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Month: April 2007

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Answers to Readers’ Questions, Part Two

Here are a few more answers to questions posted by readers of this blog:

Question: Have you thought about offering electronic versions of your books–perhaps as a value-added download from the site for those who purchase the paper copies?
Answer: My publisher (who’s very enthusiastic about these things) has produced a few prototype electronic versions of my books, and we are open to this. But I think the electronic guidebook needs to be cleverly designed beyond simply offering the same page layouts as the printed versions. I think the business model is yet to be developed.

Question: OK, Rick, we know how you pack, but how does your wife, Anne, pack? It would be nice to hear the female Steves version of packing light.
Answer: My wife travels with the same size bag I do (but the wheeled version). I’m traveling this week with a woman from my office (Heidi Sewell, a great Italian tour guide who speaks Italian so well locals think she’s from Bologna). Just today, as we transferred from Venice to Padua, I marveled at how mobile a good woman traveler can be. (I felt sexist to have doubted it.) Heidi (like all the women in my office…and at home) travels with a 9 by 22 by 14 inch wheeled bag. Whether going for two weeks or two months, you pack precisely the same.

Question: Do you always identify who you are when researching or do you go incognito?
Answer: I not only go incognito, I try to go stupid…as a gawky, tightwad, English-only tourist, in order to get a sense of how the clumsiest tourist will be received in a hotel or restaurant. Yesterday we dropped incognito into a recommended bar for a glass of wine and plate of fried vegetables — and were overcharged. That place will not be in the 2008 edition of my book. Most hotels and restaurants I recommend now know who I am. (I send many of them Christmas cards with my family photo each year — not to mention probably a third of their American business.) My best tool is talking to other people who have already eaten or slept there to learn if the recommendation is a good one. For restaurants, my standard operating procedure lately is to blitz known and unknown places from 8 to 10 p.m., and then drop into my favorite (which is often run by someone who by now is a friend) and just say, “Feed me — bring me a sampling of your most interesting dishes.” It’s always a great cap to a great day.

Question: Any interest on your part to relocate to Europe one day or buying property? Wouldn’t it be easier if you had a second home?
Answer: I once flirted with buying a little place in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy’s ultimate hill town. It was a dreamy little home perched on the edge of a grand canyon with several floors of Etruscan cellars below. With each visit (on successive tours…so every three weeks, all summer), I’d get the real-estate agent and fantasize about owning it. Then, thankfully, someone else bought it. I believe there’s also a great chalet for sale in Gimmelwald (my favorite Swiss alpine village) for around $250,000 — what a dream to have a place there! But I don’t want a single place in Europe. I sleep in about 60 different hotels in about 60 wonderful towns and villages all over Europe each year. (And I already have one cabin — in the Cascades — that I only use a couple times a year.)

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Answers to Readers’ Questions, Part One

While I generally don’t have time to respond individually to comments and questions posted on my blog, here are answers to a few questions I thought people might find interesting:

Question: Will you look into the Marche area or more of the “toe” and “heel” of the boot of Italy? Or any of the smaller islands off the coast?
Answer: Italy is my favorite country for many reasons. Most of those favorite aspects come from Italy’s rich heritage. And by “rich,” I mean money. Both during ancient Roman times and during the Renaissance, Italy’s extreme wealth gave it the wherewithal to fund marvelous culture. That money was in central and northern Italy — and that’s where that rich culture remains today. Southern Italy has a rustic culture. Part of its allure is that it’s relatively untouristed and much less expensive than the urban and touristic north. People love the south of Italy. (It’s one of our most popular tours.) But the goal of my guidebooks is to introduce travelers to what I think is the best first 30 days a country has to offer. And in Italy, the boot and the heel don’t make the cut. If I had 30 days, I wouldn’t go south of Naples and the Amalfi Coast. About islands: I don’t know much about the resort islands of the Mediterranean. My feeling is that the famous resort islands are often inundated with Europeans enjoying their fun in the sun. For that, I’ll take a winter trip to Mexico. The French, Italians, and Spaniards can keep their Mediterranean getaways–they have an impressive knack for enjoying extremely congested beaches.

Question: How long before the Italy updates are out? We leave October 31, 2007. Do you think printing will make my deadline so I can take the most up to date information?
Answer: Our 2008 editions will begin to appear by the end of this summer (mid-August). The first books will be Europe Through the Back Door, Best of Europe, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Italy–appearing in that order, each about a week after the last. All of our Italy books will probably be out by mid-September. The specific dates aren’t set yet, but keep an eye on our website for a specific list of arrival dates as soon as we know them.

Question: What’s a folding board that you mention (in your packing description)?
Answer: Eagle Creek makes a clever “Folder” the size of a folded shirt. It comes with a stiff vinyl board that you fold the shirt around. You stack your shirts, put the board on top, and wrap and fasten the Velcro flaps to make it a tight little package. With my TV work (both in Europe and going from PBS station to station) I travel with my backpack and, thanks to this board, still have reasonably well-pressed shirts.

