Grantourismo is the food and travel site of Lara Dunston and Terence Carter, a Southeast Asia-based Australian-born food and travel writer-photographer couple. We launched Grantourismo in 2010 with a yearlong global grand tour dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel – travelling more slowly, living like locals, connecting with locals, learning and doing things, and giving back to places; ways of travelling we long believed to be more immersive, engaging and enriching; more sustainable, responsible and ethical; and ultimately more meaningful and more memorable.
Since the launch of our Grantourismo project on New Year’s Eve 2009 and end of our yearlong grand tour of the world, we’ve continued to travel slowly, locally and experientially, and to advocate slow, local and experiential travel as more sustainable, responsible and ethical ways of travelling through our writing and photography here.
On Grantourismo, we write about the places we settle into around the world, whether it’s for a few days, weeks or months, the places we’ve made our homes for many years in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the people we meet on the way, the things we learn and do, the experiences and places that change us, and the food we cook in those places.
Local food and sharing recipes for dishes we learn to make from local chefs and home cooks in each place we settle into was a goal from the start. But it’s become a big part of what we do, since we slowed our travels right down, immersing ourselves in places for longer, especially since we made Siem Reap, Cambodia, our home in 2013.
Our recipes and food stories may be the most popular posts on Grantourismo, but we’re still continuing our original quest and posting on the places we travel, the people we meet, and the experiences that transform us.
About Grantourismo
Grantourismo began as a 12 month global grand tour dedicated to slow travel, local travel and experiential travel, which we’ve since made a lifelong project.
What is Grantourismo?
Grantourismo is a term we coined inspired by the Italian word granturismo, meaning ‘grand touring’. For us, it’s a style of travelling we’d been doing since January 2006, when, with a slew of guidebooks and travel stories under our belts and a year’s worth of writing commissions lined up, this husband and wife writer and photographer team embarked on a yearlong travel experiment.
Putting our worldly possessions into storage in Dubai, we took to the road to live out of our Samsonites, bouncing around the planet from project to project. Along the way, we changed the whole meaning of globetrotting, and in the process we redefined the way in which a travel writer-photographer team works.
While Grantourismo remains our main focus, we’re currently developing cookbooks, books and websites, and from time to time we still undertake food and travel writing assignments, writing and shooting for magazines and newspapers around the world, and doing the occasional guidebook update. We also work directly with travel brands, tourism organisations and travel companies on special projects.
And we love a good project. We like planning something extraordinary, embarking on a unique journey, and chronicling a trip or experience in an engaging, evocative and inspiring way here on Grantourismo. We’re open to exploring project ideas, travel experiences, writers-in-residence, a one-of-a-kind trip, from a weekend to a week, month to a year. Our only requirement is that it aligns with our principles and passions.
The project should promote slow and sustainable travel, experiential travel, local travel, living like locals, slow food, local food, culinary travel, and/or the notion of ‘giving back’ to places travelled. If you have an idea for a project that you think we might be able to collaborate on together, email us at info@grantourismotravels.com. Here’s an example of the kind of thing we like to do, the project that launched Grantourismo.
Our First Project: a Yearlong Trip Advocating Slow Travel, Local Travel and Experiential Travel
In 2010, in partnership with HomeAwayUK we swapped hotel rooms for holiday homes and embarked on a contemporary grand tour of the world of sorts. Our mission was to explore more authentic and enriching ways of travelling by slowing down, living like locals, learning and doing things, and, wherever possible, giving something back to the places we visited.
By doing so, by advocating holiday rentals as an alternative to hotels, we got to share the things that are possible when travellers stay in holiday rentals, from shopping the local markets and cooking local food to meeting locals and inviting them over for meals, as we did many times on our 12 month trip, beginning with a pre-launch soiree in Dubai, and a proper launch party in London.
After we took to the road, staying in 36 holiday rentals over the course of a year, we documented our journey here on Grantourismo. We wrote about the holiday houses and apartment rentals we settled into for two weeks at a time, our experiences living like locals and the local neighbourhoods we focused on exploring that year, the local walks we did and itineraries we created, the tours we tested out, the cooking lessons and other classes we did, the things we learnt, and the locals we met who shared their local tips in our local knowledge series.
In each place we stayed, Terence learnt to cook a quintessential dish of the place and created a weekend eggs dish based on local ingredients, and we shared those recipes on Grantourismo. We sought out local producers and products we could promote and opportunities for visitors to give back to places.
For our our Local Knowledge series, we interviewed local experts on everything from food and wine to music, film and pop culture, and in some places, we sought out music experts to create a playlist for you when you visit these places. We also created eating and drinking guides, walking tours, guides to places, itineraries, and more.
Browse through our Archives for a better idea as to the kind of content we created.
