Farm-to-table fun Traveltrend tracker Skift reports that 77 percent of vacationers crave culinary travel. If you fall into that majority, consider a sojourn to Northern Italy the birthplace of the slow food movement. Emulate Ed Sheeran, who checked into Il Salviatino, a 45-room, 15th-century Tuscany villa, with Cherry Seaborn in June 2016. After side-by-side massages incorporating local chocolate (with just one treatment room, the spa is all yours), tour the chef’s garden or hunt for trul es.
Rooms from $500, including breakfast. 2 Canoodle in a castle Palazzo di Varignana Resort & Spa, a 1705 residence-cum-wellness retreat atop a hill near Bologna, has two new reasons to brag: In fall 2016, the resort added an adults-only pool, as well as the 4,000-square-foot Villa Amagioia, which fl aunts an infi nity pool of its own. Bite into the local specialty, tortellini, at Il Palazzo Restaurant (the former dining room of the Bentivoglio family), or steal a smooch in the formal gardens.
Rooms from $200. 3 Kiss by the lake Adorable towns rim Lake Como, where George and Amal Clooney keep their fi ve-star love shack. A 2013 makeover of Palazzo del Vice Re in the village of Lezzeno revealed fi ve rooms oozing with Italian-made luxuries, down to the art and bedsheets. Daily aperitivo takes place under 400-year-old ceiling frescoes. Rooms from $304.
Wine not? In the Piedmont region hailed by Food & Wine as Italy’s new food capital clink bubbly-fi lled fl utes at 33-room Villa Sparina Resort, a winery with a spa, a Michelin-starred restaurant, an olive orchard and daybeds in the gardens. Wine geeks can tour the 57 acres of vines and 10,000 olive trees at Toscana Resort Castelfalfi. Premiering March 2017 in an 800-year-old medieval Tuscan village, it’s the region’s fi rst new-build luxury hotel in 25 years. Rooms from $334.
Find your beach bliss In summer 2015, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen (who wed in Italy in 2013) vacayed in Sicily, taking pizza-making lessons and squeezing in beach time. Follow in their footsteps with a visit to Arab-Norman Palermo, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015. In Palermo’s historic center, the former guest quarters of Moncada Palace are available to book through BB22 Charming Rooms & Apartments. Rooms from $135.