Question: Do you carry a handheld GPS?
Answer: No. People rave about these. But I have never thought, “Boy, if only I had a GPS.” Part of the fun of being immersed in Europe is navigating. By being engaged, I learn and internalize the lay of the land. But then, for several years after owning a computer, I still insisted on writing out manuscripts on paper, committed to the notion that the paper was a fertile battleground upon which my ideas would be scratched and organized and pounded into a good order. And then, only when that all was in order, did I type the article or even a book into a computer. I may have been the last writer in America to cling to WordPerfect. So, it’s a fair bet that in a few years I’ll wonder how anyone ever traveled without the help of a handheld GPS.

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Robert De Niro’s Voice Has Died

Italians love their dogs. Strolling the polished limestone streets, marveling at the gorgeous buildings and people all around, you have to watch your step. Walking with my friend in Siena, I barely missed a dog mess. In a disgusted voice, my Sienese friend said, “Those Florentines are everywhere these days.”

National, regional, and civic pride has brought war and suffering for centuries. Today in Europe it survives, but only brings off-color jokes and fills soccer stadiums.

National pride can be abused. Of course, when a nation has a Hitler or a Mussolini, flag-waving spikes…and then takes a serious dive. (Actually, if flag-waving spikes in any country, wise citizens with an appreciation of history and an ability to see beyond their borders know to be concerned.) Understandably, in post-WWII Europe, Italians and Germans did less patriotic singing and flag-waving than their neighbors.

On a related note, post-WWII Italy had the strongest communist party in Western Europe. Locals tell me they were not really leftists as much as anti-rightists (after the catastrophic fascism of Il Duce). The result: a generation of bad entrepreneurs. Today, in Italy’s business world, I see the “generation next” filled with entrepreneurial creativity and energy. On this trip, I find Italy thriving with creative small businesses driven by new young management as never before. (The banks and government support this with fewer restrictions and easier and longer business loans — 30 years rather than 5 or 10, as in past years.)

You can draw some fun conclusions from movie-translating practices in different nations. Italians are notorious for dubbing just about all foreign movies, while the French are inclined to read subtitles when they watch a “foreign” (i.e., American) movie. Some say the French are more into the subtleties and art of the movie, while the Italians are just lazy and don’t want to read. Others say Italian dubbing itself is an art form. It’s true that the Italians actually have famous dubbers who lip synch so artfully you think Robert De Niro is actually speaking Italian. In fact, Robert De Niro insisted on the same Italian voice for his parts. He actually traveled to Italy to meet with and coach Amendola, the man with his Italian voice. And now, the big news in the Italian movie world is that the king of dubbing voices, Amendola (the voice of Dustin Hoffman, Sylvester Stallone, and Roberto De Niro), has passed away.

Enjoying the wonders of Italy this month, the movie star that comes to mind for me is Roberto Benigni. Like Benigni, I need no Amendola to declare (as I seem to do several times a day), “Life is good”–La vita è bella.

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People in the Trash…

In each hotel room, I crack open a rickety old desk drawer, where I stow business cards I pick up throughout the day in my research work. This gives me a “trash can” that the maid won’t take out. I strive to keep loose papers out of my writing world, but very often I need to retrieve something I tossed.

Rummaging through my trash, reviewing the discarded cards of two days’ worth of people met, reminds me of how travel here is like a gelato social.

I met John Mica, a congressman from Florida, while dodging a horse carriage under a Donatello statue. He called himself a “knuckle-dragging conservative on economic issues who believes in funding the arts.” He and his wife sneak over here with no fanfare (so he doesn’t have to mess with security or any protocol). He was enthusiastic about a new “open skies” initiative leading to more transatlantic flights…and some funky little trattorias he wanted me to check out for my guidebook. For some reason he reminded me of salt on fresh pineapple (one of my favorite things). Meeting a likable Republican (like meeting a Catholic priest who challenges my intellect) reminds me that there’s more than one way to skin an idea.

When Congressman Mica opened his wallet to give me his card, I saw he had the card of a man I had just met and whose card I also had: David Stempler, Esq., president of the Air Travelers Association. A crusty man (and an Esq.), the government listens to him on consumer affairs dealing with the air industry. I told Stempler and Mica I thought the clamor for an “air travelers’ bill of rights” was media-stoked over-reacting to a perfect storm of airline bad luck, and that I am mightily impressed with our airline industry even if they do lose a few bags and once in a snowy blue moon a few planes are stuck on the tarmac. We agreed that the worst thing for our airline industry (and for consumers who know what’s good for them) is to saddle airlines with needless regulations and to create a business environment where they’ll cancel flights out of needless timidity.

Other cards were reminders of other encounters. For example, there was “Dr. Patricia Cantilli, Medic veterinary homeopath,” a Romanian woman on an extended computer date with a friend who once ran my favorite hotel in Florence (La Scaletta, which I deleted this year after about 20 years in my guidebooks — bad new management). Free trade, globalization…the expanded EU spills into romance, too.

“Lora Gori, president Scuola del Cuoio” runs the leather school at the Church of Santa Croce. It was actually referred to as “Citta dei Raggusi” (“Boys’ Town” in Italian) when her leatherworking family established it in collaboration with Franciscan monks during the tough years after WWII to give orphaned boys a trade. Sra. Gori still welcomes tourists as her leather workers fill former monks’ dorms with fancy belts and purses (www.leatherschool.com).

