do it, I would definitely recommend you try a destination date. If you try it, let us know how it goes. We’re always interested in hearing about your experiences.