Food and Travel

[LuckyGirl]

What resources are out there for planning trips that revolve around food and culture?

Are there good guided trips that folks have experience with? Any good web sites for putting together one's own trip with the focus on food, cooking and culture?

I am in the beginning stages of research for two trips that are in line on the travel agenda for my husband and I. We are interested in touring India and Russia (separate trips). Ideally we will have a month for each trip. Which trip we take first will depend a lot on how the plans come together.

Also on the list of tours that we would like to do as shorter trips are Vietnam, Thailand, Italy and France. While we have travelled through Europe, we've never done a trip before with the specific focus being cooking and food so any help with these countries would also be of interest.

We're certainly not looking to make all of these trips in short order but I would like to start planning and researching the bigger two trips, Russia and India. Also I would like to start researching what's available relative to cooking classes in Italy and France so that perhaps on shorter trips to those two countries we can work some thing in that is specifically food and cooking related.

Don't feel the need to limit your responses to the countries that I mentioned in this post. I'm interested in your food and travel experiences across the globe!

TIA,

Diane