After a 7 hour train journey from my home in Provence to Evian-les-Bains on the shore of Lake Geneva, I find myself standing on the side of a road, surrounded by beautiful alpine scenery on one side and the clear waters of the lake on the other. I am holding a piece of cardboard salvaged […]
The story I have to tell begins in Portugal in 1881. A team of scientists from the Lisbon Geographic Society gather to undertake an expedition to the Serra da Estrela mountains some 300km away. The Serra, the highest point in continental Portugal (the peak at Torre clocks in just shy of 2,000 meters) acquired its main […]
Venice recently made headlines for all the wrong reasons. On November 12th the city was swallowed by a whopping 187 cm (or six feet) of “acqua alta” (high tide) above mean sea level. It was just a few centimetres below the record reached in 1966, which Venetians still refer to with horror as ‘Acqua Granda’ […]
When I was younger I used to love lying on the beach. I could do it for hours, day after day. I had no care for SPF, much less so for changes in elevation. The sun, my towel, and a flat bit of sand by any body of water was all I needed. And then, in […]
Turkey spans continents, it defies expectations (mostly by surpassing them), its cuisine is constantly impressive, and then the separate regions within this vast varied country are themselves myriad, from the thriving cultural hub of Istanbul to the Azure Coast, from the interior splendours of cave-like Cappadocia to the historical highlights of Ephesus. You can now add another to […]
A dreamer for surf, I always imagined my life would follow the tides and know the nooks and crannies of some little seen coastline like the back of my hand, but I never lived on the salt water, at least not for long enough to get used to the patterns of the sea. All the pot-smoking […]
I think it was late spring, and school was going to let out a few weeks later, but things had been rough on the home front so it must have been decided that my brother and I were going to skip the end of the class year, and my 7th grade finals would be missed. […]
Don’t worry. I’ve not gone off the deep end (yet). The title is a rough translation of the hymn to San Sebastian, aka Donostia, aka one of the Coolest Coastal Towns in Spain. It’s also much more readable than the original Basque: Sebastian bat badu zeruan, donosti bat bakarra munduan. But Basque aside, I’m not hot […]
Naples doesn’t do subtle. Everything in the Southern Italian city is about abundance: if you’ve been there before, you’ll certainly know that food doesn’t come in small doses, nor with light preparations. And if Baroque is one of the arts that best encapsulates the city’s spirit, Naples has also made a name for itself for […]
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 […]
We were on our way to the market, as lead by our guide, the ever-capable and personable Paco, when my co-culinary-conspirator, Susannah, mentioned in a hushed tone that she had never visited this market before, as she had been warned-off by friends and people-in-the-know, that it was too dangerous to visit, especially for a non-Mexican […]
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 […]
Tyler gives us the low-down on the remote plains of Mongolia and the surprises therein…: The same year that “Ice Ice Baby,” “U Can’t Touch This,” and the eternal Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory” were all released, that same chunk of time gave birth to the modern state of Mongolia – with ‘modern’ being the […]
Here is a glimpse behind the curtain at the nuts and bolts of a Trufflepig research trips as Tyler heads out on the road to Bangkok…: From: tyler@trufflepig.com To: Greg and Jack August 2nd. Greg and Jack, So here is the story, Thai Tourism has put together a consultation trip for lux new properties in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and […]
When I asked a friend from Colorado to name the most beautiful state in the US, she immediately (and treacherously) replied ‘Utah’. It’s true that if there’s one state that’s going to wear out the shutter on your SLR, it’s the Beehive state. Quite apart from the shutter, you’ll be in constant battle to swap the wide-angle lens for […]
Taking a trip down Memory Road just got a lot more sandy. And adventuresome. This epic 6-night road trip, much more romantic when given its French title, La Route du Sud, will take you to some of the most remote and captivating areas of Morocco. I undertook the Route not long ago, thinking that after decades of living and […]