There is no shortage of websites advertising cooking vacations in Italy, and they certainly all look wonderful. How to choose? This guide will help you decide if ours is the best for you.

1Our vacations are truly All-Inclusive
We encourage you to browse other websites and look at their itineraries, but look closely. Most of the time you will find that they are peppered with lines like 'this afternoon you are free to...' , or 'optionally you can...', etc. Many only include meals resulting from the classes. We include everything. Every day is divided into 'morning activities' and 'afternoon activities'. If we are cooking in the morning, we have an excursion in the afternoon. If we are not cooking at all one day, we have an all-day excursion, and so on. And while we are out, every meal is included, every guided tour, every entrance fee, all transportation, etc. Of course, if you would rather venture out on your own one day, you are free to, but if you want to go on an excursion with us, it is there, and it is included. What makes this important is that if we were to simply remove 3 meals and 3 excursions from our week, it would increase our profit by 20%, so the while our pricing is in line with others, the value is much greater.

Many others don't provide accommodations, or provide 'shared' accommodations, or simply put you up in some anonymous hotel. We include a beautiful private village home for each party. Our village homes are absolutely stunning, completely restored homes in the village center, just below the medieval castle, where you will have local villagers for neighbors so you get a real sense of living Italian village life! It is an experience unlike any other that really gives you the feeling of living like an Italian, not a tourist. They are beautiful and extremely comfortable. Add to that that most of the homes have excellent air conditioning, satellite tv, and some even have wireless Internet.

In a nutshell, from the moment we pick you up at the Rome airport or Orte train station (yes, we include airport transfers unlike most others) until the moment we take you back, just about everything is included. You could conceivably never pull your wallet out all week.

To be completely up front, here is what we do not include: Airfare; Expenses you have BEFORE of AFTER our tour; Costs associated with getting to Soriano if you miss our shuttle pickups at the Rome FCO airport or Orte train station; any expenses you have if you choose to go off of our itinerary; any purchases you make; hard alcohol or special request wine with meals (we always include excellent local wines wherever we go, but if you want that specific $800 bottle of wine with dinner, it is at your expense :-) ); food or drink outside of main meals (everything is included for breakfast, lunch and dinner).

2100% Hands On, Full immersion classes
Many of the others do a great deal of 'Demonstration'. In other words, your class may include a 4 course meal, but you are only preparing one or two courses, while a great deal of the meal is being demonstrated for you, or being done separately in another kitchen. We don't believe this makes sense. With us, you will be 100% involved in preparing 100% of the meals.

3Balance: Cooking, Major sightseeing & Off the beaten path
Our unique location in Italy affords us a luxury others simply cannot afford... we are close to so much! It allows us to build itineraries that balance cooking classes with fantastic sightseeing excursions to major sights such as Rome, Florence, Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto, and much more. Still, we balance these excursions with visits many of Italy's most precious hidden treasures. You will find that our itineraries strike a wonderful balance that is unmatched.

4Home Cooking vs. High Cuisine
While this is a matter of preference, it is important to note that we focus our classes on home cooking. Some others focus more on high cuisine, which doesn't translate well into the real world. We focus on traditional Tuscan and Umbrian dishes that you can make at home. It is a very 'Family Style Experience'. We believe that you should be able to use all of the knowledge you have gained while you were with us once you get home. Because of this, we carefully select recipes that can be made with ingredients found outside of Italy, and we will provide you with a recipe book that includes both metric and imperial measurements, as well as substitutions for ingredients that you may not find at home.

5You are Family
This can't be stressed enough. A week with us just doesn't feel like a tour at all. You will feel like you are visiting extended family, and we will feel like extended family is visiting. This isn't part of some formula to make your trip special, it is just the way it all works out. We have a very casual attitude toward it... this is fun for us, and we love sharing this wonderful place with others. Perhaps it is because we get to know you before you arrive and we can't wait to finally meet, or perhaps it is just the Soriano air :-). Either way, you will go home having had the most amazing vacation of your life, having made amazing new friends, having learned to make incredible Italian home cooking, having seen remarkable things few tourists have seen, and having felt an uncanny sense belonging in a place so far away. Long before you get home, you will have started planning your return.

