• Arrival after lunch and check into and settle into your accommodation

19.30 A welcome champagne cocktail and the opportunity to meet and get to know your fellow, Culinary Adventurers’ followed by Alison and Sidney’s ‘Taste of the Loire Valley’ dinner in the ‘Old Stable’ at le Calabash

Traditional French Breakfast

After Breakfast we visit our local Goats Cheese farm and producer where we taste and experience what is known as the best goat’s cheese in the world, St Maures AOC.

When we return from the goat’s cheese farm, we use the cheese purchased to prepare two      le Calabash Classics

• Cep and Goats Cheese Ravioli with a Nut Butter
• The Art of the ‘Pithiviers’

Lunch We enjoy our Mornings cookery for lunch

This afternoon you will prepare one of ‘Le Calabashes’ most popular dishes.

• Beef Wellington with a Light Truffle Jus
• Pommes Fondant
• Medley of Seasonal Vegetables

Dinner

Traditional French Breakfast

Today you will enter Alison’s world of Desserts and Pastry, where she will share with you her passion for creating and preparing some of the world’s most sought after classics, which she has put her own stamp on.

• Dark and White Chocolate Delice with Spiced Pear and Specoloos
• Lemon Soufflé with Christmas Berry Ice Cream

Lunch

You will be taught the best catch for each season and how to identify your fish and how to ensure it is fresh.

Dishes will include;

• Olive Oil Poached Salmon with Foie Gras and Spicy Lentils
• Pan Roasted Monkfish in a creamy mussel and curry sauce

17.30 Leisure time till dinner
Dinner Tonight Alison and Sidney take you to dinner to their friend, Michelin Star Jacky Dallay at the renowned Promenade Restaurant in le Petit Pressigny.

Traditional French Breakfast

• Festive Croquembouche with Nougatine

A wonderful table centrepiece for your Christmas Lunch

Lunch

Chateau Chenonceau to experience its décor at this festive time of the year.

You have the early afternoon to explore Chenonceau at your leisure

Property of the Crown, then royal residence, Chenonceau Castle is an exceptional site not only because of its original design, the richness of its collections, its furniture and its decorations, but also because of its destiny, since it was loved, administrated and protected by women, who were all extraordinary and who, for the most part have marked history.

For the historical background, the “Château des Dames” was built in 1513 by Katherine Briçonnet, and successively embellished by Diane de Poitiers then Catherine de Medici. Chenonceau was protected from the hardship of the revolution by Madame Dupin.

Dinner in Amboise

The royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise. Confiscated by the monarchy in the 15th century, it became a favored royal residence and was extensively rebuilt. King Charles VIII died at the château in 1498 after hitting his head on a door lintel, and where you can visit the chapel in which Leonardo de Vinci is buried.

Traditional French Breakfast

We depart and spend the morning in Tours where we can enjoy Les Halles food market and do a little sightseeing

We visit Tours best bakery to choose our breakfast pastries which we will enjoy in a little market coffee shop.

This morning we explore both the indoor ‘Les Halles Food Market’ and the twice weekly outdoor market.

We visit the old town which clusters around Place Plumereau; its old houses restored to their former glory. Today this is the place for pavement cafes and people watching in the summer but stroll the smaller, narrow streets like rue Briconnet and you step back into the historic medieval city. To the south you’ll find a Romanesque basilica, the Cloitre de St-Martin and the new Basilique de St-Martin. You’re in the place which was once on the great pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. St-Martin was a soldier who became bishop of Tours in the 4th century and helped spread Christianity through France. His remains, rediscovered in 1860, are now in the crypt of the new Basilique.

The other old part, the cathedral quarter, on the other side of the main Rue Nationale, is dominated by the Cathédrale St-Gatien, a flamboyant Gothic building with 12th-century decorated stonework covering the outside. Inside the highlights are the 16th-century tomb of Charles VIII and Anne de Bretagne’s two children, and the stained glass.

Lunch

Today we enjoy a traditional French lunch at le Calabash, prepared by Alison.

Lunch Today we enjoy a traditional French lunch at le Calabash , prepared by Alison

• This afternoon you prepare and learn how to make and present a spectacular centrepiece Bûche de Noël for your Christmas Table

The traditional dessert served near Christmas in France name Bûche de Noël originally referred to the Yule log itself, and was transferred to the dessert only after this custom had fallen out of use, presumably during the first half of the 20th century

Dinner

Tonight the Bond family will be your hosts for a le Calabash approach to a festive table.

Traditional French Breakfast

This morning we prepare a trio of festive Macarons using

• Praline
• Caramel Beurre Salé
• Chocoholic

Lunch

We depart for Paris

Check into Hotel and settle into room.

• Tonight we leave you to enjoy The Christmas market along the Champs Elysees just a short walk from your hotel where you can enjoy the festive atmosphere and partake in the Street Food and have a glass of Mulled Wine.

Dinner is for your own account tonight

Traditional French Breakfast

• We visit Rue Montmartre, home to Paris’s Kitchen and Chef Shops where you can purchase some of the small pastry and kitchen pieces of equipment you may need to prepare your festive meal back home on Christmas Day.

Lunch Au Pied de Cochon situated in Les Halles area and is a Parisian institution.

Au Pied de Cochon is also highly regarded for its setting, typical of leading Parisian brasseries and its huge terrace overlooking a pedestrian street with a view of the Saint-Eustache Church

• This afternoon we visit the Christmas market at the Trocadero with its Chalets selling artisanal Christmas gifts and decorations. Here stands the Eiffel Tower which is adorned with its golden covering and which sparkles for five minutes every hour on the hour whilst its beacon shines over Paris, The City of Lights.

The Christmas market at Place de la Trocadero

• Tonight our Adventure continues with Champagne and the Show at the world renowned Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge is best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance. Originally introduced as a seductive dance by the courtesans who operated from the site, the can-can dance revue evolved into a form of entertainment of its own and led to the introduction of cabarets across Europe. Today, the Moulin Rouge is a tourist attraction, offering musical dance entertainment for visitors from around the world. The club’s decor still contains much of the romance of fin de siècle France.

 Breakfast

• 45 Breakfast
• After breakfast we take you to Galeries Lafayette and Printemps to indulge in a little time on your own to do some last chance Christmas shopping.
• We visit the Marché ‘L’Estaminet’ des Enfants Rouges in the heart of Le Marais where you have the choice of several little restaurants to have a light lunch for your own account.

• This afternoon we share with you a few of Paris’s unknown and secret little shopping streets with small boutique styled shops where the locals do their festive and day to day shopping.

Le Marais is the closest you will get to the feel of medieval Paris and has more pre-revolutionary buildings and streets left intact than any other area in Paris.

Farewell Dinner at Alison and Sidney’s favourite restaurant in Paris,

Le Train Bleu

Traditional French Breakfast

• Departure by 10.30 am

Traditional French Breakfast / Departure by 11.00 am

Le Calabash Pastry Adventure includes.

• Accommodation
• Meals: daily breakfast, and meals as per itinerary, including three glasses of selected wine with meals.
• Transport for all activities in the itinerary.
• Personalised apron and recipe folder.
• Fee Wi-Fi

The price does not include:

• Optional excursions or meals not listed in itinerary or any additional expenses ordered personally.
• Drinks that are personally ordered or excess wine consumed at meals
• Laundry
• Phone Calls