A Hand Crafted tour group goes behind the scenes to see how Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is made. Each of the wheels you see here weighs more than 100 pounds, though they will shed about 15% of that weight as they age in the cellar over the coming months. Whether you're on one of our guided, small group tours in the Emilia Romagna region, or planning to visit the area on your own, we can help you get behind the scenes, too, with our Custom Trip Planning.

Tags: Cheese, Parma

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Here's a beautiful time lapse video of many cities and places in Europe.

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A Hand Crafted tour group from 2007, enjoying the fruits of their labors. We met our chef-instructor early in the morning at the farmer's market in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, one of the largest and most colorful weekly markets in France. After wandering through the stalls, selecting a few key ingredients while getting to know the vendors, we headed to the chef's rural farmhouse.

We spent the next few hours preparing our meal – Chicken Provençal, Rice Camarguaise, and a Qunice Tart for dessert. After several breaks for snacks and drinks, we finally sat down to lunch at around 3:00 pm. Nobody needed dinner that night.

Tags: Cooking, Provence

Merci Vielmals is an expression you'll hear frequently in Switzerland, a typically Swiss mash-up of the French "thanks" and German "very much" (literally: "thanks many times").

Here are some more "German" words that are uniquely Swiss.

Tags: Language