6We Are Well-Established and Solid
It can be hard to tell the difference between a solid, established company, and a fly-by-night. Among the companies that operate cooking vacations in Italy, some are very well-respected and very well-established, while many others pop up overnight, then shut down at the blink of an eye once they begin to realize how incredibly complicated the logistics are of providing this kind of service. Most have very simplistic websites that leave much to the imagination. Instead, we want you to know as much as you can about us before you make your choice, so we have worked tirelessly to make our website as comprehensive as it can be. As you have a look around, every one of the countless pictures you see on our website is taken from one of our tours. We never use stock photography. Every person you see in the photos is one of our guests. Better yet, have a look at our comprehensive video gallery, and know that 100% of our video footage was taken during our tours, and those are all actual guests.

We want you to know that you can feel completely confident, so we have a comprehensive list of letters our guests have written us on our website. Visit our Guest Testimonials page, where you will see excerpts of these letters, and be sure to click on the names of the people below each excerpt to be taken to a page that has not only the complete text of their letter to us, but a scan of the actual letter they wrote us.

To take it a step further, our past guests would be happy to speak with you. Just visit our FaceBook page and ask a question. Someone will be sure to answer, as we are friends with hundreds of our past guests. Or just ask us, and we will be glad to put you in touch with other past guests via e-mail that would be happy to tell you what our vacations are like from their perspective.

7We Are Owner-Operators
A great deal of the cooking vacations you find on the Internet are being marketed by resellers or affiliates that have no direct connection with the vacation being provided. Not so with us. Every vacation you see on our website is organized and operated by us. When you do cooking classes, you are doing it in our kitchen, and the chef teaching the class is our chef. When you go on excursions, the guides and the drivers are working directly for us. We control every aspect of your vacation from the moment we pick you up until the moment we drop you off at the end. This means that when you speak with us or e-mail us before your trip, the knowledge we share is direct, first-hand knowledge that only comes from the experience of actually providing the service you are selling.

8Private Accommodations that put you in the mix with local villagers
Some others will put you up in a hotel, while others will house you in a shared villa for your trip. We believe that living within the Italian culture is essential to making your time with us as magical as possible. You will stay at one of our breathtaking village homes. These are truly 1st class accommodations. Each one is completely independent, and beautifully decorated. They feature all modern conveniences, most with satellite television, air conditioning, full kitchen, and much more. The homes are never shared. You have your own private place nestled in the medieval quarter of Soriano.

9Our location cannot be matched
Many people are not really familiar with the various regions in Italy, but they know certain buzzwords like 'Tuscany' or 'Umbria'. People often tell us they want to go to Tuscany and Florence. That is like hearing someone say they want to go to Los Angeles and California. The area of Italy that most people think of when they hear terms like 'Tuscan Countryside' or 'Tuscany Hilltowns' is an area known as 'Tuscia', which is made up of Southern Tuscany, Southern Umbria, and Northern Lazio. In fact, many places people think of when they think of Tuscany, aren't in Tuscany at all. Our home base is a village called Soriano nel Cimino. It is right at the center of this area. Soriano also has the added benefit of being very close to Rome, compared to most of Tuscany.

10Transportation from start to finish
Most other cooking vacations are in extremely remote areas that are very difficult to get to, and most of them require you to find your own way there. We are very well-connected. We are just 75 minutes from the Rome airport, and we have a major rail station just 15 minutes away. We offer a free shuttle service from the airport on the start day at 10:30AM, and we offer a free shuttle service from the rail station at 3:45. So if you are arriving in Italy the day you begin your time with us or you are already here, we make it easy. If you are already in Italy, our 3:45 rail station pickup makes it easy with direct trains from almost all major cities, including Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples, and more. The same goes for the end of the trip and the whole time you are with us.

11A Home Kitchen vs. an Industrial Kitchen
Many others hold their classes in a restaurant kitchen. Our kitchen is our breathtaking country villa home kitchen that is large enough to comfortably handle up to 16 people (even though most of our weeks are limited to 12 people). We believe that if you are learning to cook Italian food for home, you should learn it in a kitchen that is equipped for home cooking, not large scale cooking. Our classes will be at Villa Eddarella, our summer home in Italy. This is a 350+ year old restored country farmhouse that has been in Paola's family for centuries. In other words, we welcome you into our home for your classes.