I don’t know what came first: my affection for France, or my fascination for rusty old Citroëns. Either way, each emotion feeds the other. But one of them, over the years, has become what my close friends call a little problematic. It started young. As a kid I befriended the owner of the Citroën garage […]

‘Paris est minérale‘. Could there be a more poetic way to describe a bustling metropolis? As a Brazilian, I sure load my speeches and descriptions with hyperboles and words that defeat the rules of grammar. But mineral! Oh, I would never have thought of that, yet it remains as one of my favourite souvenirs from […]

On a cool November night at the end of last year, people nearing Beaune’s famous hospital – the 15th-century Hôtel-Dieu, also known as the Hospices, are right to wonder exactly what I and about a hundred other runners with headlamps are doing, gathered in the Place des Halles. On the weekend in question (always the […]

High above the wild gorges of Chassezac between Provence and the Massif Central, a medieval village remains quietly untouched, even in the middle of summer. On my first visit to the area, back in 2017, I almost drove past it without noticing it. The road across the plateau felt endless that day. Quiet and empty, […]

In most of my earliest childhood photos, my face is covered in chocolate. And while my table manners have somewhat improved, my love of chocolate remains unspoiled. My favourite dessert out there is my French grandmother’s chocolate mousse. Chocolate mousse is rarely the best in restaurants. It’s kind of a pain to make in large […]

France is a small but richly varied country, so we often combine two or more regions in a single trip: for example, Burgundy and Provence, Lyon and the Riviera, or the Alps and the countryside further south. But since there’s so much to see in these regions packed with history and character, there are always […]

There’s a particular kind of magic that settles over France in the off-season and I felt it almost immediately on my recent research trip. Not in any one grand moment, but in the subtle shift of things — the softened pace, the quiet streets, the way the experience moved from something observed to something more […]

There’s much I love about the French region of Alsace, tucked up alongside the Rhine between the pine-covered Vosges and the Black Forest of Germany.  For a start, it’s the only place I know where electric pistachio can be considered a subdued choice of colour to paint the entire outside of your house. The villages are […]

When I moved to Lozère region of France a little over a year ago, I quickly learned that mushroom picking here isn’t a hobby, it’s a religion. The locals are proud of their land and fiercely protective of their secret spots. When I first mentioned that I liked picking mushrooms, I was met with polite […]

I’m not sure what filled me with more dread; the fact that the invitation to the opening ceremony specified a ‘creative chic dress code’ or that it would entail having to walk up the marches du Palais, the epitome of red carpets, possibly in the footsteps of Richard Gere and Michael Fassbender. In true wallflower […]

Early afternoon , Bastille Day, 1989. I have been standing on the roundabout next to my house for nearly 3 hours. The moment I have been waiting for weeks is finally arriving. Le Tour de France, also known as La Grande Boucle, is passing my hometown, and on its way to Marseille, the finish of […]

When I started at Trufflepig, I noticed that all the trip planners within the company come from quite diverse backgrounds, with often very different interests. But while, not surprisingly, we all share the same passion for travelling, somehow we also all have a similar shared interest in food. Exploring the world on trip research, we […]

***20 December 2023: Please note that applications for these positions are now closed*** Trufflepig as a company was started by Trip Planners and is run by Trip Planners, and in a world of distractions and fads we maintain a single-minded focus on our core objective: planning great trips. Trufflepig’s Trip Planners are destination specialists and […]

Nature is fragile, let’s preserve it. This sentence is the introduction to my video as well as my conclusion after having spent most weekends in the past 5 month in Camargue. Patiently, I explored most areas the park: its lakes, channels, tracks, beaches and salt flats, in search of the best locations. And when the […]

There was a time period at the end of the 70’s, when rock and roll belched up 15 minute ballads sticky with hairspray, and the efficiency of a 2-4 beat and counterculture got lost in the woods and egos of stadium shows. We ended up with “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”. Fortunately punk rock and […]

Located in one of the sunniest parts of the French Alps, the small town of Barcelonnette (not to be confused with Barcelona in Spain) is home to almost 3000 souls. Barcelonnette is not only a friendly family ski town known to every ski enthusiast in the South of France (only 3h away from Marseille), it […]