Culinary Tours & Vacations

Our travel agency did an exceptional job on our custom trip from Barcelona, Spain, up to Rioja, then to Bilbao and San Sebastian, Spain, then to Bordeaux and finally Paris.  This was a trip all about food and wine and our travel agency ensured a flawless trip.  Our travel specialists worked very hard to find us the best hotels, a very balanced selection of dining, from exceptional Michelin star dining to various Tapas Crawls in Spain.  Our travel agency arranged all of our transportation needs, again with perfect timing.  Our private tours were all made with personable English speaking guides, and we were able to get into some very excellent vineyards.  Overall, I highly recommend this company to customize an awesome trip that takes the worry out of traveling overseas.

We outlined our desires to visit the Basque region of Spain and Portugal's Douro River Valley, with an emphasis on the culture, food, and wine of the two regions. We are in our mid-70s, so we asked that activities be designed at a pace appropriate for our age.

The itinerary designed by Zicasso’s travel team met all of these requests. Our guides/drivers were superbly prepared to explain the culture and culinary milieu throughout our trip. The guides were also universally punctual, open, and affable.

We were especially pleased with the excellent locations of our hotels. In San Sebastian, we had a really excellent pintxos restaurant across the street. The owner was exceptionally helpful in choosing items from the menu, as well as local beers. And in Porto, the hotel staff recommended a small, relaxed restaurant with excellent local cuisine just half a block away.

Our walking food tours of the two cities were excellent, both in the quality of the tastings offered and the pace through the cities. And our wine tours complemented our tastes perfectly. We could not have asked for more.

We had a fabulous trip to Spain and France and the travel agency made it so easy. We started in Madrid and then hit Bilbao, Toledo, San Sebastian, Biarritz, Bordeaux, and finally Paris. The travel agency organized the entire trip including wonderful hotel accommodations, drivers / transportation, guides, culinary tastings and wine tours. They gave us a highly organized and easy to follow, day-by-day itinerary with all the back-up documentation to make this trip turnkey and were very responsive when we ran into a couple minor hiccups. I would recommend and use them again.

Wow, just wow! This 26-day trip through Spain was absolutely fantastic. While the process of planning a trip can be overwhelming, it was made easy with the assistance of Zicasso and the travel company. The travel agent really listened to what I wanted to see and do, and came up with a perfectly paced itinerary that included Madrid (day trip to Toledo), Sevilla (day trip to Ronda), Granada (a visit to Córdoba along the way), Barcelona, San Sebastián (and small villages), and Bilbao, with day trips to small villages and the La Rioja wine region.

We had a nice combination of planes, trains, and automobiles traveling across Spain. Our private guides were all very knowledgeable, engaging, and very enjoyable. Our drivers were on time, meeting us at airports and our hotels.

The hotels they picked for us were all wonderful, centrally located in the cities and within walking distance of all of the things we wanted to do.

Our agent was very responsive to all of my questions prior to the trip and we received a beautiful layout of the itinerary, which not only gave dates/times of each activity, but also a history of what we were seeing. We also received a list of recommended restaurants for each town we visited (which we used a couple of times).

The entire team at the agency was wonderful and available 24/7 while we were in country. Thankfully, the trip ran so smoothly that I only reached out to them a couple of times to let them know what a great time we were having. I would definitely recommend working with this team if you are planning a trip to Spain!