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Rediscover the fun and romance with these car date ideas! Whether you prefer a late night drive or parking with a view, you’ll find something you two will love. With car date food ideas, too.
Why are car dates great? They’re relatively simple, putting the attention on you two spending quality time together. They take some thoughtfulness, which is automatically romantic and appreciated. And they can actually just be a lot of fun!
Below are fun car date ideas and tips to help you plan yours.
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Car Date MEANING
So, what does a car date mean? It’s a date that stays in your car! You might spend most of your car date driving or parked.
A romantic and FUN car date should include:
- Atmosphere
- Activity
- Food
- Agreement that it’s a date!
Car Date FOOD Ideas
When thinking about car date food ideas, first take inspiration from your car date theme, if you have one. You’ll find some fun ideas in this article.
You can’t really go wrong with these classic car date food ideas:
- Deli dishes: Pack a picnic with simple delicacies from your favorite deli. This can be as simple as a baguette with cheeses, meats, olives, spreads and a fruit tray.
- Pack a few favorites: Choose your favorite snacky foods, like breadsticks, bruschetta, and chocolates. These can go well with any picnic or take-out choice.
- Gourmet takeout: You can order takeout now from pretty much any restaurant. Make your car date night extra special with appetizers or dessert from an extravagant restaurant you’ve been meaning to try.
Since alcohol isn’t a great idea for car date nights, replace wine and beer with virgin cocktails, Sanpellegrino or sparkling water. Or, your favorite coffee, tea or flavored hot chocolate.
How To Set the MOOD for Car Date Night
How can you have a romantic dinner in your car? Set the mood with lighting, fun music (not too sappy!), and cozy blankets and pillows. You can string up battery lights, use flameless candles, or get lights that sync to your music. Hide a few surprises, too.
And pack great food. Bring a picnic basket, portable picnic table, cloth napkins and real dishes. Make non-alcoholic drinks feel special by using wine or champagne glasses.
Remember to aim for FUN, and the romance will follow. Check out How to Make a Car Romantic for more ideas.
What To WEAR on a Car Date
What should you wear on a car date? Look for an outfit that is comfortable AND makes you feel great.
Here are classy ideas:
- Guys: Nice jeans and a button-up shirt is usually a good choice.
- Ladies: Depending on the weather, you might opt for a cute summer dress or your favorite jeans or leggings with a gorgeous sweater.
21 Car Date Ideas That Are FUN!
As you go through these romantic and FUN car date ideas, consider interesting places to drive and places to park in your area. Where haven’t you been? What have you been meaning to see or do?
If the weather is warm, find places for nice strolls, paddles or hanging up a hammock.
1. Travel the World at Your Local Airport
Parking under your local airport’s runway is a classic car date idea. There’s something romantic and dreamy about watching planes take off and land. Where might a plane take you two one day?
Take this car date idea up a few notches by continuing with the travel theme. Bring along the Backpacker card game that takes you around the world, dodging catastrophes together. Pick your favorite ethnic food for your car date night, or order an international snack box and vote on your favorites.
2. Radio Sports Night
Remember the days of listening to sportscasters on the radio? Bring it back for your car date night! If you two love watching sports, try a new sensory experience with hearing only. Bring your favorite sports night food and non-alcoholic beer. Maybe car lights or a projector that syncs to the excitement. Have fun!
3. Backseat Picnic
Picnics are a classic date activity, so make it your car date idea. You can keep it simple with your favorite deli foods or favorite takeout place. Get a cooler, portable car table, cozy pillows and blankets. Pack nice wine glasses to make your Sanpellegrino feel fancy.
Bring a fun playlist for ambience, park in a pretty spot, and you’re set! Update your playlist with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime Music.
4. Watch an Opera
Can’t make it to New York City? Watch The Metropolitan Opera on demand! Bring your laptop and connect it to your car’s speakers through Bluetooth. For extra drama, sync your car lights or projector lights to the music. Dress it up and put on those glittery masks.
Need a car adapter for your laptop? Check out this fast-charging car adapter charger with four plugs and an LED light display to tell you the voltage level.
