Small groups. Real food people. Pete there every day.
I host small groups in Tuscany and Sicily — visiting the farms, kitchens, and dinner tables of the families who actually feed these places. Small groups, personally led by me.
Not a tour company. A person who keeps coming back to the places, the people, and the tables that matter — and brings guests who genuinely care about the same things.
A NOTE FROM PETE
Italy is not a destination. It’s a set of relationships.
I started Trips2Savor because I kept seeing Italy the wrong way. Not the tourist version — I mean the version where you move through beautiful places without ever meeting the people who made them. I wanted something different. I wanted to bring people to the table.
I have been building relationships with farmers, winemakers, cheese makers, and home cooks across Tuscany and Sicily — some long-term friendships, others through trusted professional referrals. These are people whose families have been doing this work for generations. They are not set up for visitors. They are set up for the people who keep coming back, and they have made room for us because we keep coming back with people who care about the same things they do.
Every tour I lead is intentionally small — because that is the only size that works. Small enough that a family will invite you into their home. Small enough that by the second evening, everyone in the group already knows each other. Small enough that you eat like a guest, not a customer.
If you have been thinking about Italy for years and have not gone yet, I understand. I would love to be the person who finally takes you. Read through what we do, and if it sounds like something you want, reach out. I personally answer every message.
Two tours. Two very different versions of Italy.
8 days · small group · Pete-led
Tastes of Tuscany Small-Group Culinary Tour
Eight days in Tuscany, moving slowly. We visit a grain miller whose family has been working the same stone mill since his grandfather’s time. We spend a morning with a woman who makes pasta by feel and has never used a measuring cup in her life. We eat at the table where her family eats.
Every stop chosen through personal knowledge — either my own visits or relationships I trust.
10 days · small group · Pete-led
Savors of Sicily Small-Group Culinary Tour
Ten days in Sicily, which feeds you differently than anywhere else in Italy. The island shows up in every dish — Arab spices, Greek olives, Spanish tomatoes, all of it layered into something completely its own. We visit the people who still cook it the old way, because it is simply the right way.
A grandmother who has been making caponata the same way for fifty years. A salt flat worked by the same family for four generations. You will eat things you will not find on any menu.
WHAT MAKES TRIPS2SAVOR DIFFERENT
Four things that are true about every single tour.
#1
Pete hosts every tour. Not a substitute. Not an assistant. Pete.
I have led every tour Trips2Savor has ever run. When you book, you are not hiring a company that assigns a guide. You are choosing to travel with me, personally. That is what this is.
#2
Small groups, typically six to twelve people. That is the whole group.
At that size, a family will invite you in. A cheese maker will let you taste something that never leaves the farm. The door opens. At forty people, it stays closed.
#3
Private homes, working farms, and occasionally a family trattoria worth knowing about.
Most of the places we visit are not set up for tour groups at all — they are set up for the people who live and work there. When we do eat at a restaurant, it is because it has a story that belongs on the itinerary. We are there because I have been building these relationships over time, and because I keep coming back.
#4
You leave knowing the people, not just the places.
At the end of the tour, you will remember the name of the woman who taught you to make pasta. You will remember what Giorgio said about his olive trees. That is what stays with you.
Pete with the lovely Maria Grammatico of Erice.
Pete with the insanely talented Giovanna Musumeci of Randazzo.
Pete and ‘The butcher of Panzano’ – Dario Cecchini
MEET PETE
I am not a tour company that happens to have a founder. I am just a person who knows a lot of Italians.
I grew up in a family where food was how we said everything. It was how we showed up for each other. My mother could make a meal from almost nothing and it would be the best thing you ate that week. I did not understand for a long time that not everyone grew up that way, and that for a lot of people, the table was the place where they most wanted to belong.
The first time I went to Italy, I sat down at a dinner in someone’s home in a small hill town and I understood something I had not understood before. The food was not separate from the people. The people were the food. Everything on the table had a story, and the people around the table knew every story. I spent the next several years finding my way back to more tables like that.
I have been building relationships with producers and home cooks across Tuscany and Sicily — not as a tour operator looking for experiences to package, but as a person who kept showing up, kept eating, kept listening, and eventually was invited back. Some are long-term friendships. Others came through trusted people in the food world I know well. The access is real either way.
I am a first-generation Sicilian-American — my parents came from Sicily in 1955 and raised me in a family where food was the business, the culture, and the daily language. I spent twenty years running a USDA-inspected specialty food manufacturing company, then seven years personally leading food tours through the Italian-American neighborhoods of St. Louis. I am an ITMI-certified Tour Director and Guide, a dual U.S. and Italian citizen, and I live part of each year in Certaldo, Tuscany. When I am with you on tour, I am your host and your cultural bridge — I handle the logistics, I speak the language, and I bring my own knowledge of the food and the people to every experience. At certain historical sites I bring in licensed local specialist guides whose depth of knowledge adds something I could not match on my own. For everything else — the farms, the family tables, the moments in between — I am the guide.
