Take a Cooking School Vacation
Travel with a Cooking School Twist
While lying in a chaise lounge, sipping margaritas and catching up on your beach reading certainly makes for a fine vacation, many food lovers are now choosing to skip some of the relaxation in order to indulge their culinary passions and enhance their cooking skills.
If you, too, are interested in coming home from your vacation with something other than a sunburn and a suitcase full of soon-to-grow-dusty trinkets and postcards, here's a mini-guide to planning your cooking school vacation:
Where to Go on Your Cooking School Vacation
The growing popularity of cooking school vacations means that you can likely find a way to incorporate cooking classes into your trip, no matter where you'd like to go. You can explore the culinary delights of an exotic locale like France, Italy or Thailand—or you can stick closer to home and take a workshop in a culinary hot spot like Napa Valley, New York City or New Orleans.
What You'll Pay
All-inclusive cooking school vacations—which typically offer activities from morning till night, in addition to covering meals and accommodations—can run $400 to $700 (or more) per day, per person. At the opposite end of the spectrum, half-day cooking classes, generally run $100 to 150 per day, per person. If you're traveling on a budget, you might consider vacationing in the U.S., taking a shorter vacation (three day packages are common), or take a more traditional vacation and add in a cooking class or two.
How Long You'll Be Gone
Again, there are lots of options when it comes to planning the length of your cooking school vacation. Most commonly, these trips tend to run from three to seven days, but you can also find one- or two-day options (which you can include as part of a longer, more traditional vacation). At the other end of the spectrum, 10-day (or longer) options can allow those with larger budgets the luxury of total immersion in the cuisine and culture of their destination.
What Your Cooking School Vacation Will Include
Cooking school vacations vary widely in the types of activities offered as part of the package. Some stick strictly to the kitchen, while others include visits to local farmers' markets, vineyards, and walking tours with stops at various restaurants and bakeries in addition to cooking classes. Whether you're looking for an intensive cooking experience or something more along the lines of a "culinary sightseeing tour plus unlimited pastries," you should be able to find the perfect vacation for you.
