Cooking Vacation for Tourists Visiting Tuscany
With the booming of travel industry, tourists are looking for new ways to spend their vacation in the most extraordinary ways. More and more vacationers are demanding for new and interesting travel experiences and looking for cultural vacation more and more. Just visiting top destinations and traditional sightseeing no more interesting or in demand.
People are not interested in just visiting Vatican City or watching leaning tower of Pisa. They wan to sip in the local life of Romans or want to experience Tuscany like a true Tuscan.
This new trend in the travel industry has fostered the concept of the cultural travel business, and the category of culture travel that is growing more than any other is that of cooking vacations, especially in culinary hotspots like Italy.
When you opt for a cooking vacation in Italy, no doubt, you are adding knowledge, depth and substance to your vacation plans. You won’t just enjoy the traditional sightseeing, but you will mix it in with full immersion into Italy’s implausible food and wine culture.
Cooking tours in Italy are everywhere, but the central regions of Tuscany, Umbria and Latium – From Rome to Florence are most popular destinations. You will find home-style Italian cooking classes mixed in with sightseeing, wine tasting, olive oil mill tours, and much more. You will be engaged to know the local herbs and the traditional dishes. Or if you fancy more, there are several tours that will teach you a 5-star cuisine on your request. You get the opportunity to learn everything from Tuscan to Sicilian, from Venetian to Umbrian.
If you are truly looking for a cultural holiday and planning a cooking vacation in Italy, consider:
1) Wine Tours and Tasting: If you yearn for the best wines of Italy, look for something in Umbria and Tuscany, as these cooking holidays will tend to include wine tours.
2) What’s Included: The price range for cooking vacations in Italy varies greatly. Often you get what you pay for. Look at what they include in their price. Generally, the more expensive Italian cooking vacations will be all-inclusive, and the less expensive will leave lots of free time with “optional” activities, meal times that are not included, etc.
3) Style: As mentioned above, some cooking classes offer 5-star cuisine whereas others focus on traditional style cooking. Moreover, Italian food is very regional so if you like Tuscan cuisine, for example, be sure to choose your culinary art vacation in Tuscany, Umbria or Lazio, which all offer similar cuisines.
4) Location: Some of traditional cooking schools are located in very remote or difficult to reach areas of the country, requiring car rentals and hours of driving, or may be booking rental Tuscany villas in those areas while others are very simple to reach, and sometimes include the airport transfers.
5) Number of Classes: Are you looking for concentrated workshops every day, for few hours a day or a class here and there? Most weekend holidays offer 4 to 5 hours of cooking whereas one week vacations will include 3 or 4 classes, but some only offer 1, while others have cooking whole day, or every day.
6) Accommodations: This is a little bit trivial and a big question. Are you staying in a vacation villa with all of the other guests? Or willing to share a room? Is there air conditioning or swimming pool? Will you be in a hotel room or just bed and breakfast inn? Check this closely as every cooking vacation in Italy has different styles for their included accommodations.
Author Bio:
Gilbert is a travel writer. Visiting different places and renting Tuscany villas, he has explored much of the traditional art of Tuscan cooking on his vacation to Italy.