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Inaugural Cooking Tour in Italy
October 2-8, 2005
Ciao!
My name is Cynthia Beckes and as you have seen from your brochure, I am helping Lorenzo and Carolyn arrange the Inaugural Culinary Tour in Italy.
I have created a descriptive itinerary for your review so that you can see why we are so excited about this trip. I have included web addresses that speak specifically to the places we will visit on a particular day. These will help you have some sense of the beauty of Tuscany and its environs. |
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Cynthia Beckes and John O'Connor |
I will be happy to help you any way I can. I have traveled extensively in Italy and also lived there for 4 months, so I have a good general knowledge of the area we will visit. Over the ensuing months, I will post useful information on the site, which I hope will encourage you to come to Italy a few days before the tour begins or stay a few days after. For example, did you know that both the Ferrari, Maseriti, and Lamborghini auto museums are near Bologna? Formula One races are often run in the area, so it is alive with auto enthusiasts. Also, there are over 6o museums in Florence. Maybe you'd like to spend a day or so viewing artworks before embarking on your culinary adventure with us. We can help you make those arrangements through our colleagues at American Express in Florence.
You can contact me with any questions at:
Cynthia@lorenzothechef.com
John and I look forward to meeting you all at our orientation meeting at Lorenzo's Culinary School over Labor Day Weekend.
Click here to download the PDF of the tour's brochure
Click here to download the PDF of the tour's registration form
Day One: - Sunday, October 2
Bologna
http://reenzo.hotel-bologna.net/
Meet us in Bologna at the lovely Hotel Re Enzo. You can see from the web address above that we have secured a lovely accommodation right at the historic city center, giving us easy access for our walking tour among the fabulous vendors in the markets just beyond our door. Lorenzo, Carolyn, John and I will be in the bar of the hotel for a complimentary aperitif while we "count noses" and gather the members of our group together between 6 and 8 pm. You are guaranteed as a late arrival, and check in is any time after 11 am. We have not made formal plans for dinner, as we believe that many guests will be jet lagged and only want something light before heading off to bed. Those of us who are "awake" can find a local bistro or we can recommend one if you choose to dine separately. |
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Breakfast is included in our stay at the Hotel Re Renzo. The group will gather in the hotel restaurant to eat and we will then check out, leaving our bags in a secure room behind the front desk. We will thus be unencumbered for a wonderful walking tour of the Market di Mezzo! This is located in a maze of streets that still bear the names of the ancient craftspeople that worked there like Via Drapperie for the upholsterers or Via Clavature for the blacksmiths. It is a bustling place with Bologna natives shopping for fresh fruits, fish, meats and cheeses much in the way they did in ancient times. The Bologna City Government has arranged this tour especially for us. Joining us on this junket is a local chef who will lead us to a local restaurant and demonstrate pasta making, with Lorenzo in assistance. We will dine on the pasta they make. Bologna is home to tortellini and taglatelle as well as the famous Bolognese pasta sauce made with veal, pork, beef and cream. It is probably a good thing that we are doing all this walking before lunch! After lunch we will have time for a little shopping before we travel back to our hotel, claim our bags and be driven by cab to the train station to catch the 4:22 Eurostar for Florence.
http://www.florenceby.com/executive/
http://www.dolcetours.com/re_article8.htm |
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We will enjoy an hour train ride through lovely mountain scenery to arrive in "fair Firenze" by 5:21. We will travel by cab to the Hotel Executive, located adjacent to the Lungarno - the main street that runs along the River Arno. We will have time to freshen up and unpack before heading to a leading Tuscan restaurant, the Wine Bar Frescobaldi. I have attached a nice article by a wine expert about her visit to this extraordinary dining experience. Does the name Frescobaldi ring a bell? It should if you are familiar with fine Italian red wines. This family is one of the most important vintners in all of Italy. We are fortunate to have obtained the services of one of the family members, Dieletta Frescobaldi, who will lecture to us about the various fine olive oils native to Tuscany. We will taste the oils and this will serve as our appetizer before our very special Tuscan dinner. |
| Florence, like so many Italian cities, is made for walking. After dinner those who care to can join us for a leisurely stroll across the historic Piazza della Signoria to the Piazza Republica, before heading back to the hotel. If we are lucky, we will see mimes, and fire-eaters, hear classical music being played by a student quartet or any number of other diversions during out walk. The city stays alive until the wee hours every morning. Tomorrow is another big market tour day, so we'll probably curb our enthusiasms and get to bed at a reasonable time - or not! |
Day 3 -Tuesday, - October 4
Florence - Vagliagli
http://www.dievole.it/
The Hotel Executive provides breakfast for us and we will again leave our bags secured and check out, so that our morning tour of the Central Market, shopping at the outdoor market at San Lorenzo and lunch at a typical restaurant for even more Tuscan goodies. The afternoon is free for a few hours shopping until 5 pm when we will meet back at the Hotel Executive to claim our bags. Our private bus will be waiting to take us through the breathtaking mountainous Tuscan countryside to the lovely Villa Dievole. We will spend the rest of our time in Italy at the Villa, using it as a base for day trips to points of interest, wonderful meals and tastings in the surrounding hills. The Villa is a converted farm building on the estate of the winery. Many working farms all over Italy have entered into the practice of having guests like us on their estate. This practice is known as agriturismo and has proven very popular even with native Italians for their vacations