I take small groups because that is the only way it works. Twelve people fits around a family table. Twelve people can stand in a small cave cellar and hear what the winemaker is saying. I keep the groups small because that is the only way this works. When the number goes up, the quality of what is possible goes down. That is not something I am willing to trade.
Here is what I can promise you: I will be there for every single day of the tour. You will eat very well. You will leave with at least one story you will tell for years. And if at any point you are not sure whether this is right for you, I want you to call me. We’ll talk it through.
“I believe that sitting at a table with someone changes you. Not in some grand way. In a small, quiet, real way that you carry home with you — and do not quite know what to do with until you are back in your own kitchen, making something you learned.”
GUEST STORIES
In their own words.
Linda M.
Mexico, Missouri
“This is in the top two of all the travels I’ve done — and I’ve been blessed to have traveled extensively.”
Trips2Savor and Pete Manzo have given me more than a bucket list trip. This has far exceeded any expectations I had — and I was expecting a lot. The people, the food, the wine, the travel. You have to experience it for yourself.
I have been blessed to have traveled extensively. Think about all the travels I have done. This is in the top two. I did not expect to connect to the culture and the people and all of the experiences Pete arranged for us the way I did. It is like I did not want to go home.
I love history, so being able to walk streets in a medieval village that are over a thousand years old — coming from a country that is a baby — it is just magical. I want to do it again.
Renée S.
webster groves, missouri
“We were immersed in their family. It was the whole thing that made it super special.”
We started out learning how the olives are picked, how they are pressed — the whole process, yesterday’s methods and today’s, and how they learned through experience the best way to get the best olive oil. Then we had this amazing lunch at their home.
What was so phenomenal and special to me: Mom and Dad started the company, and now their daughter and son-in-law run it — with grandchildren running around. We had lunch at their table, in their house, and they kept bringing out one course after another of their specialties. Stefano made everything in his wood-burning oven outside.
We were immersed in their family. It was the family unit — the whole thing — that made it super special.
Denise G.
st. peters, missouri
“The drivers became more like friends. Pete, you truly outdid yourself“
Thank you so much for a trip of a lifetime. We were submerged into a fantastic cultural and culinary experience. Truffle hunting with the dogs was my favorite excursion.
The accommodations were a historical experience yet with modern amenities. Anna was the best cook ever. The drivers became more like friends. Pete, you truly outdid yourself.
Can’t wait for you to put together a Sicily trip!
Michelle B.
O’fallon, missouri
This trip was worth every penny!!
This was a wonderful trip! Each day was perfectly planned and we saw and did things that I would have never found on my own. The food was fantastic and the farmhouse was beautiful! Pete was a great tour guide and the drivers he hired were very knowledgeable. This trip was worth every penny!!
FREE GUIDE
Think more clearly about Italy.
I wrote The Calm Italy Trip Plan because the people who travel with me almost always say the same thing afterward: I wish I had known this before I started looking. It’s a short, honest guide to what actually makes a small-group Italy trip work — group size, what’s included, who’s actually there with you, and how to pace it so it doesn’t feel like a checklist. Free. No strings.
Read it before you book anything. Including a tour with me.
One email from Pete, once a month.
Unsubscribe whenever.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE ANYTHING
Not sure if this tour is right for you?
I am happy to talk through it. Tell me a little about what you are looking for — what made you start thinking about Italy, what would make a trip feel worth it — and I will tell you honestly whether what we do matches that.
Several people on every tour travel solo. If that is you, I am glad you are here — call me and I will tell you exactly what that looks like.
No pressure to decide on the call. Most people leave knowing exactly what they want to do next. I do these calls because I would rather have a fifteen-minute conversation than have someone book a tour that is not right for them.
Links to Koalendar (similar to Calendly) — pick a time that works for you.
@trips2savor
This is what our days actually look like.
READY WHEN YOU ARE
If you have read this far, Italy is probably already on your mind.
That feeling — the one that has been sitting there quietly while you go about everything else — is worth paying attention to. I have taken people to Italy who almost did not come, and I have never once met someone who wished they had stayed home.
Start wherever you are. I read everything personally and I will write back. — Pete
I READ EVERY MESSAGE PERSONALLY
GET IN TOUCH
If you are asking about a tour, curious about whether this is right for you, or just want to know more before you decide anything, send me a note. I will write back. If you would rather talk, book a free fifteen-minute call below.
Prefer to talk? Book a free 30 minute call directly.