"Luxury Lifestyle at Villa Mangiacane" trip by The International Kitchen"
Cost: From $3,500 for the five-night Villa Mangiacane program.
Lodging: Fee includes lodging and transfers to and from Florence, Italy.
Not everyone wants to spend an entire vacation standing in the kitchen. If your idea of escape includes cushy surroundings, well-organized excursions, and a minimum of advance work on your part, consider a tour that combines serious cooking classes with all the other elements you'd expect from, say, a custom-packaged trip to Tuscany.
Karen Herbst, founder of a Chicago-based tour company, the International Kitchen, stopped counting her visits to Italy at 150, and she spends her weeks on the road scouting out perfect destinations for her company's trips, a range of cooking tours and culinary vacations in Spain, France, Italy, and elsewhere. One of her favorite offerings is at the Villa Mangiacane (once home to the Machiavelli family) outside Florence. The 15th-century villa is now a luxurious boutique hotel, complete with swank guest rooms and suites, olive groves, a winery, and a holistic spa. If you can drag yourself away from the massage table or the allure of prosecco on the loggia, you can learn to cook classic Tuscan dishes like panzanella and arista (roast pork) from a local chef. Other International Kitchen options include walking and cooking tours, a painting and cooking vacation along the Amalfi Coast and in Rome, and cooking school at the stunning Hotel Gritti Palace in Venice. Your hardest decision will be choosing which trip to take.
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