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Destination: England

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Enjoy a Free Trip by Bundling Travel Memories

Every few days, it seems, the editor of our Web newsletters gives me a general theme and asks me to write a vivid travel nugget. It’s one of my favorite tasks: just sitting quietly in front of my computer and meditating on a particular place. In fact, it occurs to me that having a memory bank of rich travel experiences is a wonderful blessing. Just the other day, I revisited London:

If I flew to London tomorrow, I’d eat dinner with a man in a fisherman’s apron who knows as many words for white fish as Eskimos have for ice. I’d learn of the wonders of scotch with local experts at a fancy mahogany bar under the chandeliers of a luxurious former bank lobby. I’d join the crush of commuters on the ramshackle Tube as they read their trashy daily newspapers. I’d walk the Jubilee Promenade along the Thames under the towering icons of a new skyline and past quirky bits of Dickens’ London ‘ half-timbered stagecoach inns, operating theaters where they sopped up the blood with hay, and a hospital for psychiatric inmates in a neighborhood called Bedlam. And I’d while away my afternoons in Europe’s greatest museums ‘ free and always tickling my sightseeing fancy with new exhibits. Between each stroll and museum visit, I’d join chatty locals again to feel the pulse of today’s London behind the etched windows of venerable watering holes where candles have spilled and beers have sloshed on the same tables for literally centuries. Just writing this makes me want to fling around my winter scarf and head for London town.

If you haven’t tried this, you might enjoy it. Spend a few meditative moments bundling travel memories.

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Random Scraps

I’m back home now after a great travel season. On the road for four months of the last five, I marvel at the experiences I enjoyed and am thankful for the work I was able to accomplish. I did my share to update our various guidebooks (with work in Italy, Hungary, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Spain, and England) and produced the last three shows of our new series (Basque, North Spain, Helsinki/Tallinn), which debuts nationally next month.

Settling back into my office, I look ahead at an exhilarating year with my staff, designing our new content into usable material to help Americans travel smarter than ever.

I have a few random scraps in my blog notes file that must get their day in the sun:

In Vienna, if you die in the hospital you are automatically an organ donor. It’s like a wrecking yard of human bodies.

In Conwy in North Wales, the fisherman’s harbor was fixed up by EU money, but EU regulations require that fish must be transported in refrigerated trucks. Those trucks couldn’t fit through the gate to the new harbor, so they set up shop in the next town. Now Conwy has a fine fisherman’s harbor…with no fishermen.

Windsor, which is just under the landing path of planes coming into London’s Heathrow Airport, is a delightful town at night. It has inexpensive B&Bs (compared to London prices), a wonderful pedestrian zone along the Thames River and in the shadow of the hulking Windsor Castle, and an enticing array of small restaurants. Windsor gave me a peaceful and charming last night in England before flying out.

I am a sucker for old, historic, black-and-white photos. Many small and charming towns have no museums or organized way to let people know what they were like a century ago. But a few hotel lobbies, pubs, and cafés collect and display old photos, serving as a small history gallery for visitors. While it may sound weird, I find this is a plus when I consider recommending a place.

If this offends you, so will Blackpool.
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Blackpool daze.
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Backstage with Christopher, aka “Hope.”
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For silly and personal reasons (which I won’t share), I included Blackpool in Europe’s Top 20 Destinations in the special edition Smithsonian magazine we recently produced with the wonderful people on that staff. Visiting Blackpool last month, I was hoping it would charm me in the gut-bomb, white-trash way only Blackpool can. But the place depressed me. Two men greeted me by showing me their new tattoos that still made their butt cheeks all red. And it went downhill from there.

I desperately needed a couple of good B&Bs to recommend in my Blackpool chapter. I found a great one, but the woman who runs it was furious at me for my industrial espionage methods of research. (I drop in and say I need a room. They show me a couple as if I’m a prospective customer. Then, once I’ve seen how they treat travelers without knowing who I am, I tell them I don’t really need a room and that I’m researching for a guidebook.) She just stopped talking with me, so I couldn’t complete my research interview to get the information on the hotel I needed to write up a new listing. It was strange to be essentially thrown out of a hotel that I’ll still write up and recommend and send lots of business to in the coming year via my guidebook.

Blackpool is a study in people watching. For a long time I observed a woman, in a carnival-like trance, digging dreamily into her piggy bank, dropping in coin after coin in hopes of winning a tiny teddy bear.

The people of Blackpool are so impressed by the goofy tableaux that line their main drag (big, garish, cartoon-like installations that are strewn with little electric lights). I can’t imagine that they were impressive, even back in the 1960s when they were set up. But then I went to the Funny Girls drag show, had a wonderful time, met one of the performers — a gorgeous Filipino named Christopher — who “absolutely loves my show.” And I remembered what Blackpool was all about: unbridled, unpretentious, lowbrow fun.

As I say in my guidebook, the Cumbrian Lake District in North England is beautiful, but its beauty is even more striking when coming from crass Blackpool. Keswick is my slam-dunk favorite home base for exploring the Lake District. Intending to freshen up my hotel and B&B listings, I spent a morning visiting new places. I toured a great guesthouse, thinking I was incognito. When I told Gillian (who ran the place) who I was, she said, “You’re not going to insult my carpet, are you?” Startled and confused, I asked what brought on that random comment. She said that her friend was in my book, and I described her place as “good in spite of the tired, kitschy carpet,” and she considered that insulting. It was funny to me because I didn’t even think she knew who I was, much less how I described the carpet in a competing B&B.

