I can’t believe I can say that I’ve been in the travel business for more than two decades now. I started back in the early days of Tripadvisor , which at the time was just a small travel forum — long before automatic booking systems existed. Guests would post questions, and fellow travellers or local operators like me would respond. If someone wanted to join a wine tour, we would simply exchange emails. I used to email with every single guest. It was extremely time-consuming, of course, but...

There’s a good chance you’ve Googled this exact question before landing here. To be fair — I did too. Not because I don’t know where to go, but because lately I’ve been receiving more and more requests from different people asking to visit the same two or three wineries. Over and over again. And I wanted to understand why. You’re planning a trip to Tuscany, you want to visit a few wineries, and you don’t really know where to start — so you Google it. Suddenly, you’re flooded with lists of...

When in Florence, you can see the Medici family’s mark pretty much anywhere you look; without them, Florence would not have been the same. Wealthy merchants, bankers, and patrons of the arts and culture, the Medici family linked their history to the cultural heritage of Florence and to artists such as Leonardo, Donatello, Raffaello, Michelangelo and many others; but also the world of wine and cuisine, both Italian and French, still bear traces of their nobility... and appetite.  It was Cosimo...