The best part about traveling is the chance to break your routine. So many of us are stuck in the same habitual pattern: “Up, work, home, TV, bed. Repeat.” But going on a trip forces us to shake up our schedules. When we are far from home, it’s easier to be spontaneous, to be fearless, to be adventurous.
You’re miles away from your old life, so far away that you feel invigorated, like a new person. So it’s only natural that you decide to go with the flow, to sample something exotic. You can declare, “I’ll try anything once—after all, this might be the last time I ever come here, I might as well live it up a little.”
Travel liberates us, and opens our minds to possibilities we would never consider back home. So it seems only natural that there is an element of the erotic in all types of travel. You try new food, meet new people, explore a new city. Your senses are on high alert, stimulated by all of the newness that surrounds you. Excited by your new surroundings, chances are you might experience another kind of excitement as well. One thing leads to another, and suddenly you are swept up in the romance of travel, and the heat of the moment.
In celebration of the myriad sexual responses that traveling can elicit, here is a selection of movies, both new and old, where travel and sex collide. Sometimes, the encounter seem like something out of a storybook...and sometimes, it can lead to more serious consequences.
Let's Go To The Movies
| Before Sunrise | Eat Pray Love |
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| The Place: Vienna | The Places: New York, Naples, India, and Bali |
| The Plot: Two strangers (one American, one French) meet on a train traveling from Budapest to Paris, and impulsively get off in Vienna to spend the night together. | The Plot: A woman recovers from her painful divorce by traveling around the globe. Along the way, she meets a handsome man and falls in love all over again. |
| Hotness Rating: *** Who hasn’t found themselves intrigued by a handsome stranger, and wanted to surrender to their impulses? | Hotness Rating: *** The story and characters take a backseat to the stunning vistas and sharp cinematography. |
| The Beach | The Darjeeling Limited |
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| The Place: An unnamed island near Thailand | The Places: India |
| The Plot: A young American travels around Thailand, hearing rumors about a beach paradise where both sex and drugs are plentiful. He meets a beautiful French girl, but soon finds out that the island paradise isn’t all that it seems. | The Plot:Three American brothers reconnect on a train ride throughout India, while experiencing all that the country has to offer. |
| Hotness Rating: *** 1/2 Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is bombarded by offers of sex throughout the entire movie, whether it’s pimps asking him if he “needs a girl” or Tilda Swinton coercing him into a sexual encounter. | Hotness Rating: ** Jack and the stewardess nicknamed “Sweet Lime” have one hurried tryst in the train bathroom shortly before he gets kicked off the train. |
| Hotel Chevalier | Heading South |
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| The Place: Paris | The Places: Haiti |
| The Plot: In this prequel to the events of The Darjeeling Limited, Jack has an unexpected encounter with his ex-girlfriend (played by Natalie Portman). | The Plot:Three women vacationing in Haiti are entranced by the local male escorts, but come to realize that all is not bliss under the country’s dictatorial rule. |
| Hotness Rating: **** Portman is lovely, nude, and at her best. It would be five stars, except the song Jack insists on playing in the background isn’t exactly a slow jam. | Hotness Rating: **** As some of us know all too well, sex often seems better when there is an element of danger. |
| How Stella Got Her Groove Back | Under the Tuscan Sun |
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| The Place: Jamaica | The Places: Tuscany |
| The Plot: Overworked executive Stella takes a long-overdue vacation, where she meets a gorgeous man 20 years her junior. | The Plot:Frances, depressed by her recent divorce, buys a villa in Tuscany. After one failed romance with an Italian, at the end of the film she finally meets an American she might have a chance with. |
| Hotness Rating: **** Two words: Taye Diggs. | Hotness Rating: **** Some have said it has one of the most masterfully shot lesbian sex scenes in cinema history, and it’s one of the top-grossing feature films of all time featuring a lesbian couple. |
Classic to Cutting Edge
| Summertime | Desert Hearts |
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| The Place: Venice | The Places: Nevada |
| The Plot: An uptight spinster (Katherine Hepburn) warms to the idea of an affair with a married Italian man. | The Plot:Newly divorced New Yorker Vivian Bell undergoes a sexual awakening in the heat of the desert. |
| Hotness Rating: **** Let’s face it: most men like crude when they are eying up a woman. But Rossano Brazzi has a way of undressing a woman with his eyes that is incredibly hot. This one of the most tame movies on the list, and yet it sizzles. Katharine Hepburn is a lucky, lucky woman. | Hotness Rating: *** Just goes to show that sometimes we need to travel halfway around the world in order to find ourselves. |
| French Kiss | Vicky Cristina Barcelona |
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| The Place: Paris, Cannes, and other locations around France | The Places: Barcelona |
| The Plot: Kate travels to France to win back her fiance, but finds herself attracted to a French thief she meets on the plane. | The Plot:An American woman and her best friend spend the summer in Barcelona. Cristina (played by the sultry ScarJo) eventually falls into a polyamorous relationship with an artist and his ex-wife. |
| Hotness Rating: **** Almost every woman has fantasized about having a French lover at some point, and a lover with a criminal past only makes the tryst more enticing. | Hotness Rating: ***** The only thing hotter than the summer heat in Spain is the darkroom makeout scene between Scarlett Johannson, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz. This movie will undoubtedly inspire an entire generation of women to spend a summer abroad in Barcelona. |
Serial Travelers (and Seducers)
| In the history of cinema, there have been many movie franchises driven by the dual passions of travel and sex. From James Bond to Indiana Jones to Captain Kirk, some of the longest-running film series are steeped in stories that revolve around globetrotting adventurers who are experts at both navigation and seduction. Here are some highlights from the most travelicious and bootylicious exploits of these classic characters. If only there were more female characters at the heart of franchises like these! |
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| Captain Kirk kissing an alien woman: | James Bond making love with a beautiful woman in the Bahamas: | Trailer for the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in which he travels with his latest flame from China to India: |