I think most of you would agree that food plays a very big part when it comes to travel.
I’ve never taken a local cooking course or went on a trip with the main reason being the food. (I have had a few trips inspired by beer in the past though!) However, Kim and I have gone on our own mini-food tours during trips in the past.
Here are a few that come to mind:
- Trying lobster rolls (and whoopie pies) in Maine
- Eating lots of pizza around Rome
- Trying some of New Haven’s great apizza
- Sampling some great cheesesteaks in Philadelphia
- A never-ending quest to try out the best pizza and burgers around Brooklyn and NYC for that matter.
While thinking of our mini-food tours, most of them seem to have taken place during trips around the US. I’d think that this is the case due to usually having a car to get around, where on international trips I’ve rarely rented a car.
During our international travels, there have been some great food experiences but I wouldn’t classify them as tours. (Check out The 6 Oddest Foods That I’ve Ever Tried.)
Fodor’s Travel has a fun slideshow with Top 10 Fall Trips for Food Lovers.
I was curious to find out what Fodor’s came up with and which tours might interest me.
Here is the list:
- Hikes and Taste with Whole Foods- Aspen, Colorado
- Eat Your Way Through Italy- Emilia Romagna, Italy
- Celebrate Suds- Tasmania, Australia
- Tapas Crawl in La Rioja- Logrono, Spain
- Driving a UK Food Trail- Blaenavon to Aberaeron, Wales
- Forage For Your Food- Asheville, North Carolina
- Culinary Safari- Franschhoek, South Africa
- South America’s Largest Food Fest- Lima, Peru
- Gather Grapes During Harvest- Kakheti, Georgia
- Sample Street Food- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
I’m not going to go into detail about each of the tours but if I had to pick a bunch to experience, I think I’d go with the first four.
Hikes and Tastes with Whole Foods is through their Whole Journeys “offshoot” where you can go on a long hike which ends each day with different local foodie experiences. Trips are ran around the world and the Aspen trip mentioned by Fodor’s sounds awesome!
Eat Your Way Through Italy with Emilia Romagna has you sampling a variety of foods in the country’s food capital- Bologna. “Experience visits with the region’s premier artisans, chefs, and producers withΒ Tour de Forks, whose itineraries are based on the tenets of the Slow Food movement”.
Celebrate Suds in Tasmania sounds great for a couple of reasons. I’d love to return to Australia and when I do Tasmania is high on my list of places to visit and the trip involves lots of beer. Tasmanian International Beerfest has a beer garden that is close to “the length of two football fields” and there are over 300 beers to try from around the world.
Tapas Crawl in La Rioja– I love tapas but unfortunately during my trip to Spain it wasn’t my thing. I was just way too picky back then. In La Rioja, Spain there are two streets filled with tapas bars so it would probably be a great place to sample the variety of tapas from the country.
Would you be interested in going on a foodie tour or even traveling with the main purpose being the food?
Find out about each of the Top Fall Trips for Foodies in the Fodor’s article here.
