Kinder Egg or Marrakesh?

6th Feb 2010

Every coun­try I’ve ever vis­ited, every city I’ve ever been, every restau­rant I’ve ever eaten at has had cou­ples there. So it wouldn’t be very out­landish of me to say that cou­ples want to go out together and see the world. From the Chi­nese restau­rant at the end of the road to the Golden Gate Bridge, Angkor Wat, and every­thing in between, you can­not escape cou­ples. If you can’t beat them, join them, right? This is the ratio­nale behind the valen­tines breaks pro­files we’ve been focus­ing on the last few issues. I asked a girl on cam­pus last week what she thought of the travel page – she had it open in front of her while she waited for her cof­fee in Star­bucks – she said it needed more pictures…I died a lit­tle inside. It’s hard to have your work crit­i­cised, which is why I feel the need to use this edi­to­r­ial to jus­tify our choice of con­tin­u­ing these valen­tines breaks, even though many peo­ple may be as skint as I am and just hop­ing, pray­ing, that their girl­friend will let them off doing any­thing at all; or maybe will just be happy with a Kinder Egg and a mix tape. If you’re one of the peo­ple with some brass in your pock­ets, dreams out­side of this scepter’d isle and, most impor­tantly, some­one to spend valen­tines day with, then I really hope these pages will help you whisk that per­son away and off their feet. Last week we said Dublin; this week we say Mar­rakesh and Stock­holm and next week we’ll have one more last minute idea for you. But, in the mean time, get out an atlas and have a think about where you’d like to spend valen­tines day. And to the girl in Star­bucks who wanted more pic­tures, I hope you get whisked away so you’ll be grate­ful there weren’t so many pictures.