Foodie Trips Presents: The Tuscan Culinary Adventure of Your Dreams

Our friendly contributor, Priyanka Nasta, put together an amazing recap of our upcoming delicious adventure to the Italian countryside!

Let us tell you a bit about ourselves here at the Foodie Trips.  We start to make dinner plans in the morning, and our evenings and weekends are mostly centered around food and cooking.  We also love to travel, and are borderline neurotic about finding interesting travel locations and exploring different cuisines on Pinterest.

When we are not planning culinary vacations in charming locales, we are dreaming of enchanting hills, historical villages and all the food and culture they offer.  This fall, the Foodie-Trips troop, along with a bunch of you culinados (take our quiz to see if you're one), will embark on a Tuscan Culinary Adventure, full of Italian food and wine.

Mark your calendar from October 2-6, where we will spend an amazing week in the hills of Tuscany truffle hunting, wine tasting and taking hands on cooking classes with Tuscan chefs.  Our home base will be the luxurious Villa Mangiacane which has welcomed many celebrities and is said to have been designed by Michelangelo. The fifteenth-century villa is the ultimate Florentine hotel and spa, guaranteed to exceed your expectations.

The Villa is the perfect home base for our explorations.  We will be eating a lot of gelato while exploring medieval towns, the wonderful city of Florence and learning a few Italian words along the way.  Bei tempi (Good times)!

We will begin Day 1 of our Tuscan cooking class by preparing a three-course lunch with the finest local ingredients with our chef in the kitchen.  We then get to enjoy our meal on the patio overlooking the valley of vineyards surrounding the Machiavellian Villa.  Following lunch, we have some free time to explore the area.  For dinner, we  will indulge in a Tuscan barbecue-style dinner while enjoying the sunset.

The next day begins with a light breakfast at the villa, followed by a visit to one of the region's most famous wineries owned by one of the oldest winemaking families in Italy.  After a trip to the James Bond like cellars, lunch and some of their most famous wine is served on the terrace.

What’s a trip without learning the local language? Enjoy dinner along with an Italian language lesson at a hidden gem restaurant that is a secret to most tourists and owned by a very charismatic Florentine.

We will also visit the gorgeous medieval village of San Gimignano, where guests have the afternoon to enjoy lunch at their leisure with time afterward to peruse and shop at local galleries and boutiques.  For dinner we don our aprons again for a home made pizza and pasta making workshop, and party back at Villa Mangiacane.

A day of truffle hunting follows! At the organic farm where we hunt, we will sample artisanal cheeses, meats and honey.  Chef Francesco will conduct a lunchtime cooking class to use the farm's produce for a meal. In the evening, we unwind with a light wine degustation dinner on the terrace complete with classical Chianti selections.

On the final day of the Tuscan vacation, we explore the bustling renaissance food and leather market before a culinary class in their historic market.  We then toast the wonderful week's end with champagne and a traditional Tuscan farewell dinner.

The Tuscan Culinary Adventure is all about learning and absorbing the culture, heritage and food of Tuscany, and more importantly, it's a great way to relax, rejuvenate and charge your batteries for the real world.  Join us for a vacation and culinary experience like no other, we promise it will change you!

To book your trip, please contact our dedicated travel professional Clara Power on 416-996-6849 or email her at cpower@tpi.ca.  We also have an early bird booking special until May 31, 2017.  More information and details are also available on our website.