market

We arrived yesterday afternoon and fought the jet lag to stay up late enough in the evening to “reset” ourselves.  We had a light dinner of fresh pasta and salad at one of our favorite restaurants and a good night’s sleep.

Today we spent the day driving some of the back roads to scout our shooting locations.  Although the Tuscan scenery changes little, it is always beautiful and amazes us so!  The sheep are not so smart, but very cute!  And their milk makes very tasty local cheese…

For dinner this evening, we cooked fresh ravioli tartufo (truffle filled ravioli) and asparagi (asparagus) from the local market…  Mmmm!  Tomorrow, Montepulciano and Montalcino.

Ciao for now!

We’re now booking our 2011 Villages of Tuscany workshop!   It will be a unique cultural and visual journey. Visit some previous posts to get an idea of what we do. The dates are 14-21 May, 2011*.  As always, we include 7 nights accommodation, in-country transportation, many wonderful meals, wine tasting, and much more!  We’re really excited for another great trip.  Click here to see a full description.

*We can also arrange a similar tour for private groups to Tuscany or Provence!  Contact us for more information…

We still have room in two upcoming workshops, September 25th- Digital Photo Basics and October 8-10th- Fall Color in Northern Arizona …  time is running out!

Ciao for now.

After doing an art show within days of our return from Europe, I think we’ll take a day off!  Then, this will be our week to “catch up.”

In this post is a mid-day shot of our home base village for our Villages of Provence workshop in September.  In fact, the view from our hotel is very similar to this- pretty spectacular!  They have a wonderful open air market here that we will photograph with our group, as well as beautiful nearby villages, an abbey, vineyards during the harvest, a winery, oh and did I mention the food?  The list goes on…

Because of the drop in the euro, we are able to offer a discount of $500/couple (or $250/person) off the total price of the trip through June 15th.  So now is a great time to sign up!

A tout à l’heure!  (See you later!)

This is where Pecorino comes from!  Pecorino is tasty sheeps’ cheese that the village we stay in is famous for…  I took this photo just outside of town under the watchful eye of a Great Pyrenee (large white dog), who keeps the sheep from being eaten by predators.  He (or she) took the job very seriously!  We also visited a nearby village with some wonderful shops full of yummy local pastas, vinegars, olive oils, meats and cheeses.  The shop keeper wanted to be seen in America, so here she is!

Ciao!

We went to a great market Wednesday in a nearby village.  These are a couple of Joel’s snapshots.  Of course we HAD to buy some of these olives- amazing!  So many olives, so little time…  The classic Citroën was too cute to pass up.  We had the most amazing lunch at one of the restaurants scheduled for our September workshop.  As usual, it looked as good as it tasted!  I’ll put up a photo of one of our courses tomorrow!

A bientôt!

Well, we made it to France, a little tired, but we’re trying to do as much as possible to stave off jetlag!  Here are a couple snaphots from our first day here…  As you can see we’re staying in a classic Provençal gîte (apartment).  Funny, neither of us likes fresh tomatoes, but these tomatoes at the local store were beautiful!  We also had to go to the shopping mall to replace our old cell phone, but I have to admit it was a fun mall, complete with crèperie and even a gelaterie (a French gelato shop!)  I’ll post more later as our adventures officially begin tomorrow when we have our tour at the winery, with wine and olive oil tasting of course!

A bientôt!