If you’re a Trufflepig newsletter subscriber (and if you aren’t, get on that), you know that every week we feature a “spotted pig” one of our readers has discovered. Usually they just get a passing one-liner, but we decided that this little piggy deserves a bit more time in the spotlight. Sarah Dumbrille spotted this […]
When a tour guide invites you into her home and makes you a special herbal elixir to heal your cough, you have probably made the leap from travel client over to friend. Or maybe you’ve just met Hemali Talsania, the kindest Trufflepig guide of them all. Trufflepig is built on experience. We don’t plan in […]
Hotels, hotels, hotels. We know a lot of you out there are accommodation addicts, envying the large part of every planner’s job that involves checking out all the options for a home away from home. We do get to see some amazing places, but the majority of hotels err on the side of anonymous, big-brand […]
Every now and then we discover an organization or person who is doing something amazing for the area of the world that they live in. Jennifer Ridolfi is one of those people. In Mareeba, Australia, about an hour inland from the reef access town of Cairns, Jennifer runs the Jowajilla Wildlife Refuge. The refuge takes […]
When my mom texts me, she refers to me as “Nomad”. It started as a typo that her phone autocorrected, and stuck due to my longstanding travel addiction. When I rode a camel into the Sahara Desert to meet some real nomads this summer, she found it highly amusing. Traditionally, the nomadic Berbers in Morocco […]
For most people, just the trip to India would be adventure enough. In a country where crazy is the norm, simply wandering around on foot can provide a full day’s worth of diversions and interactions more than entertaining enough to blog home about. But Anton Lynch is not most people. Anton is our go-to man […]
If you’re not in the Christmas spirit by now, it may simply be too late for this year. I mean, how much more fluffy snow, how many more four martini lunches, how fewer days of last-minute shopping, do you need to get you in the mood for merriment? But hey, that’s fine, maybe it’s not […]
It’s pretty hard not to fall hard for France (as you may have read in Jack’s article from a few weeks ago). The whole country is just so visually appealing and culturally captivating. I was in Paris for a couple of days recently and walking around the city I was reminded how insanely and wonderfully […]
There are two things I’m always on the hunt for when I travel. An inspiring cup of coffee and a place that sells old stuff (aka antiques, aka one man’s treasure, aka junk). It’s surprisingly rare to hit the jackpot on both counts in the same day. But last Friday in London that’s precisely what […]
Over the centuries, Paris has given us a lot to be thankful for. And now, for design lovers, there’s one more reason. Merci (that’s me telling you the name of a store, not saying “thanks”). A ten-minute walk north from Place des Vosges, Merci is the new hotspot for contemporary design. It’s mildly easy to miss given that […]
Guatemala is a very colourful country. The markets are abundant with shades that would make a painter envious, the traditional dress of the local women is a multicoloured work of beauty and the gorgeous town of Antigua is jam-packed with brightly-hued houses. However, by far my favourite example of the colours of Guatemala is the […]
There’s a theory that suggests you must do something for 10,000 hours before you really master it. By conservative math, Trufflepig co-founder Jack Dancy has been planning trips to France for about 30,000 hours. Ooh la la. This partly explains why he’s so good at it and why he was once again named to Conde Nast […]
The curation of randomness is about the only thing I like more than random discovery. So you can imagine how excited I was to serendipitously stumble on Busacca Gallery, a mecca for miscellanea. Just a few blocks from the top of Lombard Street (allegedly the world’s crookedest street) high on San Francisco’s Russian Hill, Busacca is pretty much […]
Okay, so you haven’t quite gotten around to planning that late December holiday getaway. You don’t need more guilt heaped on your work-weary shoulders. But you do need some help. The Christmas to New Year’s travel window is a busy one, so there’s no more time to waste. Here’s a rundown of of what could […]
It’s 3:00 pm in Toronto, on a grey and quiet Friday afternoon. In Spain, it’s 10:00 pm and somewhere in some small bar in some small town a guitar is about to catch fire. Or so it seems. A moment ago our Spain & Morocco trip planner, Sebastian Lapostol, sent me this brief but compelling […]
I’ve never been to China. But yesterday I went to see an art show at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) in Toronto, featuring the phenomenal work of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (pronounced ‘I Way Way’). Even though I know there’s nothing like seeing a country in person, I kind of feel like this show […]