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Finding My Way North – the Camino de Santiago

I’ve found that the old dictum “hindsight is 20/20” has taken on new meaning this year. My realization has been that for much of my adult life, travel has defined my most significant moments. I don’t want to come off sounding like some Instagram travel influencer racing around the globe to collect passport stamps for the […]

Changes in Burgundy’s Wine Harvest Reflect a Bigger Picture

Look at the picture. Isn’t it lovely to see an image of such unchanging tradition? Cart horses being used to transport grapes picked by hand in Burgundy’s famous Côte de Beaune, with the picturesque village of Pommard in the background, under a beautiful August blue sky… Lovely. But wait, hang on a second… doesn’t harvest […]

One Step At A Time

After a 7 hour train journey from my home in Provence to Evian-les-Bains on the shore of Lake Geneva, I find myself standing on the side of a road, surrounded by beautiful alpine scenery on one side and the clear waters of the lake on the other. I am holding a piece of cardboard salvaged […]

Make Lemonade

March 17, 2020. France has just entered into confinement with strict rules: we are locked down for the foreseeable future and limited to 1 hour a day outside our homes and within a 1km radius. Difficult times ahead for keen travelers and nature lovers like me. … May 11. The French government has eased the […]

A Sebastian in Heaven, A Sebastian on Earth

Don’t worry.  I’ve not gone off the deep end (yet). The title is a rough translation of the hymn to San Sebastian, aka Donostia, aka one of the Coolest Coastal Towns in Spain.  It’s also much more readable than the original Basque: Sebastian bat badu zeruan, donosti bat bakarra munduan. But Basque aside, I’m not hot […]

Globe Trotters

We’ve been out on the road this year…. a lot. At half-time on 2019, our trotters are worn smooth, and it’s time to take stock. The pictures above flooded my inbox when I naively wrote to our planning team to ask for a few shots from recent research trips. I was struck by the awesome […]

Is Paris Burning?

Michael Eloy gives us some real hooves-on-the-ground intel on the situation in Paris… : When I head out on a Trufflepig research trip, I make sure to go prepared. Prepared for my work assignment obviously – but also prepared to take photos, which is my main hobby. On this current research trip in Paris, I knew I would […]

Trufflepig is Hiring: France Planner

Bugs Bunny described France as that place where ‘all good Americans go when they die’. Well, now you don’t have to wait that long, and you can get paid for doing it. Trufflepig is hiring into our comfiest position, that of France planner. We’re looking for one lucky winner to join our award-winning team of ace travel chefs. […]

Losing it in Montmartre

I get lost all the time. When a set of directions indicates a southerly course, northeast it is. If a line on a map points straight, the immediate impulse is to take a hard left. It’s a condition really, some defect in my DNA that’s left me without any sort of inner compass. Oddly enough, […]

Trufflepig recipes: Cassoulet

The ingredients for this daunting dish are many, and complicated. By far the most important of them are bravery and time. You cannot rush a cassoulet, and you cannot let it get the better of you. Those of you who are adventurous and gourmand enough to try this marvellous dish will find it will try […]

The Town & Country Grand Tour

This Fall, Town & Country magazine had the hare-brained scheme of planning a 170-day Grand Tour around the world for their 100th anniversary. And then they had the wise idea of asking Trufflepig to plan 43 days of it. We were tickled pink with [false] modesty. There’s a world of difference between good trip-planning and most […]

Bon… jour?

No one can complicate things like a Frenchman can. Just when you thought it was as easy as ‘bonjour’, here’s our abridged guide on how to say hello in French, reduced to 17 easy-to-remember time/gender/location/religion-specific steps. Think of bonjour as a launchcode: dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands. That’s right, although they taught […]

Day of the Dead

There’s probably something you look for immediately on your first day exploring a new destination. Maybe it’s the most interesting museums, delicious street food, local markets; everyone has their go-to travel highlights. As for me, after a long journey to a new city, I often steer myself toward the places where people rest—eternally, that is. […]

Seeing in Black and White

I have had some growing pains over the years, as I learned to use my new digital camera. It was a world of difference over film, and I humbly admit that I did, on occasion, get caught up in the allure of certain “features” the camera offered. Remember that colour bleed, where you pull just […]

Tasting Menu

Your trip planners and planning assistants here at Trufflepig travel a lot. Put all of that jet setting together, and you’ve got yourself a fine selection of previously enjoyed (and eagerly photographed) foods from around the globe. Every lunch hour we end up pining for one faraway dish or another; we’ve decided it’s time to […]

Les Plus Belles Fesses du Louvre

The sheer size of the Louvre—bigger than an airport and more labyrinthine—can be overwhelming; but even more daunting than that is the sheer academic weight of all those masterpieces staring down at you; centuries and centuries of art in room upon room of scholarship. All those dates to learn, those artistic genres to distinguish, those […]