Regular readers might have heard about a funky food tour I have been working on for October (see green line above). It’s been a long time in the making and my partner-in-crime, fellow expat in Calabria, friend and cooking class connoisseur, Tania Pascuzzi (In Italy Tours) and I have poured our blood, sweat and tears-or vino rosso, bianco and rosato, if you prefer-into the tour.
In fact, we’ve been working on the itinerary, scouting locations, hotels, agriturismi , restaurants, chefs and guides since last fall.
Oh and it was hard!
Seriously. Traveling around this rugged and diverse region … trying new ethnic dishes and home-cooked meals … having professional chefs cook for us … that is work, people!
Well, it *was* work.
Narrowing it down, at least.
But somehow we did and we ended up with an appropriately-packed, while-still-allowing-for-breathing-time eight-day itinerary that is complete with four hands-on cooking classes, pasta and bread-making demonstrations, visits to local farms, factories and markets, wine-tasting, cultural visits, tarantella parties … and more.
I’ve been wanting to elaborate a bit on the tour for a while now, but between independent clients, the ancestry tours and the new capo I hadn’t yet collected these thoughts to put on paper. Uhm, computer screen … you know what I mean. … until now.
And then something happened this week that made me realize I better act. While scootin’ around Google, Tania noticed that the Calabrian Table Tour had been renamed the “Calabrian Culinary Tour,” was scheduled for the same dates, quoted our copy and was published on a website neither of us had seen before.
I’m not going to link to them here and give them my good Google Juice but let’s just say if you search for Busy Walkers dot com you will find a website that advertises business tours. 920 business tours to be exact. Or, well, 919 now.
A few days of creatively digging around, a half dozen unanswered phone calls and a Russian Skype message later we discovered that the company was communicating with would-be guests on our behalf and we asked them to remove our tour.
We still aren’t sure if they were going to tell us about any potential bookings, demand commission or worst of all … accept payments from Calabria-lovin’ foodies wanting to visit the deep south, but we are glad we found them before future travelers did.
If you are reading this post and want to join us in October, then you will probably contact us directly-or work with one of our fellow Italy travel consultants who has first hand knowledge of the tour. And that’s great. But feel free to warn others about companies like Busy Walkers who might not be on the up and up.
The last few days scared the naiveté out of me (out of maaay, you know to make that rhyme) but nothing’s going to distract from the energy, passion and Calabrian creativity we’ve poured into this tour. October can’t get here quickly enough for us and we hope you’ll come along for the Calabrian Table Tour and join us at we travel throughout the region, sharing our Calabria with you … one table at a time.
Are you heading to southern Italy or Calabria and can’t make the tour in October? If so, click here to see how I can help you plan your trip.
