This exceptional guide combines the perfect mix of food and travel. With award-winning chefs as your personal teachers, the holidays featured here are ideal getaways for food lovers. The third in this series of unusual, illustrated vacation guides, Cooking School Holidays follows the success of Walking the World's Most Exceptional Trails and Spas: Exceptional Destinations Around the World. In this new volume twenty-five cooking schools with excellent teaching facilities from around the world are presented, including the Mandarin Oriental Cooking School in Bangkok where in intimate-sized classes you learn traditional ingredient preparation and gain confidence to produce delectable Thai dishes, and Betty's, the well-known tea room and bakery in Yorkshire, England, where experts give master classes in the art of baking. Other exciting destinations include a course preparing seafood in Sydney, Australia, a study of Northern Italian food and wine in Tuscany, and a discovery of seasonal French cuisine in Provence. Whatever your preference, this guide serves up a vacation for every food lovers' taste. Author Jenni Muir selected schools that provide a memorable holiday along with practical skills and useful knowledge about a particular cuisine. Accompanying 150 stunning travel and food pictures in color, the lively text describes a course of study-from a long weekend to a two-week program-and provides a "taster" recipe from each school. Tips are provided on other programs readers might like to try if they find the one featured appealing. There is also information about schedules, travel arrangements, and accommodations that range from charming bed-and-breakfast places near the schools to luxurious all-inclusive packages staying in former convents, rustic farmhouses, and plush international hotels. So if your fantasy is to fly to some intriguing destination and learn at the side of an award-winning chef, be instructed on authentic cooking methods of a favorite cuisine, or understand how local people really shop, cook, eat, and drink, this guide offers plans to realize these dreams. Whatever cooking adventure you have in mind, the vacations in this guide will provide thrilling culinary experiences and bring style to your cooking, discernment to your shopping, and enjoyment of meals for many years to come. Book jacket.