Atop the Empire State Building. On an abandoned train platform in Mumbai as your life flashes before your eyes. In front of all your friends as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. A kiss, whether stolen away or done in public with gusto, can be naughty or nice. Maybe it’s the movies—Sleepless in Seattle, Slumdog Millionaire, When Harry Met Sally, and yes I know two of these star Meg Ryan—that have convinced us that a big, dramatic kiss is the only thing to do when love takes over. But it’s not just a practice in fiction. The most pleasure you can get in life is the feeling of getting away with something, whether it’s a steamy makeout before a sweeping view, or a quick peck when nobody is looking. Nothing sets the stage quite like travel. Maybe, on a solo trip, you meet a stranger who doesn’t speak the same language as you—how else can you communicate? Or, perhaps, you and your long-time lover are in some part unknown through which you discover each other anew. Lips meet, sparks fly, and so on.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we asked some of our favorite tastemakers, artists, writers, and well-documented romantics to share their favorite spots around the world for a snog. There’s a cemetery, a boardwalk, and plenty a restaurant booth, among many, many other things. Get kissing.
Mokshini
The best places in the world to steal a kiss
1. “Oh, the Cathedral of Florence: the Duomo. It was a spur of the moment thing, I left my husband in the hotel room and there I was [at the Duomo] kissing a stranger. That’s pretty bad.” —Martha Stewart
2. “I want to steal a kiss in Paris like everybody else does. Where? On Pont-Neuf, wherever all the locks are. Why? It’s Paris, I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not above it. In fact, I’m usually beneath it.” —Jacob Tierney, director and showrunner of Heated Rivalry
3. “It was in Lisbon—in Alcântara, not the cute tiled part on everyone’s Instagrams. We were on the back steps of a closed fado rehearsal hall, down the street from a venue we had just played the night before. Not romantic on paper, just concrete stairs that smelled like dust, oranges, and old men’s cologne. It was after midnight and the city was quiet in that specific Atlantic way. The perfect setting for an intimate, slow, passionate make out.” —Este Haim, bassist of Haim
Mokshini
4. “The barren but beautiful Arctic airfield in Grise Fiord, Nunavut, the northernmost civilian settlement in North America. It’s where I got married!” —Gary Shteyngart, author