I’ve never met a wine-growing region I didn’t like. But there’s a difference between producing wine and cultivating a wine culture, and the best measure of how successful a wine-growing region can be lies not just with the quality of the wines they produce, but how well the place weaves together the distinct threads of […]
When I was younger I used to love lying on the beach. I could do it for hours, day after day. I had no care for SPF, much less so for changes in elevation. The sun, my towel, and a flat bit of sand by any body of water was all I needed. And then, in […]
Trufflepig has grown slowly and carefully in our 16 years of snuffling. We have no sales team. No real marketing budget. If you call up looking for the IT department, we’ll patch you through to the Iceland expert. Sure, we’ve laid on some layers of bacon over the years, but we remain at core a […]
A dreamer for surf, I always imagined my life would follow the tides and know the nooks and crannies of some little seen coastline like the back of my hand, but I never lived on the salt water, at least not for long enough to get used to the patterns of the sea. All the pot-smoking […]
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 […]
Often, when people think of Lake Como, their mind conjures up images of sumptuous historic villas and luxurious gardens – and rightfully so. There’s an embarrassment of riches, mostly clustered between Como and the central portion of the lake: think for instance of Villa del Balbianello (where they filmed a scene from Star Wars Episode […]
It is Friday morning in early December, and I’ve just arrived in Frankfurt, the bustling German metropolis often referred to as Mainhattan for its decidedly un-European plethora of skyscrapers nestled along the Main river. I have the joyous task of spending a long weekend introducing a good friend – and first time visitor to my home […]
Naples doesn’t do subtle. Everything in the Southern Italian city is about abundance: if you’ve been there before, you’ll certainly know that food doesn’t come in small doses, nor with light preparations. And if Baroque is one of the arts that best encapsulates the city’s spirit, Naples has also made a name for itself for […]
I’ve long had a fascination for border towns. Places of transit. People and wares on the move. Constantly changing faces that melt together in memory, dingy train stations that scream “end-of-the-line”. Dimly lit border patrol checkpoints staffed by hard luck, disgruntled customs agents still trying to figure out how they screwed up on the job to […]
The church of Santa Croce is one of those monuments that never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many times I visit; and truth be told, I plan on spending some time there each time I’m in Florence. There are so many reasons as to why it keeps luring me back: for one, this […]
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 […]
Nowadays, Negroni is one of the most popular Italian aperitifs in the world, but its origin is steeped in legend. According to tradition, Count Camillo Negroni invented it in Florence in 1919, when he asked the bartender at his usual watering hole (Caffè Casoni in Via de’ Tornabuoni 83, now closed) to fortify his Americano […]
It’s the year of the Pig, folks, and to celebrate our star-studded shredding of the 2019 Conde Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialists List (5 of our planners listed… more than any other company in the – ahem – world) we all gathered in Toronto last month for what can only be described as a good […]
Luisa, the newest addition to Trufflepig’s planning team, begins her Sounder career, like her days, with a strong Roman coffee: The Bad The belief that coffee in Italy is something extraordinary is very deeply rooted in popular culture worldwide. But, truth be told, this is more myth than fact. Not all coffees are created equal, […]
Jacoline Vinke, Trufflepig’s Greece planner, heads to Euphoria Retreat in Mystras, and finds that taking it easy ain’t so rough after all… : Give me some Greek dirt to dig into and I am happy. I find truffles. An old man – son of a miner – taking me for a walk into abandoned mineshafts on […]
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 […]