Bric-a-Brac 1
Navigators, an egg salad sandwich worth a road trip, and a new place to stay in Callicoon NY
I always gravitate to a bric-a-brac store—well at least the ones in France—and once I learned the origin of the phrase, I knew I had to work it into having a regular appearance in this newsletter. “A certain interest from being old, pretty, or curious, but no claim to art; 1840, from obsolete French à bric et à brac (16c.); at random, any old way; a nonsense phrase.” I’m aiming for a “bric-a-brac” post once a week, where you’ll find a mixed bag of travel info: something old, something new, probably a recipe, maybe a playlist, and always a Navigator (a series I’m really excited about—interviews with passionate travel advisors).
THE NEW
The Boarding House at Seminary Hill: Tom and Anna from Homestedt Design are friends of ours in Upstate New York. They’ve recently taken two 19th-century buildings that were a former local hospital in Callicoon (a generation of our neighbors were born there), and put their beautiful Shaker/Scando design touch to make this lovely inn.
JUST BACK FROM
Not new, but also in Sullivan County in Upstate New York…. Matt just had dinner at the North Branch Inn as he had friends staying there, and he couldn’t stop talking about how it was the best meal he’d had in upstate, ever. Thoughtful, elevated, and everything local and seasonal.
THE RECIPE
Our friend Dewey Nicks has hated mayonnaise his whole life (it’s probably the only thing we don’t agree on), so when he told us about a place that had such a great egg salad sandwich that he not only loved, but drove several hours for, we knew we had to check it out. We detoured to Bell’s in Los Alamos this spring on a road trip through California, and we all agreed that it was one of the most exciting restaurants we’ve been to in this country in a long time. For you egg salad fans, here is a gift.
THE NAVIGATOR
Tyler Dillon, Travel Planner, Truffle Pig
Tell us about you/your company: what you do and what do you specialize in?
I grew up in a mixture of Americana, first in the suburbs of New York City until I was seven and then in rural Georgia, about 30 minutes south of Athens (the musical home of REM and the B52’s). My mother was a flight attendant with American Airlines. Her family line came from the traveling poor French Acadians to the swamps of Louisiana—a Cajun, a Robichaux. My father’s side of the family were known for being traveling mercenaries and sheep thieves in ancient Ireland. All to say, the want to wander was deep in my genetic charts. I hardly made it through university as I was keen on dropping it all and heading out into the great green globe, but finish I did and achieved a degree in philosophy. To make ends meet during my studies I worked for the acclaimed chef Hugh Acheson, who taught me how to handle stress and the ability to organize while under pressure. Working in restaurants teaches you certain skills that are akin to being in battle. After I graduated, I immediately headed east, trying to make up for an overly Euro-centric upbringing. I knew there was a world I’d overlooked and hadn’t been taught about in school, a missing hemisphere. I ended up in China for seven years, where I taught 5th grade and started a business building summer camps, sold that business in 2005 and started guiding cycling trips for Butterfield & Robinson. I was of a lucky generation of guides who grew up as the travel industry shifted and changed and bespoke travel really took off, so was able to use my guiding skills to help design trips for travelers. For the past four years I have been specializing in Asia (and Ireland) with Trufflepig Travel.
What’s the entry level to talk to you?
The kind of trips I set up typically cost between $500 and $2,000 per person per day, all in. Sometimes they’re a wee bit less, sometimes they’re significantly more, depending on choices and needs of the trip. These costs are all from the components—hotels, transfers, guides, visas. Included in this cost is also a planning fee. I am religious about transparency in costs.
Where is the sweet spot of your expertise?
When I am working with folks who are curious, well-traveled, and a little bit funky, in places I know well (Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, Mongolia and Ireland). I love the high-low mixture in the flow of a day, planning for people who are keen on taking a tuk-tuk to the Michelin star dinner, taking an ancient Fiat Panda across France while staying at the George V—that is the stuff I dig. I have friends who converge once a year at the Genghis Khan Retreat to play polo, wear black tie and dine on traditional Mongolian BBQ Boodog with French wine, a meal not usually had with utensils and known to use most of the parts of a goat, meaning your black-tie kit will never be the same. That, to me, is rock n’ roll. It is a magic balance of activity and space when, at the end of it all, you can boil down your day to a few priorities that perfectly measure out the pace we were all meant to live by. Travel by foot, wheel, or hoof, meals at certain times to optimize digestion, a nap post-lunch, tea at four, drinks near sunset, and magic, music, fire and stories after nightfall.
A trip you’ve created that you feel represents you and your philosophy the best?