What can be said of the Villa Dievole? Please take a look at the web site above and know that we have settled into one of the most lovely spots in all of Tuscany. The Villa is part of the larger Dievole Vineyards, one of the best-known producers of Chianti Classico in the world. We will have dinner on the open terrace, weather permitting, and relax for the evening. |
Day 4 - Wednesday
Siena
http://europeforvisitors.com/europe/articles/bls_siena_info_intro.htm |
| Our breakfast at Villa Dievole will prepare us for a day trip to Siena, the medieval Tuscan city famous for is horse race, The Palio. Another market tour is on the agenda and a cooking class. We will be joined by a guest chef who will take us through the market. He will return with us to the Villa for a cooking lesson which will become our lunch. Lorenzo is quite excited to have hands-on experience with a number of chefs on the tour. There will be time for shopping before we return to the Villa. Before dinner, we will have a wine tasting of the various Dievole vintages, coupled with a taste of the specific food that brings out the best flavors of each wine. |
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| Dinner this evening will be in the Cantina Storica, that is dinner in the room that holds the casks of wine in the making. Be sure to look at the Dievole website above to see this wonderful space set for a candlelight dinner. The weather should be fine enough in October that we can enjoy sitting outside after dinner by either of the villa's two swimming pools. |
Day 5 - Thursday
Montalcino and Sant'Antimo
http://www.castellobanfi.com/montal.html
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/tuscany/sant_antimo.htm
After breakfast at the Villa, we will have and enchanting half day excursion to the Church of Sant'Antimo, probably the finest Romanesque church in all of Italy and to the town of Montalcino, home of Italy's most famous wine, Brunello. The web site above for the church is very informative and reminds me that we might get to hear the monks as they chant on their way to prayer services - a stirring experience if you'd never heard it "live." We will visit a farm where we will dine on a light lunch of locally produced cheeses, salami, ham and garlic bread - washed down, of course, with a sample of the noble red wine mentioned above. I've included a web site for the Banfi Castle - for information only. Banfi, another large vintner like the Frescobaldi family, is a million dollar industry and the website will give you a good overview of the area we will visit. John and I are biking enthusiasts and Montalcino is a bicycle rider's paradise. Carolyn and I are looking forward to some wonderful shopping here and understand there is a special kind of wine glass that allows Brunello to be best appreciated, called a "thumbnail glass." We'll be on the hunt for those especially! |
Day 6 - Friday
Cortona
http://www.fineliving.com/fine/our_specials/article/0,1663,FINE_5916_2259393,00.html |
| We will prepare to leave the Villa for Florence on Saturday morning, so we can linger in Cortona and not worry about packing our bags. Later in the morning, we will have a cooking lesson at the Villa Dievole as our lunch. We will then leave on a half-day trip to Cortona. As our week draws to a close, you may find that we have saved the best for last - even after all the extraordinary places we've been, the food and drink we've consumed, and the things we have learned from our guest chefs. Cortona is a jewel of a town, made famous in recent years by an American woman who moved there and wrote a book about it, "Under the Tuscan Sun." To learn more about these most famous citizens of Cortona (not counting such historic luminaries as Fra Angelico or St. Margaret) see the above website. |
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| A city of views, wonderful shops, much local color and pageantry, Cortona is the site of our lavish farewell dinner. After seeing the sites, we will repair to Cortona's most notable restaurant, Il Falconiere, the place where the birds of prey were kept in the Castle's heyday. Perched at the pinnacle of Cortona's already 1800 foot elevation, this is restaurant is a private home that has become a bed and breakfast and fine dining establishment. Please look at their web site and be as awed as we were. Here we can have a leisurely dinner, share memories of our days together and relax high above the Tuscan hills. We hope you time with us will peak your interest for the next Culinary Tour. Lorenzo and Carolyn have several ideas as to where in Italy they would like to take a group next. Perhaps Genoa and the Italian Riviera are good choices, where we could learn all about pesto and the use of basil in our cooking. Maybe we should head south to Naples and Capri to learn about cooking predominantly with red sauces as opposed to the white of the North and Central regions. We'd appreciate your input and it should make for lively dinner discussion. |
Day 7 - Depart for Home
We will have breakfast with you all and make sure you understand your final departure plans. We have planned to leave the villa in the morning and be driven directly to Florence. Some of guests will leave on the afternoon flight for a European hub that will afford them a flight that will take them directly to the State (flights from Florence include connections with Paris, Frankfurt, London, Brussels, and Milan). Others may have flown into Bologna and need to take the train on from Florence to the Bologna airport. Still others may choose to stay in Italy for a while longer. We will accompany you to Florence, from where we will depart for the states. We trust that you will have had a Buon Viaggio and will look forward to seeing you in Lakeside next year. |
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