Quit your job. Tell your friends. Dust off your résumé and fire up your arrabbiata recipe. We’re hiring a new Italy planner. This is a full-time position within our award-winning European planning team, handling our trips to Italy and beyond. Excuse me: handling our highly-orchestrated, unusually pungent, exceptionally quirky and universally acclaimed trips to Italy and beyond. That’s more like […]
The end of dictatorship in Portugal in the 1970s, and the ushering in of new found freedoms and economic opportunities, brought with it a sad legacy: a serious drug addiction problem that coincided with an emerging AIDS epidemic. The combination devastated families across Portugal’s social classes. The Algarve, synonymous today with Portugal’s prime beach destination, […]
As even the most cursory glance at the map will tell you, Greenland is the world’s largest misnomer. It seems “Iceland”, sadly, was taken, and the Norse settlers who first attempted to set up camp on the south-eastern shores (the north-west had long been inhabited by Inuits) thought a little gilding the lilly might bring in […]
The Hindus speak of the purusharthas, or the four aims of a balanced life as the blueprint for human fulfillment: duty/ethics, prosperity, pleasure, and the pursuit of liberation. As a travel professional these ideas have always resonated with me, as I appreciate the finer things in life but have often found that luxury and pleasure […]
We were saying. Mayieritsa. You’ve got to taste it to believe it. It smells quite good actually (that’s the spring onion), but it’s a kind of an, um, acquired taste. And I never quite succeeded in acquiring that taste. (Honestly, I tried.) My Greek husband swears by it. To the extent that during the years we […]
It’s lent. The 40-day period prior to Easter, during which the Greek Orthodox church prescribes that we should all abstain from eating animals with red blood flowing through their bodies as well as whatever they produce (dairy, eggs), as well as fish. Boneless seafood – shrimps, octopus, fish eggs – is fine. Pretty much every Greek observes […]
While Copenhagen rightly remains a perennial favourite on the Scandinavian circuit, there are a number of delightful retreats dotting the Danish countryside that are worth including in your Nordic adventure. Not only does the setting of these charming inns make you appreciate the slower pace of rural living, they also house some of Scandinavia’s finest […]
In Palermo, the driving is best left to the natives. I can only surmise that local licence holders have genetically mutated to remain placid in this perpetual game of chicken. Motorists bicker with their horns like an island of squabbling siblings. In the big city, our advice is: call a cab. Palermo aside, I confess […]
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. […]
We may be a tiny travel company (with a great big nose) but when Conde Nast Traveler magazine published its “2017 Top Travel Specialists” list last week, we blushed hot pink to see that Trufflepig has more experts listed than any other outfit. Our very own Dan, Rudston, Tyler and Sebastian, for Italy, Spain, Southern Africa and Myanmar. CNT describe them as “the […]
I had heard that Scotland had some of the best driving anywhere. I generally take statements like these with a pinch of salt but I’ve always been partial to a good road trip. So when my wife and I were in Scotland for a family celebration, we took the opportunity to tack on a wee (I’m not […]
I arrive into Kiruna, gateway to Swedish Lapland (Sapmi in local language), around the lunch hour on an overcast Wednesday. It’s January, and the sun is about to set. I’ve come in from Stockholm, confident that I had adjusted well to the short days of Winter in Northern Europe. But up here past the Arctic Circle […]
In the blink of an eye, it’s over. It may not last long, but the sweet magic that Summer casts on the Swedish island of Gotland is a spell to enjoy year after year. A storybook of Swedish Summer paradise, Gotland is where savvy Swedes head from Stockholm to avoid the hordes of Southern Europe sinking Santorini into the […]
Lured by the call of the newly opened Elbphilharmonie concert hall, I decided to make my way to the Northern German metropolis of Hamburg to see for myself what all the fuss is about. With its striking architecture resembling a giant crystal, hoisted sail, or perhaps ocean waves, Elphi – as it has been affectionately nicknamed – […]
It’s no secret I like to sweat it out. Preferably in the solitude of a wood-fired cabin by a lake surrounded by dense forest. But failing that, I get my schwitz on any way I can. One of my most memorable sauna quests took place in Malmö on the Baltic Sea coast, where on a […]
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, […]