For the past few years, I have been setting up a series of trips for a group of well-traveled folks keen on being a part of the research process, a behind-the-curtain sort of trip. These are journalists, lawyers, filmmakers, fashion designers, a motley crew of misfits. The idea was simple: pick a place we have never been to but are inspired to go and we all jump into the research. Being aware of the origin of the inspiration is key, meaning there are a few stories and pillars that the entire trip is based off of. The last trip was Central Asia, specifically Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with a vision of ending the trip in Istanbul on the Bosporus sipping on drinks at the Four Seasons terrace like at the end of Ice Cold in Alex. I had spent years guiding and researching along the Chinese side of the Silk Road, so had a lot to pull from. We also were keen on meeting up with some of the key folks involved in a fascinating story about Igor Savitsky; in short, an avant-garde Muscovite who fled persecution with a generation of art in tow to make a palace in the desert dedicated to housing one of the largest collections of avant-garde art. There was the ancient Silk Road as a theme, the trade routes that first introduced one side of the peopled planet with the other. There was the “Great Game” of the late 1800s to the early 1900s, where spies were sent dressed as monks to Central Asia to spy on Russia or the British. Then there was the current Belt and Road Project that is the rebirth of the trade routes, paid for by China and currently reorganizing the infrastructure of Central Asia. These themes helped steer who we met and where we went—letting stories guide us rather than guidebooks. I worked with musicians, artists, politicians, textile manufacturers and journalists to get to the heart of the matter. We stayed in world-class hotels to pop-up yurts in the Karakum Desert sleeping next to the Gates of Hell, strange capital cities, and cold pints in the sun to end it. It was a complete joy. We sparked the interest of the Financial Times and were highlighted in their Life and Arts section.
The idea behind the trip is what really got me going. The transparency in how we go about setting up events and how we research and pick and choose how we move about a country. There is a fine balance of making sure we are put in the right time and the right place for lightning to strike and that is the skill I feel I have been honing for almost 20 years of travel, rather than flashing a ton of cash to eat at the feet of Michelangelo's David or to have a helicopter land you in the ruins of Choquequirao—experiences that take full heart and engagement in a place and a journey. Those are the ones I am most proud of.
Favorite trip you’ve planned?
A traveler contacted me with interest in heading back to Myanmar to search for places she remembered from her youth. She was born in what was then called Burma to a Shan mother and an English father when the British were there in the 1920s. Her father was a police officer who worked for George Orwell and was in charge of policing the waters off of Victoria Point, the southernmost tip of the country. Her father passed away in Victoria Point and shortly thereafter, the family left the country. She was 11 at the time. From there they went to India and then to England. She contacted me to help her find the places of her youth, to see if they were still there, and explore the new country, as well as the picture of it she still held in her mind.
After the call I started to search for information. I like the research part of trip planning and I dig deep. To me, a trip starts with that first lust to go, that first idea that pops in your head one day and tells you to buy a ticket—research is traveling in part. I found a manuscript that sounded somewhat similar to the story I heard from the woman. A book written in the early 1980s, an autobiographical account of a Burmese woman who had married a British police officer that worked with Orwell (the Orwellian connection is how I found it).
There are a lot of old British texts that have been re-published with interesting accounts of a couple of years spent living in an exotic land, but this story was different and particular and the similarity to this woman’s personal story struck me. So, I asked her if she knew of the book and the author. I told her the name and she laughed as it was written by her mother and secretly published without the family knowing. She knew her mother kept a diary but had no idea this book existed. So, of course, I bought the book and read it, and found an amazing tale and personality in the author’s voice, as well as learned about the life and birth of the now 80-year-old traveler calling in to find memories of her youth. It was the perfect blueprint for designing a trip—there were places in the book I knew still existed. For example, the spot where her mother and father were engaged to be married became a surprise picnic on the trip.
This trip wasn’t just an experience that began with a flight and ended with arriving back home, it was a trip that started with ideas and dreams and helping guide that into what the trip became is the magic to me, a ratio of spontaneity and organizing, which result in changing lives.
What is something you wished we all knew or were better at? How do we become better travelers, clients, citizens of the world?
The way we have looked at travel up until now has been defined as a certain limited time spent on the road periodically. We book flights, we fly off for 2 weeks, and come back and it is wrapped up in a finite time period. I think we have to think differently and engage differently with the places we travel in. Opening up the idea of what it means to travel can help give us tools to find out new points of view for the places we explore. A trip isn’t just when you start to move, it is when the wanderlust first hits the bloodstream. When you first realize you are interested in going to X, then the things you read, the conversations you have, the preparations you make, the people you follow on social media, the places you go, and how you are constantly redefining your relationship with that place...all of this is travel. Using the resources near you in the cities we all live in can really start the trip well before you check in for a flight. This is especially true if you live in an urban environment, if you are in New York, London, Toronto. There are slices of Saigon in New York that you can dig into months before you fly out and likewise when you return. You get close to those you are studying, you connect, and in doing so, develop a deeper empathy. You then take that empathy and, in the best situations and deliberate trip planning, reflect it back on the place through the trips you go on and the choices you make on the trip. The idea that the entirety of a culture is locked into geography is absurd and antiquated and to continue to operate like that hurts what we all ultimately love to do when we travel, which is to connect.
To connect with Tyler, email him on tyler@trufflepig.com.
Photo by Sophy Roberts
LOVE THIS!
Truly a gift! My friend and I stopped at Bell’s on our drive from Dallas to Carmel, CA. The egg salad and the pate were perfection!