Italy: Take a Cooking Class

Need a lesson on slowing down and savoring life? Head for rural Italy and stay at a small family-run organic farm, inn, and cooking school in Le Marche. Set on 250 acres of rolling hills and farmland, La Tavola Marche gives you the chance to mingle with locals and Italians on holiday for an authentic farm-to-table experience.

Down in the garden, guests pick veggies for the day's class under the watchful eye of the Italian farmer, a lively character who also guides guests into the surrounding forest during the fall for mushroom hunting. Thursday is the inn's pizza night, when locals from the farming village (who speak little to no English) join guests around one long table for a family-style meal.

If You Go: You'll stay in the 300-year-old stone farmhouse with wood-beam ceilings and stone fireplaces. Five-course feasts are served either in the rustic kitchen, the dining room, or outdoors in the garden terrace. Doubles start at €80 (about $105) per night.