If you're in love with a chocoholic, this may be your ticket never-ending bliss. Just in time for Valetine's Day, one Japanese spa has created a new service: chocolate baths.

Revelers hop into water mixed with cacao and fragrant bath powders, to which staff add creamy chocolate -- pouring it onto the bathers, who then...well...use it accordingly.

With recent research indicating that chocolate helps release "feel good" hormones -- creating sensations commonly attributed to being in love, a dip in the chocolate bath might be just what you need to convince that reluctant partner to take the next step.

Or just use it as an aphrodisiac. The choice is yours.

Private, elegant, and with a hint of superiority, penthouses are, by their very definition, sexy. Way up high, looking down on all the little people scurrying about like so many ants, penthouse users seem eternally to be sipping cold drinks (brought to them by their in-house butler) and snuggling by the fire (sparked by the aforementioned butler). Though I like my adventure a bit more rough-and-tumble, I could certainly enjoy a night or two of high class in a penthouse. Don't agree? Check out the view from Trump Towers' Penthouse, and your opinion might change. Golden...and dizzying.

If you'd like to try a night of living large, then check out Concierge's list of the top 10 sexiest penthouses. From Miami to St. Barths, from Australia to the Maldives, the list is To Do List for people who love Big Pimpin'.

Generally, penthouse luxury doesn't come cheap, however. The costliest penthouse profiled (the Hong Kong Intercon) runs a hefty $11,215 per night. Yikes. For the rest of us, Milan's The Gray runs a more affordable $648 a night -- and, frankly, looks way cooler. Now you just have to get to Italy.

Before puckering up to give your mister or misses a big smooch-a-roo next week, try practicing some of these foreign langs to woo them with over your candlelit dinner. I'm sure his or her corazon (heart) will melt like mantequilla (butter), so long as you stick to one foreign tongue and not two. Oh, and pick up the entire bill, don't go Dutch. Got it?

Good.

Today I'm supplying you with a list of "I Love You's" from around the globe:

• Chinese - Wo ai ni
• Croatian - Volim te
• Dutch - Ik hou van je
• French - Je t'aime
• Polish - Kocham cie
• Spanish - Te amo

For more ways to say the three word heart-racing sentence in other languages visit this NY Public Library page.

Okay, so we wouldn't've known about these heart-shaped places if it hadn't been for the eagle-eyes over at Google Sightseeing. Nevertheless, here are some heart-shaped objects that can be seen from way up high:

• There's a heart-shaped forest near the Kansas City airport.
• Somebody cleverer than me used weed killer and "drew" a heart (and a smiley face) into a hillside near Simi Valley.
• There's a heart-shaped swamp near French New Caledonia. Before you get grossed out because I wrote "swamp," bear in mind that New Caledonia is in the beautiful South Pacific.
• Taipei has a heart-shaped pool. Taipei also has a weird erosion thing going on along a coast that looks like a heart.
• Croatia is home to a spectacular heart-shaped island.

If you live in the area of any of these places, it might be cool to swing by and exchange gifts! Unfortunately, you'll have to print out some of the aerial views in order to explain the significance of the location to your Sweetie. ("Honey, why are we in a swamp...?")

Of course, Valentine's Day is largely about romance. In my opinion, the most romantic place I've ever been was on top of Table Mountain. After riding the aerial cableway car to the top, my wife and I found a secluded spot, whipped out a bottle of South African wine, and watched the sun set. It was beautiful. However, many people might not think of a mountaintop as particularly romantic. To that end, here are some other places that might be more "classically" romantic:

1. The Samode Palace in amber-soaked Rajasthan, India.
2. Chaa Creek's Treetop Suites high above Belize.
3. Mfuwe Lodge's chalets, overlooking animal-packed South Luangwa Park.
4. Bavaria's Schloss Neuschwanstein, nestled among so many mountains.
5. Chile's Hacienda Los Lingues is for the horse lovers.
6. California's Muir Woods, which conservationist John Muir claimed was "best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world."
7. The Daintree Cape Tribulation coast is where the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree rainforest meet, and the only place on earth where two World Heritage areas exist side by side.
8. Zanzibar's gently-sloping Paradise Beaches.
9. The Sheraton Moorea is guaranteed to make you melt.

What should we list as #10?

Now, that this day has been filled with love, here's the other side of the coin. Paris is touted as the city for romance. Tom Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes there. Gene Kelly danced through puddles to "Singing in the Rain" in An American in Paris. Frank Sinatra crooned "I Love Paris," (click for lyrics) Cole Porter's song. We've all seen pictures of the Eiffel Tower backlit with kissing couples doing some perfectly framed eye-gazing.

