Monthly Archives: March 2023

Trip

Enliven Students’ Taste Buds on Educational Trips to Florence

Florence is an ideal destination for educational trips, but for those with a culinary focus it is perhaps even more so. The region takes students into the heart of Tuscany, where the food demonstrates what is truly unique about Italian cuisine. Students will have their senses bombarded by the wonderful ingredients and cuisine to experience.

Bread and Oil

The fundamentals of Florentine food are bread and olive oil. Basic as these ingredients may seem, when they are injected with the passion that exists in this region the resultant dishes are amongst the best in the world.

Bread comes in all shapes and sizes and is used in all aspects of Tuscan cuisine. Traditionally, bread in Tuscany comes unsalted and this tradition stems from 1540 when Pope Paolo III levied a tax on salt. This made it prohibitively expensive to continue to eat salt and the Tuscans have continued this practice to the present day.

Students on educational trips will learn, while here, that no bread is wasted in Tuscany. It is, of course, served as an accompaniment, but it is also used extensively in the dishes themselves. Tuscans use bread to make dishes such as Panzanilla, which is a cold soup made from stale bread and tomatoes, and Ribolitta, another soup that uses bread and beans. (If you struggle with unsalted bread there are many bakeries throughout Florence that also offer the salted variety.)

The Main Event

Tuscan cuisine stems from the region’s rustic roots and many Tuscans are meat lovers. Traditional dishes for meat eaters include those made from Cinghiale (wild boar) and Faraona (guinea fowl). The special Florentine T-bone steak will please even the most exacting meat eater and Game Ragu is a speciality served in many trattorias. One food some adventurous students on educational trips may choose to try (but which is definitely not for the faint hearted) is the trippaio (tripe) sandwich – served from many roadside stands.

In Florentine cuisine, pasta is served with many game sauces, including duck and venison, and risotto is another favourite, using the abundance of fresh produce available in the region. Mushrooms are often utilised along with the archetypal Florentine addition, spinach. For those who prefer fish and seafood, Risotto Nero alla Fiorentina is a local speciality made from black rice and cuttlefish.

A Sweet Ending

For those with a sweet tooth, the Florentine version of Tiramisu is Zuccotto, but probably the most popular way to round off a meal is with some Cantuccini and Vin Santo. Vin Santo, which literally translates as ‘holy wine’, is a Tuscan dessert wine served with almond biscuits that are dipped into it. Another Tuscan favourite dessert is Panforte, which is a huge dome shaped cake made with candied fruit and nuts and flavoured with cinnamon or vanilla. Of course, as in all regions of Italy, there is always gelato in numerous flavours as well as the delicious semi-freddo, which is a cross between a mousse and an ice-cream.

Wherever students venture on the itinerary of food focused educational trips to Florence, there will be an opportunity to sample the wonderful food that this region is so rightly famous for.

Travel

Run a Bed and Breakfast? What Travel Marketing Can Do For You

Are you a business owner who runs a bed and breakfast? If you are, have you been using travel marketing to your advantage? If you have not, it is about time that you start. As a bed and breakfast owner, you likely need to compete with larger hotels and vacation resorts. While it may seem like an impossible task to do, travel marketing can make it more than possible.

As a business owner, you are likely already familiar with marketing. Unfortunately, many business owners focus only on local marketing. Those who often market their business, or a bed and breakfast in your case, do not always give travel marketing or tourism marketing all of the attention that it deserves. By incorporating travel marketing into your business plan, you may start to see success almost right away. That success may result in more reservations and an increase in profits.

What is nice about travel marketing is that you have a number of different options. One of those options involves relying on the assistance of a professional travel marketing expert. Travel marketing experts are individuals who handle of all the marketing for you and your business. This often involves arrangements with those who operate online travel websites, to get your business listed in their directories or advertised on their websites. These are just a few of the many steps that a professional travel marketing expert may do to market your bed and breakfast to the public, namely tourists.

The good thing about travel marketing is that you do not have to rely on professional assistance; it is more than possible for you to do your own travel marketing, should you wish to do so. As previously mentioned, you can contact those who run online travel or tourism websites. You can ask to buy advertising space or see if you can get your bed and breakfast listed in their travel directory. Additional travel marketing steps that you can take involve contacting your local government to see if you can get space in their travel guides, creating an online website for yourself, and marketing that website to ensure that potential customers see it.

Travel marketing may seem like a lot of work, but it is work that will almost always pay off in the end. As a reminder, if you do not have the time or the energy to do your own travel marketing, you can seek professional assistance. To find an individual or a company who specializes in travel marketing, you may want to perform a standard internet search. Before choosing a travel marketing expert to do business with, it is important that you examine the services offered and everything that you will be provided with. This will help to ensure that your money will be money well spent.

Tips

7 Instant Weight Loss Tips That Work

Excessive weight is a challenge that most people face these days and could reduce one’s quality of life. Weight loss could be difficult but it actually depends on the approach that you take towards it. It is true that some people would lose weight more readily than others. However, there are necessary things that anyone serious about losing that extra weight ought to do in other to achieve his/her weight loss goal.

In this article, I am going to show you some instant weight loss tips that have been proven to work. Firstly, if you are overweight, you should take immediate action to shed that fat quickly before its dangerous implications begin to set in.

There are series of diseases out there that are weight-related. Amongst these are; arthritis, heart problems, hypertension, diabetes, fatigue e.t.c. These deadly diseases should be avoided. The decision you take now concerning your weight reduction could change your life forever.

These instant weight loss tips should work for you if you follow them;

Tip 1 – Avoid intake of too much salt. This reduces your body metabolism and thus makes you unable to burn enough calories to reduce your weight.

Tip 2 – Drink water frequently. This helps in digestion and other body functions and helps to keep hunger in check as well thereby preventing you from eating unnecessarily. Always keep your body hydrated. You should try to take about 8 glasses of water daily.

Tip 3 – Exercise regularly. Engaging in aerobics and other exercise routines will prove really helpful to you.

Tip 4 – Do not take alcohol often. There is a higher risk of weight gain and bloated bellies in men and women that drink alcohol than those who do not. This is even a major reason for ‘pot bellies’ in men.

Tip 5 – Take plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables instead of junk, processed foods. Eat more of natural foods and include lean protein, non-fat dairy products, whole grains and beans.

Tip 6 – Endeavour to cook your own food and include nuts, and other foods that contain fibre. This helps you to lose weight quickly as your body burns more calories while trying to digest those fibre-rich foods. Avoid sugary beverages as well to cut down on your calorie intake.

Tip 7 – Go on a meal plan. Having a proper diet plan will keep you focused and committed towards your weight loss goal. Your diet program should not encourage that you starve yourself but rather should guide you towards eating better in order to lose that extra weight.