Dates: An open tour created around your summer dates! Available between June and September 2026. A minimum of 8 participants is necessary for the tour.
TOUR INCLUDES 3 Nights Accommodation, 3 Full Breakfasts, 3 Excursions, 3 Dinners, 3 Lunches, 1 Cooking Lesson, 1 Tasting
Join Chef Ezio in Abruzzo Italy on a 4-day for a Ciao Abruzzo tour. Dreamy landscapes, adventures with delicious and diverse regional foods and wines sampled in hilltop and mountain villages and on the Adriatic coastline.
Along the way you can revel in the beauty of Italy’s best-kept secret, Abruzzo, whose lush Apennine Mountains and national parks are home to bears, wolves and lynx. Its rolling hills boast some of Italy’s most beautiful hill towns as well as award-winning vineyards, its Adriatic coastline plenty of Blue Flag beaches and a marine park.
From pick up at Rome’s Leonardo airport, we’ll begin away our journey towards the restored Benedictine Monastery of Grancia dei Celestini, where George Clooney stayed whilst filming The American.
It’s set in the middle of the stunning medieval town of Sulmona, the birthplace of Ovid and the world’s favourite sugared almonds known as confetti. This lively mountain town sits in the heart of the Peligna Valley were 3000 years ago the name Italia was first given to the Italian peninsula in 90 bc.
EVENING
We will meet up late afternoon for a short guided tour of Sulmona that explores its sacred sites, cultural quarters and a tangle of interesting cobbled alleys and provides an opportunity to go shopping.
Then it’s on to a leisurely aperitivo overlooked by a statue of Ovid and dinner. We’ll have a light 4-course dinner that reflects summer and the superb high-quality artisan ingredients produced locally at our favourite family-run restaurant.
We’ll return to Sulmona for an aperitivo and welcome dinner served by Chef Claudio in the courtyard of the monastery.
After a leisurely combined local breakfast, we will travel to nearby Calascio, one of Italy’s most beautiful villages that is listed as a Borghi Piu Belli for an easy ramble to Rocca Calascio.
We will have an extraordinary Abruzzese barbecue lunch on Campo Imperatore at the mountain refuge, Ristoro Mucciante. Picnics in Abruzzo always include arrosticini, the delectable grilled skewers of meat that the shepherds used to eat and which now becoming one of Europe’s most popular street foods.
We will follow lunch with a gentle canoe excursion down the turquoise Il Tirino river from Bussi which sits within the Gran Sasso National Park. This is an incredible, colourful trip to relax both your mind and body whilst discovering the heritage of the mountains and sampling water celery.
DAY 3
Pack your beach gear as after breakfast we will depart for the Adriatic and the Trabocchi Coast.
You will be quirkily wined and dined aboard a trabocco for 3.5 hours, delighting in a 10-course fish feast in what we guarantee will become your most memorable beach dining experience! Expect a succession of fish and shellfish served sushi-style, drizzled with local olive oil, mixed into salads, served with fresh kinds of pasta, grilled, baked whole fish and crunchy breaded fillets.
Since 1887, these sustainable fishing machines positioned on stilts above a sparkling sea have been used by the local population to catch fish, and some now enjoy a double role as Abruzzo’s most novel restaurants.
After a visit to the nearby fabled San Giovanni a Venere Abbey with its exquisite sculptures and views down the coast, we’ll make our way back to Sulmona. We’ll have a cheese and wine soiree in the hotel and sample Abruzzo’s 5 most established grapes.
Return to Rome
CHAT BEFORE BOOKING
Discuss with Ezio your group and dates, it’s a free and non-committal!
