Pack Your Skillet -- We're Going on a Cooking Trip

You may only book the entire castle, so bring hungry friends and family on this vacation.

Nimmy Paul's House, Cochin, India

Noted Indian chef Nimmy Paul teaches cooking right in her home in Cochin, India.

You'll learn to prepare South India's finest Keralan delicacies, like pallappam (an impossibly light and lacy rice pancake), meen molee (fish in coconut milk) and inji kari (sweet and sour vegetables).

The best part is sitting at the Paul family table and eating a meal you've helped to prepare. Book through Greaves India, which can also help you to arrange nearby accommodations.

Villa San Michele School of Cookery, Florence, Italy

As if a stay in a 15th-century former monastery in Florence wasn't romantic enough, learn to cook with the most romantic of ingredients, flowers.

Attilio Di Fabrizio, the property's executive chef, and assistant chef Luca Orini -- along with an assist from herb and flower expert Fernanda Russo -- will guide you through a personal shopping experience for flowers and herbs.

Over the course of two days, they will guide you through the preparation of your own lunch. "Cooking with Flowers" is scheduled for Sept. 10-Sept. 13; reserve one of the villa's 46 rooms to secure your spot.

InterContinental Hong Kong, Kowloon, China

The Yan Toh Heen restaurant inside this hotel is renowned for its refined Cantonese cuisine, and especially for its dim sum lunch.

Although the hotel doesn't advertise it extensively, you can go behind the scenes and learn how to prepare dim sum with one of the restaurant's chefs, and then sit down and dive in to what you've prepared for lunch.