Christoph Rehli, a conductor from Switzerland with Young Frankenstein hair, was in Florence preparing for a concert. He was eating alone in one of my favorite restaurants. We had pianos in common. I told him my piano was made in the same Black Forest village as the accordion of the Gypsy man who just left the restaurant (Hohner harmonicas and accordions, and Sauter pianos — all made in Spaichingen). I told him my dad imported fine German pianos. There were three Steinway brothers, so factories ended up in New York, Hamburg, and Braunschweig. (Dad imported the Grotrian-Steinweg from Braunschweig. Back then, CBS owned the New York Steinway, was threatened by the better German Steinway, and successfully sued requiring that the name be simply Grotrian in the USA.) Christoph said he had a Hamburg Steinway that was old but good. I guessed it was a “vintage” from around 1930. He said yes. (Knowing pianos like others know wine assures me that we can all be snobs in some realm. I am forever impressed by wine-lovers who know the good years — a topic which completely baffles me.) Maestro Rehli and I had a wonderful chemistry…the kind of person I know I could be great friends with, but I’ll never see again. (A sad reality a traveler gets callous to: the best travelers say the most goodbyes.)

And another card from someone who called herself “The Tuscan Concierge” was a reminder that countless Americans and Italian entrepreneurs are still capitalizing on the “Under the Tuscan Sun” fascination we have with this part of Italy (and would love to get into my guidebook). Ristorante Medioevo (that Buca I loved in Assisi) has one of those cards so artsy you have a tough time actually deriving the name of the establishment — a growing problem, it seems, in Italy. Thankfully, Web addresses generally list the name without the over-the-top font play. Jim Fox and Barbara Miller, an American expat couple living in Florence, pass out their tandem card to people they meet. Jim said when you travel with a personal card and hand it out liberally, Europeans take you more seriously. Good tip.

Among piles of other cards penciled up with notes for the next edition of my Florence guidebook was a very clever card by Dr. Stephen Kerr, “the tourist doctor” with a clinic 100 yards from the Uffizi, open two hours a day for drop-ins. He also makes €80 “house calls” to hotels and gives student discounts.

A card from the Istituto Oblate dell’Assunzione, a welcoming convent renting rooms and tranquility, actually has an email address on it. Finally convents are getting a little business sense. The spunky sister there — Theresa — remembered me from the early 1980s when I kept my tour groups (minibus loads only back then) at a convent near the Vatican on via Andrea Doria. I didn’t remember her…but I did remember kindly sisters letting me hang my wet laundry on the rooftop with all their linen.

This little nostalgic swing through my trash drawer reminds me that good travel connects people with people. Whether I’m leading a tour group, researching a guidebook, or producing a TV show, I know that connecting my traveling Americans with Europeans is what will carbonate the experience.

 

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Medici Fantasies Like You Can’t Imagine…

In Florence, I stay at Loggiato dei Serviti — a stately former convent, crisp with elegance and history. I consider it a splurge — but it’s far less costly than a night at the Sheraton, and it stokes Medici fantasies like you can’t imagine.

My bedroom looks out on a courtyard. The building across the way is the Accademia, housing an art school…and Michelangelo’s David. The courtyard in between is gravelly with broken columns and stones set up for students to carve. Like creative woodpeckers, all day long I hear the happy pecking and chirping of chisels gaining confidence, cutting through the stone. With this actually enjoyable soundtrack, I spent all yesterday here in my room pecking doggedly yet happily on my laptop.

Moving into my room, I got set up: Put the TV out of view. Ask for a desk and an extra lamp for writing. Pick up and stow all the clutter that comes with a hotel room so it’s just pristine, Old World Florence. There’s a creaky freestanding armoire (I open the huge door with its skeleton key). The heavy wood beam ceiling fifteen feet overhead evokes a day when monasteries had Pentagon-like budgets. My circa-1980 phone is ruby-red, and the receiver rattles like a maraca if I get animated while talking. The mini-fridge is just big enough for my liter box of pompelmo (grapefruit juice) to sneak in with all the overpriced drinks that don’t exist in my mind. The parquet floors have extremely slip-slidey little throw rugs. I think they’re called throw rugs for what would happen to me if I carelessly stepped on one.

My hotel is on a grand old square and faces the first Renaissance building — a hospital designed by Brunelleschi. Outside, an arcade shelters the local lowlife. Enjoying a warm slice of pizza bianco while leaning against a column, I ponder the scene. While these well-worn people littering the steps used to get me down, now I realize that for 500 years, vagabonds and street people who couldn’t afford a bedroom like I’m calling home for these six days in Florence could enjoy the architecture (or at least the shade). Since the days of Michelangelo, they have set up camp free under the loggia eave of my fancy front door.

Each midnight, I open the window and untie the big sash that lets the heavy-tasseled curtain tumble straight…like princess hair. At 6 a.m., the birds chirp. I get up, look at the sleepy courtyard with its unfinished statuary, and close the windows hoping to grab another hour’s sleep. But too often I pick up this laptop and start pecking and chirping away.