If you’re a fan of dating game shows or spend time on dating websites, you’re probably familiar with this common query: describe your perfect date.
It’s a good question, and one that presumably offers a good deal of insight about the respondent. For instance, if you like long walks on the beach, you’re probably not afraid of water. You also don’t mind walking on uneven surfaces or getting sand in your shoe. You’re someone who can tolerate moderate doses of discomfort. That’s important to know up front.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dates in my own life. My husband and I have been married for three years and together for nine. We go out together quite often, but I don’t think of these outings as dates. I associate dating with getting to know someone new and trying to figure out whether a relationship is worth pursuing. Dates are a trial, marriage is the verdict. Yep, we’re going to do this hanging out forever thing.
Nonetheless, as a romance writer, I feel like I should be able to describe an awesome date, and if I were to enact the vision in my own life, I would want my husband to be my dating partner.
I’d go back to a place we visited a few years ago: Venice, Italy. 
We’d begin the evening at sunset with a water taxi ride along the Grand Canal. The boat would drop us of in the Piazza San Marco where we’d drink Spritzes at an outdoor cafe. We’d find a place for dinner off the square. We’d drink lots of red wine and eat squid ink pasta and burrata, this insanely good Italian cheese that’s like mozzarella but all melty inside. Dairy magic. We’d follow dinner with gelato, of course, because a day in Italy is not complete without gelato. And then, wine drunk and sugar happy, we’d play a game we invented along with my sister during our first trip to Venice: find the smallest street. The principal is simple, you look for the narrowest street and follow that street until you find an even narrower one. You try not to get lost because Venice’s disconnected land masses, bridges, and alleyways form a life size maze. Eventually, we’d find our way back to our hotel…
Where would you go on your perfect date? What would you do?
Sarah Zureick-Brown 