Forbes - 5 Luxury Adventures To Find The Heart of Florence

5 Luxury Adventures To Find The Heart of Florence

I paused when I scanned through my Twitter feed recently. One of my favorite food writers and the original domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson, was tweeting about her trip to Italy. “Think must have died and gone to Heaven. Either that or am at @villasanmichele [Villa San Michele].”

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View from Villa San MicheleWhat's your favorite?

1. The Most Fabulous Cooking School overlooking Florence at Villa San Michele

2. Meeting and Going Behind-The-Scenes with leather artisans, shoemakers, picture frame shops and silk weaving studios using the same looms from the 17th and 18th centuries

3. Learning what a fresco actually means and trying it yourself with an artist

4. Going truffle hunting with an expert and his truffle hunting dog!

5. Going to the Carrara Marble Quarries and seeing the cave where Michelangelo found the block of marble for David

Murray's Cheese on Bleecker Street

Murray's Cheese, a landmark gourmet shop on Bleecker Street since 1940, recently finished a large expansion and it looks great.  I always try to buy cheese here-it's in my neighborhood and they are super friendly, knowledgeable and give me new ideas for things that I "need."  They're obviously known for their huge selection of cheese but now carry coffee, chocolate and too many T-shirts and gifts.  I do like their Big Cheese T-shirts though! 

Murray's Cheese ClassroomYou can tour their famous cheese caves beneath the store in the "Mystery of the Caves" class offered a few times a month. And they have Mozzarella Making, Cheese 101, The Harmony of Wine & Cheese...everything uppity New Yorkers love to learn about.

If you don't live in New York, Murray's recently began to offer some of their cheeses in Kroger stores in Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas (and in King Soopers stores in Colorado).