New Adventures for 2010: Vegetarian Half Term | Taste + Textiles | Italian Countryside Tour

Other personalized packages: Cheese + Honey | Pork + Porcini | Olive Oil, Chestnuts + Polenta |
Gastronomic Adventures for Familes | Bare Oil in Tuscany | Cooking Lessons and Courses

Courses: Advanced Salumi Course: Salami, Sausages and Salted Loin

Personalized packages:
Italian Countryside Tour

11 — 21 October 2010

A gastronomic adventure meeting the locals and artisans and sharing their culinary treasures from Val d’Orcia in the south of Tuscany to Lucca in the north. Exquisite accommodation, personalised small group travel.

Highlights of tour

• Visit cheesemakers who make pecorino and ricotta with milk from their own flocks
• Visit Montepulciano and taste the famed Nobile di Montepulciano wine
• Outing to Mount Amiata and a farm that rears the belted Cinta Senese pig
• Cooking lesson with seasonal southern Tuscan produce
• Truffle hunt
• Optional visit to spa
• Pick and press olives, and bottle your own oil

• A day exploring the exquisite villages and coastline of the Cinque Terre
• Dinner in the home of an Italian family
• Cooking lesson using your new extra-virgin olive oil
• Tutored olive oil tasting
• Tour sculpture studio beneath famous Carrara marble quarries
• Walk in chestnut woods to see chestnuts drying in a metato (traditional drying house) and taste cake made from chestnut flour
• Visit an 18th-century water mill where chestnuts are ground into flour
• Visit a woollen mill that makes cashmere scarves for international fashion houses on traditional handlooms and opportunity to buy at factory outlet prices
• Polenta, salumi and wine tasting at Andrea Bertucci’s parallel gastronomic universe beneath the 12th-century fortress in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
• Free day in the walled town of Lucca for sightseeing and shopping, or rent a bicycle and tour the tops of the renaissance walls
• Puccini concert in Lucca, his birthplace

Accommodation

Agriturismo ‘La Palazzina’
An 18th-century hunting lodge, set in oak and cypress parkland, has been sensitively restored retaining period features while incorporating modern conveniences. Today it possesses the qualities of a fine country house to which owners Silvano and Eliana give guests a warm welcome.

Albergo Pietrasanta
A 4-star luxurious boutique hotel in the historic centre of the mediaeval town of Pietrasanta. In addition to its beautifully appointed rooms, it has an ample garden and hosts an exceptional collection of contemporary art.

Price per person:
€3300 (Euros)

Single Supplement:
€475 (Euros)

The Itinerary is subject to change if necessary due to weather or agricultural conditions or other events outside our control.

Includes:

• Luxury accommodation for 10 nights
• Local ground transportation for 11 days
• Daily continental breakfast, 6 lunches, 6 dinners
• Entrance to wine tasting, cheese tasting, truffle hunt, concert, sculpture studio, cooking lessons, guided visits with producers

Does not include:

• Airfares
• Travel and cancellation insurance
• Spa treatments
• Wines and beverages, other than those served with meals, additional meals
• Personal expenses such as telephone, mini-bar, etc.

Notes

Meeting points
Pisa International Airport (Galileo Galilei)
or Viareggio train station

Attire: Informal. Jeans or smart trousers are acceptable everywhere.

Weather in October & November:
Val d’Orcia: 9°–15°C, precipitation 69 mm
Lucca: 11°–21°C, precipitation 119 mm

Slow Food Salone del Gusto, Turin
21–25 October
Transport from Turin to Lucca can be arranged if enough people request it.
Recommended 4-star hotel: Hotel Victoria www.hotelvictoria-torino.com

International travel advice
For more information on flights to Pisa International Airport, please click here.
For information on arriving by train The Man in Seat Sixty-One gives much good advice.