Other Projects with Other Brands
During our 2010 HomeAwayUK Grand Tour and since that project finished in February 2011, we’ve worked with a number of other travel brands, on everything from short-term projects to competitions. Our partners have included: Viator, Context, Rail Europe, Our Explorer, Trourist, AFAR, Putumayo, Luxe Guides, Melbourne Private Tours, Roomorama, Espresso Apartments, Great Southern Rail, South Australia Tourism, Lord Howe Island Tourism, Hamilton Island and Great Barrier Feast, Destination NSW, Sabah Tourism, Orion Expeditions, Selangor Tourism, Relais and Chateaux, Air New Zealand, Sony Australia, and so many more.
Our Guiding Principles and Passions
What all projects, whether large or small, have in common is that they explore one or more of our guiding principles and passions.
Experiential Travel
The original idea of The Grand Tour was rooted in experiential travel; a slow, extended journey aimed at learning about the local culture, arts, language, and people of the places the grand tourists travelled to, has always been appealing. Like the early grand tourists, our kind of travel is a more experiential style of extended travel.
Terence has a passion for cooking and there are still a few musical instruments he hasn’t yet mastered. Lara has dabbled in everything from bellydancing to badminton. We’re up for anything and have tried our hands at all kinds of things from learning about elephants in Thailand to Terry playing at Master Chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant kitchen in Mallorca.
At each place we visit, we endeavour to learn a little of the language. Our original plan for the yearlong grand tour we embarked upon in partnership with HomeAwayUK involved a month in each place within which time we would attempt to learn as much of the language that we could and a number of skills unique to the place – and then write a book about the experience.
While we scaled back our ambitions for the HomeAwayUK project, our aims and interests were the same, and will always remain the same.
Slow Travel and Sustainable Travel
We have called thousands of hotel rooms around the world our home, often checking in and out of new hotels every day or two as we’ve bounced around the planet from one assignment to another. Nobody knows hotels like we do.
But while we love the luxury and attentive service of a fine five-star, the charm and character of an unique boutique place, and the chance to unwind at a laidback beach resort, at every opportunity, we have been quick to trade our swipe cards for door keys and check into a rental property for a month or two.
Independent boutique hotels can offer a slower style of travel than big brash brand hotels, but the contrast between cookie-cutter hotels and holiday rental accommodation couldn’t be greater. The chance to really slow down and kick back at a holiday rental is the obvious advantage.
There are no breakfast buffet times to wake for, no need to lay your towel down on a sun bed at dawn, and no need to worry about when the kitchen closes. In a holiday rental you can do your own thing anytime, anywhere and take your time about it.
By travelling more slowly, travellers are also travelling more sustainably – from taking the time to discover local markets and small neighbourhood businesses to shop instead of the first tourist traps spotted on the street, to choosing to buy and cook local produce instead of expensive imported products.
Not only is this kind of slow travel more sustainable, travellers are able to learn how to live like locals.
Local Travel and Living like Locals
One of the things that we love about renting properties when we travel is the opportunity they afford to travel more authentically by meeting, learning about and living like locals.
Whether it’s the regular exchange of greetings with neighbours in the corridor or small talk each day with the owner of the corner grocery shop that develops into meaningful conversation, there’s a sense of community to be tasted from such small interactions and special insights into places and their people that can rarely be experienced when staying at a hotel.
Such encounters enable travellers to befriend local people or at the very least get great local recommendations and enable travellers to learn to live like locals. That’s a wonderful thing at a time when so many travel experiences are manufactured and mass produced, and globalisation has meant that hotels, attractions, restaurants, and even food and drink, are starting to look, feel and taste the same all around the world.
At each destination we visit we try to learn to live like locals. Our aim is always to identify the most ‘local’ places we can, from the bars and restaurants locals frequent to the markets where locals do their shopping.
Giving Back – Charitable Deeds and Altruism
Travel, especially holidays, can often be very self-indulgent, focused on unwinding and relaxing, sleeping and reading, eating and drinking, and, increasingly, pampering at a retreat or spa. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We just prefer a more altruistic style of travel and giving back to the places we go to.
In recent years, a growing travel trend has been voluntourism or volunteerism, the idea of travelling to a place to volunteer your time and energy, skills and labour, to help out at a charity, school, NGO, environmental organisation and so on. The intention is to give something back, rather than just take away.
Unfortunately voluntourism and volunteering is not always the best way to contribute to a place, as it can take jobs from locals, cause emotional scarring when children are involved, and support dodgy businesses.
There are more responsible and more ethical ways to ‘give back’ such as supporting NGO projects, shopping at social enterprises, drinking and dining at hospitality training restaurants and cafes, and supporting small local businesses. We frequently share tips as to how to do this in our responsible travel guides and our shopping, eating and drinking guides on Grantourismo.