Have you ever looked at a dog’s nose? I mean really studied it closely. It’s cold (most of the time), wet (generally) but the most fascinating thing about it is the texture, a kind of ‘scorched earth’ granularity. Go get your dog, if you have one and stare at that snoot… Now, what does it […]

In a sea of gondolas and fast motor boats, the Eolo — a fully restored Venetian bragozzo, or flat-bottom fishing boat, painted with the classic black and white decorations — proudly unfurls its trapezoidal rust-red sails to the winds: quite a proclamation, visually and conceptually, even from afar. Irreverent, you might think, yet very much […]

It’s hard to encapsulate the essence of a place in a single phrase. There are too many layers and complexities, flavours and voices, volumes and colours. But when I think of my latest trip to Florence, “the devil is in the details” comes to mind. I was caught up in a whirlwind of self-inflicted (and […]

In the gastronomic pantheon, hundreds of foods take their names from famous figures, spanning the whole alphabet from Eggs Benedict to Caesar Salad, Beef Wellington to Peach Melba. In Italy the most popular dish in such a category has to be the pizza Margherita, which, according to the legend, was created by Raffaele Esposito Brandi […]

There is a cluster of islands, right off the coast of Naples, that look like pebbles scattered in the sea by the hand of a giant. Some are big, some tiny, some just deserted rocks: Capri, Ischia, Procida, Li Galli (also called Le Sirenuse), Vivara, and many more… As myth has it, this is the […]

***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 […]

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 […]