The Romantic.com

One year my husband took me away over the Christmas holiday to the Caribbean for 10 glorious days. It was a wonderful romantic time spent exploring every nook and cranny of Tortolla, St. Thomas and St John. We often took evening walks on the beach under a sky full of stars with the surf rolling over our bare feet as we walked through the sand. Sometimes we would stop and drop a blanket on the sand and share a bottle of wine and wonderful conversation.

Anyway, we live in cold and frosty New York and after months and months of cold and snow you tend to feel like it will never end. That was where we we were when our anniversary rolled around and I began to think of how I could put that magical feeling that we had found in the Islands into our small efficiency apartment in New York. I decided to try and bring the Islands to us.

I went to a party store and found six foot tall cardboard cutouts off Palm trees and lots of colorful tropical fish. Then I went online and found a CD of ocean sounds with a continual sound of the surf rolling onto the beach. I pulled out the strings of miniature Christmas lights from our holiday decorations. After hanging the trees and fish all over the surrounding walls and stringing the lights on the ceiling, I put a bottle of wine on ice and began to prepare a feast of our favorite Island foods.

Imagine his surprise when he walked in the door that evening, after making his way home from work through 3 feet of snow, to have me greet him in my bikini and sarong and take him by the hand into our “Island Paradise”. We ate mahi-mahi and conk fritters and drank wine on a blanket in the middle of the floor under a starry sky, surrounded by palm trees and listening to the waves roll in. Three years later he is still talking about how warm and loved he felt that evening and I know that romance is what you make it with a little thought and creativity.