Off the Tourist Grid: Fresh Faces and Old Ways In Italy's Marche Region
$2850 Includes All Expenses Except Airfare
Contact Us for 2012 Dates!
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| Mercatello Square |
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| Making Pasta with Lina |
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| Ceramics Studio and Demo in Urbania |
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| Slipping Into Time... |
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Slip out of time and slide into authentic Italian life for a week. You’ll meet artists and artisans, chefs and farmers, all bringing old ways into the new world. Come with us to the little-known Marche region, just next door to Tuscany, where tourists have missed the little nuggets of history and culture tucked into every turn in the road. We’ll stay in a palazzo built in the 1400s and dip into life on the town square of Mercatello (where Jamie Oliver battled the locals in a pasta making contest a couple of years back - see http://youtu.be/cBU-JYWMyrI). Our October trip is timed to coincide with the White Truffle festival, a time of celebration and gustatory overload for all! Every experience is tailored to provide you with new acquaintances and fresh perspectives that may change your view of this part of the world forever.
Cost: The cost for the entire trip is $2850 and includes all expenses except airfare to Rome. We will pick you up at the Rome airport (or make other arrangements if you fly into another airport) and from that moment on, all of your food, drink, lessons, tours, transportation is covered. We eat in local restaurants and you order from the menu; no steam tables or set menus. The end result is that we have done the hard work for you, so upon your arrival you can relax, enjoy, and experience this region of Italy as you could never do on a large tour or on your own.
When: Right now the first people to sign up for the trip get to choose which week in October 2012 they would like to go!
Itinerary: Read on for the details, then give us a call at 214.585.1880 and we'll get together with you to discuss the trip in more depth and answer any questions you may have. See you soon! Nancy and Gary Krabill
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| At Home in Palazzo Donati |
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Day 1: Welcome! – We meet you at the Rome Airport (for those traveling in from different cities, we will make plans to have you meet us in Mercatello). We’ll drive up the autostrada with a quick stop in Orvieto for lunch, and then arrive Saturday late afternoon at the Donati Palazzo on Mercatello’s town square where we’ll spend the week. The palazzo is an extraordinary experience in itself, over 4000 square feet filled with antiques and local furnishings, including a medieval-style kitchen, an elegant dining room painted by a Jewish artist protected by the family during WWII, bedrooms for 10 people, and an elegant lawn hidden in back. We’ll start with an orientation to the palazzo and grounds followed by an optional walking tour of the city with a local. Refreshments at Caffe Rinaldi, local bar and unofficial town center. We’ll relax a bit
at the palazzo before dinner at Da Uto, a local restaurant within walking
distance.
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| Truffles! |
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Day 2: Truffles!– It’s white truffle time in the Marche! Neighboring San Angelo in Vado celebrates the season with day-long food and wine tastings, truffle hunting demonstrations, and cultural activities. It is a little-known fact that the prized white truffle hails not only from famous Alba in northwest Italy, but also from the Marche region. Skip the tourists and experience the truffle season more directly here, along with local specialties such as Pecorino di Fossa, sheep’s cheese aged in caves. One side trip will be a visit to the footings of a recently-discovered Roman domus, or noble’s house, erected in the first century A.D., where the mosaic floors draped on the contours of the land tell the story of its opulent owners millennia ago.
Day 2: May – Piazza of
Taste in “Canterbury” (Cantiano)
Our May trip ventures out for a gustatory overload in tiny Cantiano. During this festival the town square is
brimming with local food and drink, accompanied by music. Local restaurants will trot out their
favorite fare, all is a celebration of taste that lasts all day.
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| Lamoli Blue Dye |
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Day 3: More Truffles, Feeling Blue, A Church That Tells Time, and Pizzas! – Continuing our truffle theme, we’ll start out with a guide and a couple of dogs to see how a truffle hunt works, followed by a tour of a research facility that has learned to cultivate the black (but not the elusive white) truffle. Next, we’ll venture to tiny Lamoli to see a museum and artist workshop dedicated to bringing back the medieval art of using yellow flowers to make blue dye (ask about the special form of human intervention needed to make it work!). Next door, we’ll explore a medieval church with an interior that tells the time.
That evening will be special, with our hosts Lina and Celsa, who will whip up a dizzying amount of pizzas in a wood-fired oven right before our eyes (including a special dessert pizza). We’ll invite their friends from the village, giving you the opportunity to interact with the locals.