Sure, Paris might be the place for romance, but my first time there during my junior year in college was romantically disasterous. The first misstep was not convincing that dashing Canadian fellow I met at that youth hostel in Norway to ditch his friend in Germany for a couple of days and come to Paris with me. "There will always be Berlin," I had said.

Being young and determined, instead of altering MY course and going with him like he thought I should do, I headed to Paris alone on my "I'm independent" streak. No, nothing terrible happened, but I did fend off a custodian's advances at a Metro stop which involved drawing a toilet on a scrap of paper after I unwittingly wandered into his custodial closet while looking for the restroom. With that coloring my impressions, I wasn't too thrilled to brave out my adventure. I did get in a boat tour on the Seine River, toured the Louvre and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, went to a symphony concert and walked along the Champs Elysee before heading out of town feeling disappointed. I sighed all the while, thinking about my missed Canadian opportunity. Oh, the follies of youth.

Thankfully, I've been back to Paris three times since then and each time was better than the last. So, go ahead, give Paris and romance a shot. Just avoid the custodial closets.

If you are going to be in Paris on Valentine's Day here is a romantic dinner cruise you can take on the Seine. If you can't make it by the 14th, this cruise is a daily event made for two, but book ahead.

Do you have any of your own sad-sack love/travel stories? Here is a place for venting.

Tom and Nicole went to Venice and stayed at the Hotel Cipriani, where Casanova reportedly woo'ed many women. Richard Burton and Liz Taylor visited Botswana's Chobe Game Reserve, where the views of the stars rival the views of the wildlife. Bill and Melinda Gates celebrated at the Four Seasons Resort Lanai in Hawaii, where they reserved all the rooms and all the airplane seats into the island to stymie zealous paparazzi.

Even if you don't watch entertainment shows that detail every facet of celebrities' lives, you might find this profile of celebrity couples and where they honeymooned interesting. From Tiger and Elin to Denise and Charlie, the round-up discusses the accommodation the various couples enjoyed and also dishes some of the dirt on their special events. If this piece doesn't quell your insatiable thirst for stars and their honeymoons, check out these resources:

• Lovetripper has a round-up of celebrity honeymoons sorted by destination.
• About.com has them sorted by year.
• Sharon Goldman lists her top 10 fave celebrity destinations.
• Elizabeth Borsting has compiled a 245-page book, Celebrity Weddings and Honeymoon Getaways, detailing, uh, celebrity weddings and honeymoon getaways.

In looking over these lists, it occurs to me that Britney and Jessica stayed at the same place in Fiji. That's, like, so lame.

Since we've committed the day to helping you get your act together for the big V-day next week, I went in search for a friendly photo reminder of what you could get your sweet. The idea is simple: flowers. This photo was captured by londonsir well after purchasing hours in London. London Flowers is the name of the shop window in question and as one might guess love is the flowers. It's all about the flowers, but if it were up to me I'd prefer a trip to the London Flowers shop for a first-hand look at the window display. That being said I guess I'm just greedy.

Anyhow, great job londonsir for dropping this lovely shot into your Flickr photo stream.

Believe it or not, there are actually a number of cities named Valentine. For example:

• Valentine, Nebraska ("America's Heart City") is home to the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. According to the website, the Heart City plans to host a Valentine's Day event, although -- like shy suitors -- they haven't expressed their feelings about it yet. In 2005, the town hosted a chili cook-off.
• Right off Purple Heart Trail, there's a Valentine, Arizona. Generally speaking, though, unless you're a bit of an adventurer, I doubt this is where you'll be spending your special day.
• Only a few hundred people live in the west Texas town of Valentine.
• There's a Valentine Village in New Mexico.
• Upper Austria seems to dislike the fact that it has a small village called Valentine.
• France boasts Saint-Valentin -- "The Lovers Village" -- which also has a Garden of Lovers. Not surprisingly, thousands of couples marry in this village of 258 permanent residents each year.

It's amazing to me that so few of these Valentines have taken advantage of the rather obvious brand management they could so easily monopolize.

I'm going to cut right to the chase here. Valentines Day is right around the corner and you want to whisk your date away but don't know where to go.

Suggestions are popping up all over the internet. Turn, for example, to msnbc.com, which highlights romance deals to Paris, Philadelphia, Alberta (Canada), and Jekyll Island, just off the coast of Georgia.

Or, check out a similar story carried by the Associated Press which focuses more on B&B's, spas, and the romantic Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.

And then there is the column by Peter Greenberg, Valentine's Getaways with a Twist, in which the author tells us of more unique possibilities such as swimming with dolphins, a zero-gravity date, and an invitation to join the Mile High Club.

So you've no excuse! Book your getaway now and get a move on before the love fades!