On a sunny day in September 1991, two German hikers enjoying a walk in the Ötztal Alps, close to the border between Italy and Austria, decided to take a short cut. They left the marked path and continued past a rocky gully filled with meltwater. Noticing something on...
These tiny pasta parcels are a traditional dish from Piemonte and something which we learnt to make in our cooking class in Cuneo, as part of our brand new France & Italy tour. Cuneo is a wonderfully elegant city lying to the south of Turin and here we...
Our brand new 2016 tour in France and Italy has got me thinking about salt! This is because our route takes us along some of France's ancient salt roads from the Mediterranean over the Maritime Alps and into northern Italy. Since its discovery...
The Pollino National Park is the largest in Italy and straddles both the regions of Basilicata and Calabria, in the instep of the foot of Italy. It covers around 1,960 square kilometres and has the richest collection of flora and fauna in the whole of Southern Italy....
Hikers on our Southern Italy tour will have many opportunities to taste a wonderful local wine made from an ancient grape variety known as Aglianico. It's origins are a little unclear but the name probably derives from the word "Hellenic" or Greek, as this...
Whenever we are hiking on our Abruzzo tour, we spend an evening with the chef from the wonderful Locanda Sotto Gli Archi in the Sextantio hotel to learn how to make traditional Abruzzese dishes. One of these is the very special spaghetti alla...
The first stop on our new Southern Italy tour is a visit to the Barlotti cheesemaker, famous for producing buffalo mozzarella in the shadow of the ancient Greek temple at Paestum. It is well known that the most highly prized artisanal buffalo...
At Hedonistic Hiking we are lucky to have a great team of Tour Managers who support us on the tours in Italy. They are all friends of ours who have worked in the tourism and hospitality industries for many years and we thought it would be interesing for our guests to...
At Hedonistic Hiking we are lucky to have a great team of Tour Managers who support us on the tours in Italy. They are all friends of ours who have worked in the tourism and hospitality industries for many years and we thought it would be interesing for our guests to...
As we head back to Piedmont for our June Jewels of Piedmont tour much of our attention will be focussed on the celebrated Barolo and Barbaresco wines of the area, made from the famous Nebbiolo grape. But the region has another native red grape,Barbera,...
At Hedonistic Hiking we are lucky to have a great team of Tour Managers who support us on the tours in Italy. They are all friends of ours who have worked in the tourism and hospitality industries for many years and we thought it would be interesing for our guests to...
Wining and Dining in Naples Our newest tour in Southern Italy starts and finishes in the exotic city of Naples and our hope is for Hedonistic Hikers to take a couple of days either at the start or end of the tour to explore this chaotic but...
Giacomo Puccini, composer of some of the world's favourite operas, was born in the city of Lucca in 1858 and lived almost all of his life in this part of Tuscany. Born into an established musical family in Lucca, four generations before him had held the position of...
Ten things you may not know about The Palio If you've not yet joined one of our annual Palio tours in Siena every August your ideas about this horse race might be a little sketchy. As race day approaches (August 16) we thought you might like to...
The region of Basilicata in the southern part of the Italian peninsula is wild, dramatic and sparsely populated. Its geography has something "other worldly" about it, with majestic mountains, bare clay hills and dark forested valleys. But it is the...
The first tour of our Italian season took us to the wild landscape of Abruzzo, in the central Apennine region of Italy. Abruzzo is home to many National Parks but the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise itself is home to some very special...
The island of Elba sits opposite the coast of Tuscany, about 20km from the town of Piombino, where the ferry leaves to connect the island to the mainland. It has a population of about 31,000 residents but is incredibly popular with visitors during...
As we (that is Jackie and Annabel) were sitting in a restaurant in Parma one evening, we thought how good it would be to recognise some of the people who help to make our Italian walking holidays so much fun. They are people who always say "yes" when we have strange...
The Australian passion for coffee must be almost equal to the Italian, but we often notice on our tours that the differences in terminology can catch a visitor out, and lots of great coffee-drinking moments are getting lost in translation! We have designed this...
Very close to our headquarters at Porepunkah in north east Victoria lies the magical Mount Buffalo National Park. It was one of the first National Parks in the region to be established in 1898 and today covers some 31,000 hectares, encompassing the entire granite...