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| Cooking with Flowers, Then Ceramics in Urbania |
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Day 4: Cooking with Flowers, Then Ceramics in Urbania – We’ll start the day with a trip to nearby Urbania where we will take a cooking lesson from Anna Faggi at Mulino Della Ricavata, a restaurant and B&B located at a restored mill deep in the countryside. Anna grows her own flowers and herbs, and includes flowers in every course in a way that is not silly, but instead absolutely perfectly paired and balanced. We’ll learn to cook her way, and then sample the results in what will be an incredible lunch. Urbania is famous for its ceramics, so on the way back we’ll visit a tiny ceramics factory, Ceramica Casteldurante, where the owners Giuliano and Gilberto control the entire process from throwing the pieces to painting and firing using Renaissance classic paintings as their inspiration. Having worked up an appetite, we’ll sample gelato and
pastries at the nearby Pasticceria Caffe Teatro. They’re best enjoyed outside, with a view of
the town theater designed by the famous architect Bramante who also created St.
Peter’s basilica in Rome.
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| Federico's Palace and Dinner with the Golosi |
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Day 5: Federico’s Palace and Dinner with the Golosi – We’ll spend the day at Federico II’s ducal palace in Urbino, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. Federico II ruled as Duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482, and in that short time established Urbino as a center of culture and the arts, creating a salon-type environment at his court where important artists and thinkers such as Piero della Francesca, Giovanni Santi (father of Raphael), and Francesco di Giorgio Martini not only created important works, but set the standards for courtly decorum for centuries to come. Baldassare Castiglione coined the term “sprezzatura” here. It means a certain sort of studied nonchalance, or “la bella figura”, which describes the ultimate in courtly behavior, sometimes at the expense of natural behavior and honesty. In his 1970s book and BBC TV Series "Civilization" (both still available), Kenneth Clark said that "life in Urbino was one of the high water marks of western civilization. (In regards to the Palace), the arcaded courtyard is calm and timeless …the rooms are so perfectly proportioned that it exhilarates one to walk through them: in fact it’s the only palace in the world that I can go round without feeling oppressed and exhausted". Another commentator says that "above all it was judgement, not just a lucky use of available talent, that made the proportions, the spaces and the decorations of his palace the purest and most harmonious expressions of Quattrocento aesthetic ideals" (J.R.Hale, U.C. London).
We’ll begin with a brief walk around town, then lunch at Osteria Gula di Bigonzi Orfeo (Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi, 23, 61029, Italy+39 0722 2694). The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche museum now located in the palace houses one of Italy’s most important collections of Renaissance art. We’ll tour the museum, checking out Federico’s enormous bedstead and his studio, covered with intarsia (wooden mosaics) depicting armor, military equipment, and other manly images. Next we’ll take a walking tour to include Rafael’s birthplace.
We’ll return to Mercatello to dine at Bernardo’s fabulous restaurant nestled in his restored village, Castello della Pieve (named after the group that banished Dante from Florence). After being served course after course of appetizers like Prosciutto di Carpenia, melon with ground sausage, fried dough with meats, fennel with pear and facing your entrée, you will understand the origin of the restaurant’s name. Il Girone dei Golosi is the circle in Dante’s Inferno reserved for gluttons.
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| Pasta Lesson in the Kitchen of Palazzo Donati |
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Day 6: Pasta and Art – We’ll start out with a pasta making lesson with Lina, then venture to Pasquale Martini's home, a local sculptor and ironworker. We'll see his workshop, then stroll among his world-famous creations in situ in his outdoor gallery. Back to the villa to dine on the fruits of our lesson, and we’ll have the afternoon on our own to stroll the village, relax, and begin to pack for the journey home.
On to La Grotta Dei Folletti for our "last supper." Jamie Oliver and his entourage encamped and dined there during the
filming of Jamie’s Great Italian Escape for Food Network. Owner Massimo and his family (along with an entourage of very friendly dogs) greet you for a little Prosecco and (if you’re lucky) a swipe of millefiori honey still on the comb that's made on the premises, Inside, you’ll
hunker down to a dizzying array of plates, groaning with local fare including pasta
made on site, cheeses including fresh ricotta and pecorino, salami and
dried sausages made with both pork and roe deer meat (seasonal), along with local
prosciutto and wild boar. Local wines
are featured along with sweet endings such as Visciole, a dried cherry liqueur,
and meade made from the hives on site.
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| On The Road Again |
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Day 7: – Arrivederci! We head out to the Rome Airport, with lunch in hilltop Orvieto just for fun. We will make arrangements for travelers heading on to other destinations as well.
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