Head for 10,000-acre Alisal Guest Ranch & Resort, conveniently located in the middle of Santa Barbara wine country, for unplugged upscale vacations and relaxed wrangler-led rides. Couples and families have been doing just that, year-round, since 1946. Alisal has a string of some 100 trail horses for its guests -- horses suitable for beginners as well as experienced riders. Two-hour breakfast rides include a Western breakfast buffet, cowboy poetry and campfire under the sycamores at the ranch’s historic Adobe Camp. Twilight rides are best for sunset color and spotting wildlife. Daily trail rides set out every morning and afternoon, or sign up for riding lessons, available for kids as well as adults.
Every Wednesday evening during summer brings the low-key Alisal Ranch Rodeo, where wranglers demonstrate their skill at roping, team sorting and barrel racing. Pint-sized cowpokes can visit the “barnyard” daily to meet the farm animals, and be led around on horseback by their parents. Alisal provides absolute peace and simple luxury, with no phones or in-room TVs, but a swimming pool, private lake and two 18-hole golf courses. Daily rates for a two-night minimum stay in 2010 started at $495 per couple, breakfast and dinner included, with kids over 2 an extra $55 to $85 and complimentary cribs. Ride rates were $75 for two hours.
Alisal Guest Ranch & Resort
1054 Alisal Road
Solvang, CA 93463
805-688-6411
800-425-4725
alisal.com
Best Cooking Classes Around the World
cook and wine of salzburg : Kaigasse 43
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The Farm Cooking School, U.S.
Located in a 250-year-old stone building on a working farm, this New Jersey school reflects a range of modern culinary obsessions: Students can learn cheesemaking or take a class that combines healthy cooking and yoga instruction. Run by two former Gourmet magazine editors, Ian Knauer and Shelley Wiseman, the school offers advanced lessons (DIY butchery using cattle raised on the farm, Mexican classics), as well as basics like knife skills.
Class Size: 12 thefarmcookingschool.com
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Matthew Kenney Academy, U.S.
The F&W Best New Chef 1994 gives raw and vegan cooking classes in Santa Monica, California; he'll open a new school in Miami next month.
Cool Tools: Each teaching kitchen has 16 marble workstations and a super-cooling anti-griddle.
Virtual Class: A new online program lets students watch sessions and virtually interact with instructors and classmates. matthewkenneycuisine.com
The best DIRECTING CLASSES to MAJOR MOTION PICTURES in the WORLD
https://www.barrowgroup.org/acting-school/classes/directing-class
“If you are like me, and you like to get the feeling, when watching a play or film or whatever, not that the actor is performing for you, but that you are being let in on a secret viewing of someone’s most private life…if you want to know what it feels like to do that in your work…then Seth Barrish is your guy. And moreover, what he teaches is simple, without ego.”
—Jennifer Landon, Three-time Emmy 
Directors learn how to communicate more effectively with actors, and develop tools to sharpen their storytelling.