5. Take a Local Tour
What’s great about the community you live in? What is it known for, and where might a tourist go? Many communities have walking tours you can access online, or an informational channel dedicated to the area.
Take a tour of your community, only in the car. Indulge in local treats and enjoy local sights you either forgot about or didn’t know existed. Learn something new about the place you call home.
6. Selfie Scavenger Hunt
This car date idea will take a little extra thought and planning, but it’s totally doable. A selfie scavenger hunt! Take this scavenger hunt to your favorite relationship haunts or romantic spots around town, with fun selfies you have to take along the way.
Here are tips for planning your selfie scavenger hunt:
- Start with the end. Figure out your final stop and selfie, and work backwards.
- Use clues unique to your relationship, like items, places and references. This brings the “romantic” into the hunt.
- Keep it fun. If you like poetry, go ahead with the rhyming hints to the next stop. But, it’s okay just to be silly, too. Search Pinterest for fun couples selfies and make them the requirement to get the next clue.
- Aim for max 8 clues. You don’t want it to be too long, or it could get tedious. Between four and eight is a good number.
- Include food stops. Where were/are your favorite spots to eat? Food trucks and ice cream trucks are totally in for selfies!
You can get some pretty fun selfies with a flexible tripod. Mount your phone and wrap it around a tree limb or set it on your car with the magnet. Cool, right?
7. Video Scavenger Hunt
Rather than photos, create a video scavenger hunt. Make each stop a selfie video with fun questions you have to answer together (check out these fun conversation starters for ideas). At the end, watch your car date night video together with snacks and cozy blankets.
8. Rent a Car for the Day
Have you always wanted to go 4x4ing in a jeep? Cruise the streets in a convertible with the top rolled down? Rent it for your car date idea!
Spend the day touring your town or nearby scenic drives and just having fun in a different vehicle. You might even get in costume and role-play your favorite movie couple, complete with a bad accent. Compare rental options on Expedia.
9. Bollywood Night
Deck your car out for Bollywood Night! Bollywood movies are so fun to watch together, so embrace the theme. Projectors are fun for a DIY drive-in car date night, but you can keep it simple, too, by just plugging in your laptop.
Order an Indian buffet to go, complete with lassies or Masala Chais. Get an expandable car table for your laptop and dinner. And be ready to crank up the music, roll down your windows and head outside to practice your Bollywood dance moves!
Find lots of Bollywood movie ideas on Amazon Prime Video with a free 30-day trial.
10. Take a Neighborhood Tour
Do you two love architecture? How about a neighborhood tour? Drive around to find interesting buildings and home designs, and vote on your favorites. Before you head out, stop for your favorite hot drink. On the drive, hop radio stations and play “name that tune.” Simple and nice!
11. Around the World Foodie Tour
Which restaurants are your favorites? Take a foodie tour on the go for your car date night idea! Pick a different spot for each dish, and enjoy an evening of takeout of all your favorites. A French loaf. Mexican corn tortillas, tomatillos salsa and guacamole. Greek salad. An Asian noodle bowl, followed by baklava and Swiss chocolate. Yum!
12. DIY Foodie Tour
Another way to do a foodie tour car date idea is DIY. Instead of getting everything from a restaurant, order a few things like international snack boxes and chocolates from your favorite chocolatier. Pick a few ethnic dishes from your local deli or order incredible gourmet dishes from Home Bistro, which features dishes by celebrity chefs. Make a playlist of your favorite international artists.
Try a few new dishes and rate your favorites. Easy-peasy!
13. Take a Virtual Tour
SO many people and places have created incredible virtual tours, easy to access right on YouTube. You can take a voice-guided tour, too, but my favorites are interactive videos where you can move your mouse to look around whenever and wherever you want.
Here are three of my favorite virtual tours for a car date activity idea:
- Wander through the ruins of Pompeii, Italy. Featured in my list of Best Virtual Tours of CITIES, this virtual tour is fantastic for car date night because your host silently walks you through the ruins over two hours. Take turns panning around and enjoying this epic city.
