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 […]
Returning to Dubrovnik I fall in love every time. No matter how many times I’ve admired the glittering lights across the Adriatic Sea, or sat on my hotel balcony at night gazing in awe at the illuminated Old Town – it’s a scene that I just cannot pry my eyes away from. Despite the inevitable crowds, it’s still possible […]
When I travel to places I don’t know, I like finding the threads that bind destinations together. This exercise in dot-connecting led me recently to follow the trail of one of Portugal’s most popular, and bizarre legends. Alcobaça, about an hour or so north of Lisbon, is a quiet town with an outsized history and […]
When I find myself in colder climes I tend to develop a craving for sweltering heat. The kind produced by a well-fed wood stove; the kind that blissfully gets under your skin and melts away the gloom of Winter. A sauna kind of heat. While spending a handful of chilly December days in Basel, one of […]
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 […]