To travel is to hold smelling salts to our senses, to go wide-eyed, to become hyper observant, run on sheer curiosity. I dive into a research trip scanning for the beauty, the stories, the connections between where I am now and other places I’ve been. I pick a local caffè to hear the morning gossip […]

Let’s play a little game. One city – Venice Seven questions Two possible answers each time: by boot or by boat. Ready? 1. What’s the best way to get lost? By foot. Venice is comprised of roughly 120 islands (the precise number depends on how you define an island), and 391 bridges. If you don’t […]

Meredith is back from a few weeks on research in Italy, with tales of a missed flight, loose knees, and pure flexibility. The world has changed, and we with it – the tempo is different, and in this makeshift podcast we try to capture a feeling, that thing we all chase when we leave our […]

With the advent of the digital era, many bemoaned the disappearance of books as physical objects and pointed to the dangers connected with such a possibility, for it might change the way we think.  So, these days, when a book becomes a literary case, that’s already cause for celebration. If that book is an art […]

Some foods are so intrinsically tied to a place that often they shed a light on its past vicissitude much better than any museums or monuments. One of them is cod: the consumption of this fish is widespread across several continents, from Russia, to Western Africa, from the Caribbean to England, to the point that […]

Since the invention of filmmaking, Rome has been unmatched as the ideal open-air set. The opulent palazzos, lively squares and ancient ruins combine with Europe’s biggest studios in Cinecittà, to provide the perfect backdrop to thousands of productions, national and international. And the image of Rome and the Romans that emerges from these films is […]

This isn’t really a podcast, and it isn’t an interview, but it is a collection of clips recorded from two planners trying to capture the ephemeral feeling we have right when we get back from a research trip.  When someone from Trufflepig goes off digging for a few weeks at a time, searching and researching, […]

With some of them there’s not much you can do: they’re stubborn, they squirm and squeal at every attempt to implement some discipline; sometimes you manage to reestablish a form of order, sometimes you fail. Some are just born wild and you know from the very beginning that they’re gonna have a life of their […]

In good news, the world of travel is moving towards a greener, cleaner way of sashaying across the globe.  Trufflepig is right in the scrum on these efforts. We are tickled pink that whatever momentum Al Gore attempted, Greta Thurnberg is striking into a butterfly effect. But this is not an article about environmentalism or […]

July 21, 1969. My parents were traveling to Spain on their honeymoon, racing their tiny, overpacked Fiat 500 convertible beyond the laws of physics. They pulled over at a cafe in Tossa de Mar, a Medieval town in Catalonia, hastily parking the car on the sidewalk. It was very early in the morning (or very […]

Last week Conde Nast Traveler released its annual Travel Specialists list, kind of like the Oscars of the travel world. And with another record-breaking 7 Trufflepig planners with their names in lights (again), we feel more than usually justified in describing ourselves as the Tiny Company with the Great Big Nose. We are of course […]

Remember dinner parties? The ever-gracious host. The ebullient storyteller who commandeers the conversation. The witty chap in a blazer – a date on his arm and a quip on his lips. The elegant lady in a well-tailored dress which flatters but doesn’t reveal. Her kid sister with a contagious laugh and plummeting neckline. Sigh. It’s […]

Swish, swoosh — the oar smoothly fends the water. Quite the statement, the Venetian way of rowing: proudly standing up, and facing forward, eyes into the future.  Swish swoosh, the roar rhythmically breaks the green surface of the lagoon. The pungent smell of salt and shallow marshes. An island here, another there, and more as […]

I laughed a little too hard recently when reading Anne Lamott’s words, “By the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards”. I cannot be the only human whose covid days, home-cooked meals and masked conversations have become excruciatingly banal.  We’re all yearning for discovery, spice and a rollicking time anywhere but […]

Holidays are lurking and with it, more Coronavirus cases and renewed lockdowns. It’s all been enough for anyone to reach for the bottle. As we hunker down for the winter, we asked around our planning team to see who’s got the bartending chops in the Trufflepig farm.  Below are some road-tested recipes that came back […]

Italy’s food culture is a constellation of countless regional specialties, so place-peculiar that dishes can vary significantly in the span of just a few hundred meters. Such is the case of some mountain valleys, for instance, where the natural landscape has helped keep the local from spreading further. But one aspect that unites all these […]