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A Dão For All Seasons, a Dão For All Reasons

I’m driving on secondary country lanes, having just taken an exit north of Coimbra, on Portugal’s A1 tollway that joins the capital to coastal Porto, some three hours’ journey. As often happens when driving through this country, take just about any random turn, and modern efficient roads are quickly replaced by rolling hills with endless […]

Alfredo Who?

In the gastronomic pantheon, hundreds of foods take their names from famous figures, spanning the whole alphabet from Eggs Benedict to Caesar Salad, Beef Wellington to Peach Melba. In Italy the most popular dish in such a category has to be the pizza Margherita, which, according to the legend, was created by Raffaele Esposito Brandi […]

Growing up behind the Iron Curtain

In November 2024 Germany officially celebrates 35 years since reunification; it’s not been an easy road and continues to unite and divide. The country has come a long way, but to a degree East & West still exist in people’s minds, is reflected in salaries, political orientation and the like. Time to take a brief […]

La Grande Boucle

Early afternoon , Bastille Day, 1989. I have been standing on the roundabout next to my house for nearly 3 hours. The moment I have been waiting for weeks is finally arriving. Le Tour de France, also known as La Grande Boucle, is passing my hometown, and on its way to Marseille, the finish of […]

Sharing the water

Sifnos is the island next-door for me. Serifos is “my” island – I started going there a good 25 years ago, and from the moment I set foot on it, I knew I’d be back and start spending my summers there. I still do. It’s mountainous, wild and unpolished; beaches are virgin, and the occasional […]

Where the Sirens Sing

There is a cluster of islands, right off the coast of Naples, that look like pebbles scattered in the sea by the hand of a giant. Some are big, some tiny, some just deserted rocks: Capri, Ischia, Procida, Li Galli (also called Le Sirenuse), Vivara, and many more… As myth has it, this is the […]

If You Don’t Know Gin, You Don’t Know Bullocks

In the midst of lockdown in the summer of 2020 there wasn’t a whole lot of trip related email flying around, but one rather hot afternoon in July the following missive landed in my inbox which I found intriguing: “To find the Azores, look on Google Maps on Portugal, turn towards the Atlantic Ocean, and […]

Meet… Joe Scallop

After a steaming plate of fresh mussels has been set on the table to replace the mound of sautéed pimientos de Padrón (Padrón sweet green peppers) that we’ve just worked our way through, I reflect on how unanticipated moments like these make great travel. In front of me at the table is 2 Michelin-starred Galician […]

The day I made cheese in Corsica

When I started at Trufflepig, I noticed that all the trip planners within the company come from quite diverse backgrounds, with often very different interests. But while, not surprisingly, we all share the same passion for travelling, somehow we also all have a similar shared interest in food. Exploring the world on trip research, we […]

Trufflepig is Hiring: Trip Planners

***20 December 2023: Please note that applications for these positions are now closed*** Trufflepig as a company was started by Trip Planners and is run by Trip Planners, and in a world of distractions and fads we maintain a single-minded focus on our core objective: planning great trips. Trufflepig’s Trip Planners are destination specialists and […]

Luo Fu Shan

The Pearl River Delta, in the early 2000’s, was a place of heavy industry, pollution, run off, waste and ruin. It was rubble and rebar.  Home to factories like Yue Yuen (a company that produces the majority of the shoes for Nike, Crocs, Adidas, Reebok, Asics, New Balance, Puma, Timberland and Rockport)  and Samsung, the […]

The Power of Prokletije

I signed up for an adventure and got a lot more than I bargained for. In a good way. It started with a basic task (put one foot in front of the other), and led me to a lasting experience I was hardly prepared for: ten days in a vacuum-like state, practically closed off from […]

Camargue from above

Nature is fragile, let’s preserve it. This sentence is the introduction to my video as well as my conclusion after having spent most weekends in the past 5 month in Camargue. Patiently, I explored most areas the park: its lakes, channels, tracks, beaches and salt flats, in search of the best locations. And when the […]

Oporto, My Porto

“Just look out for two old codgers standing in arrivals.” This was the closing sentence in an email I received from my father’s cousin, and even though we had never met, I knew instantly that we would get along. Sure enough, after a flight across the Atlantic to Lisbon, and then another north to Oporto, […]

Anton’s two wheel tour

Our man Anton lives at the pace of a cruising bike in the grand city of London England.  There is something special about the pace of a free-wheeling bicycle – it allows you to float past the riff-raff, watching life roll by, almost unseen. The bike, since its invention, has barely evolved, a perfect invention […]

the sweet and lowdown

There was a time period at the end of the 70’s, when rock and roll belched up 15 minute ballads sticky with hairspray, and the efficiency of a 2-4 beat and counterculture got lost in the woods and egos of stadium shows. We ended up with “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”. Fortunately punk rock and […]