- Take a helicopter tour of Iceland’s best landscapes. AirPano takes you to remote, absolutely breathtaking scenery around the world. And in 360-video, you can look around at whatever you want. Click on the question mark to learn about what you’re seeing. It’s almost like your private helicopter tour! Find plenty of other locations in my Best Virtual Tours of National Parks and Waterfalls.
- Virtually walk the Great Wall of China. Spend your car date night among the most epic historic sites in the world. Walk among the Xian Warriors. Head into Pharaoh Ramesses VI’s tomb or European palaces. Explore Petra, Machu Picchu or biblical sights in Israel and Palestine. The world is waiting for you! Find them in my Best Virtual Tours of Historic Sites.
Pair the experience with ethnic food from the place you’re exploring. SO fun and easy!
14. Read a Book
There’s something luxurious about reading a book, don’t you think? It means you actually found some you-time! When my husband and I were dating, we read a fun fantasy series together. It was SO much more interactive than watching a movie. And there’s something romantic about hearing each other’s voices reading a story.
We love the David Eddings Belgariad and Malloreon series. Check out Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans and a free 30-day trial of Audible Plus for thousands of audiobooks and podcasts.
15. Park Tour
How many parks have you been to in your community? Make it a park-hop car date night. Local parks are often some of the most beautiful spots in our communities, but it can be challenging to get out to new ones. Especially if they’re across town.
If the weather’s nice, choose a few parks with activities like pretty walks or paddle-boating. And some with nice lookouts for just hanging out in the car. Vote on your top three to go back to.
16. Explore Nearby Sights
What’s near your community that you just never get out to? Maybe an interesting historic site, petting farm or waterfall? Take a drive for your car date idea. This is obviously best paired with warmer weather when you can get out of your car to see the area and stretch your legs. But for scenic drives, just head out on a short road trip for your car date and finally see these beautiful spots.
Bring road trip snacks, games and conversation cards, too.
17. Visit a Nearby TOWN
Take a drive out to a nearby town or village and be tourists for the day. What makes the community unique and special? Pick up local food. Visit a local attraction. Drive around and get to know it for yourself.
Play the Anywhere Travel Guide to get to know it better! Pick a card and start exploring.
18. Play a Game
How about simply playing a game for your car date night idea? You’ll want a portable table for board games and card games. Check out this small cupholder table or expandable table. Bring game-night munchies and your favorite playlist, and you’re set.
Some great date night games that work in the car include I Should Have Known That trivia, American Trivia Game, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza memory, 100 PICS riddles and good ol’ Travel Battleship.
19. Drive-In Movie
Some communities have brought back the drive-in theaters, which is perfect for car date night ideas. But if you’re not so lucky to have one nearby, you can simply pull out your laptop (the biggest screen you have), a portable laptop table, and fast-charging car adapter. Bring lots of cozy cushions, blankets, popcorn and candy.
Find lots of movie ideas on Amazon Prime Video with a free 30-day trial. Great car date movie ideas are Sleepless in Seattle, The Mask and Aliens! All available with Amazon Prime.
20. Lookout Picnic
Where’s a great lookout in your community? Maybe it’s up on a hill overlooking city lights, or at a park overlooking a pond. Pack a picnic, create a fun playlist and print out these conversation starters. Your car date idea can be as simple as this.
21. Glamping Night-Out
Turn your car date night into a glamping night out! Head to a nearby campground, light a campfire, and bring smores fixings and a guitar. And now you can bring wine or beer, too! If it’s warm enough, bring camping chairs to sit by the fire. If not, enjoy the glow from your back seat.
Bring an inflatable car mattress or car hammock for the backseat, along with lots of pillows and warm blankets. Pack late-night munchies and your favorite bakery treats for the morning. Get a portable kettle and durable stainless-steel french press for coffee. You might also bring a book, movie with your laptop, or audio book for some entertainment.
Not convinced it’ll be comfortable? Rent an RV from RV Share!
So, which car date idea is your favorite? Share in the comments below!
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Featured photo credit: Rene Rauschenberger from Pixabay.
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