I traveled through China’s Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, where minority peoples live in the countryside, on a 17-day trip, Oct. 9-29, 2011. These sections are interesting because some of the people still adhere to the older customs and style of dress.
Within Hôtel Ritz Paris, cooking classes are held at Ecole (School) Ritz Escoffier (15 place Vendôme, 75041 Paris Cedex 01, France; phone 33 [0] 1 43 16 30 50), named for Auguste Escoffier, the hotel’s first head chef.
Examples — prepare and eat lunch in a one-hour “Ritzy Break” (€55, near $77). Saturday holds two four-hour workshops, one on seasonal dishes, the other on pastries, each €140 ($196). On Sunday is the four-hour “Extreme Chocolate” (€250, or $350). At the hotel, students enter at 38 rue Cambon.
Saipan is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a territory of the United States. The native islanders are called Chamorros, but over the years their culture has been infused with aspects of Spanish, Japanese and American cultures.
by Karl & Ann Springer; San Antonio, TX
My wife, Ann, and I spent 25 days in the south of France — including two weeks in Provence and four days in Nice and ending with a 7-day riverboat cruise on the Rhône and Saône rivers — in June-July 2011.
In Beijing, China, Wan Feng Xiaochi (Snack Shop) (No. 306 Wan Feng Rd., Fengtai District; phone 6488 6868), is the only place where the cuisine of all 56 of China’s ethnic groups is represented. The three-story, more than 172,000-square-foot food palace seats 2,000, and its stalls have 3,000 selections, including samosas from Xinjiang, Tibetan wine and mutton from Mongolia.
In addition, folk art and jewelry are for sale and craftspeople demo cooking techniques.
Four-day/three-night, women-only trip in the Bobbie Burns Mountains, western CANADA, Aug. 23-26, 2012. Highlights: Daily yoga lesson/helicopter into mountains with guide for hiking/cooking class/lodge with spa. Land, $2,615. Single supp., $300. Canadian Mountain Holidays (Banff, Alberta, Canada; phone 800/661-0252, www.canadianmountainholidays.com).
Koper, Slovenia, was one of our last ports on a May-June ’11 cruise aboard the Nautica of Oceania Cruises (800/531-5619). Most of our shipmates who stayed in town or went on the ship’s tours were disappointed in this port of call, but our group of seven had a wonderful day. I would say it was one of my favorite ports, but, with an itinerary that included Istanbul, Kus¸adası, Kotor, Dubrovnik and Venice, that would be a stretch.
by Steven Emmet; Solana Beach, CA
The “Tali Wiru Experience,” a dinner served on an isolated dune with a view of Uluru and the distant Olgas, is offered April 1, 2012, to Jan. 15, 2013, by Ayers Rock Resort in Australia (phone +61 2 8296 8010, fax +61 2 9299 2103, e-mail travel@voyages.com.au). Tali wiru means “beautiful dune” in the Aboriginal language Anangu. For AUS295 (about $313) each, no more than 20 guests are picked up from the resort’s six hotels and taken to Tali Wiru, where they will walk 250 meters on soft sand to the top of the dune.
My 93-year-old mother, who loves to cook, often says, “Nothing I make tastes like what my mother used to make.” She complains, “Today tomatoes are unblemished and red, but they have no flavor. Nothing tastes like it used to when it was home grown the old-fashioned way without fancy fertilizers and chemicals.”