Now that I’m home, people ask where I’m heading next. I have no idea. While I’ve yet to give it a thought, I know I’ll spend next April, May, July, and August in Europe. But right now, I do know that until then, I’ll be home. I’ll be enjoying the challenges and rewards of my work and becoming something more than a temporary local — with gusto.

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A Sweaty Saint, a Sommelier, and Marmite

Last week, sitting down to a traditional fried breakfast in an early-19th-century steel master’s mansion in England’s Ironbridge Gorge (birthplace of the Industrial Revolution), I reviewed ways people had spiced up and given meaning to my travels in the past month.

Collin, who ran the B&B I was enjoying, topped up my coffee and showed me a photo of an industrial wasteland with his stately brick home standing like some weary war survivor in its midst. Today, his delightful house stands in a lush river valley welcoming guests like pilgrims to the place where iron was first produced in the modern way. As his wife, Sara, brought my toast on a rack, I asked about the marmite. She explained to me what the beef-yeast spread was, and that “even the adverts admit you either love it or hate it.”

A few days before that in Paris, under dangling lamps and a heavy subterranean stone vault a block from the Louvre, I spent a tasty and fascinating two hours with Olivier, a passionate young sommelier. He makes his living explaining the fine points of French wine to travelers. Between the pouring and sipping, he shared the basics with random insights: “Riesling works well both in the Alsace and in Russia. A French Alsatian vintner was offered big money to make wine in Russia. He refused, saying, ‘Here, I have the privilege of being from somewhere.'”

A few days before that, in Finland, a man sat naked next to me beating himself with birch twigs while explaining the importance of opening the pores, stimulating circulation, letting out toxins, and relaxing in a place “where there are no bosses and all are equal.”

A week before that, I met Marianne from Berlin, who’d been hiking alone across Spain on the ancient pilgrims’ Way of Saint James. With her floppy backpack dangling carelessly from her tiny frame and backlit goldilocks, she talked with a pilgrim’s philosophy as if singing children’s rhymes. She spoke as if she were a real saint come to earth. Talking with her, I felt like I had just entered a Botticelli painting.

And, packing up after that Ironbridge Gorge breakfast, I was heading west…knowing that, in a couple of hours, I’d cross another border, where I just knew someone would tell me why in heaven they speak Welsh.

If there’s one thing that keeps me enthusiastic about traveling in Europe and teaching European travel, it’s the beauty of connecting people with people. Maybe it sounds trite. But that fact can’t be over-emphasized. If you’re not connecting with people in your travels, you’re missing out.

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Travel Tip: Take a Hike

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I just spent 10 days in a car exploring Britain. I forgot to note the mileage, but I started in London, scoured the Cotswolds, toured North Wales, and then drove up north to the Windermere Lake District (near Keswick), before returning to London. Total cost for diesel: £120 (about $185).

For the first time, I really took time to hike in the Cotswolds and the Lake District. And when I think back on the highlights of the last 10 days, those hikes were it. Nothing too demanding — just hiking through farmland from Stow-on-the-Wold through the Slaughters to Bourton-on-the-Water and back in the Cotswolds; and up along Catbells, high above the lake called Derwentwater in the Lake District.

The point: I can’t imagine a better way to spend three hours in a day. Every day has three hours to spare. What else is so important between 4 o’clock and dinnertime? With these walks, I take home vivid memories.

In the Cotswolds: farms in action viewed from behind, ducks rudely butt-up in millponds, rabbits popping up in fields like some video game challenge, ancient wind-sculpted trees, wet and slippery kissing gates, and slender slate church spires marking distant villages where a hot cuppa tea awaits.

In the Lake District, I struggled up and over Catbells — a ridge walk I’ve recommended for years (and felt guilty having never actually hiked). The weather almost kept me in. But I was glad I ventured out — the wind “blowing the cobwebs out” (as my B&B host warned) once atop Catbells ridge, the comedic baa-ing of sheep, being the stick figure on the ridge for those observing from distant farms or boats on the lake…as others have always been the stick figures for me.

And, oh, the joy of a pub after a good hike. Studying the light on ruddy faces while sipping the local brew in a pub has always been part of the magic of travel in Britain. When your face is weather-stung and your legs ache happily with accomplishment, the pub ambience sparkles even better.

About the weather: In Britain, you don’t wait for the weather to get good. Blustery weather is part of the scene. Consider it a blessing. The majority of “bad weather” comes with broken spells of brightness. Don’t get greedy — you wish for and are thankful for brightness, not sunshine. As they say here, there’s no bad weather…just inappropriate clothing. And if you’re in a hiking area and your clothing is inappropriate, your B&B host can likely loan you a heavy coat (along with the best local map).

Hiking along the ridge, with the weather — like a dark army — storming overhead, the wind buffeting in my ears, my camera bulging but dry under my coat, and a commanding 360-degree lakes view…makes me want to turn cartwheels.

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Visit Blackpool and Las Vegas to Put the P in "Pristine"

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Blackpool, England.

I was in Las Vegas recently. While immersed in the fun with people from all walks of life, I couldn’t stop thinking about England’s Blackpool. Both resorts provide their country a place where a strata of society can get down to the basic mission of life — mating — and then offer an affordable escape for that same gang to enjoy an invigorating break from a life of meaningless work.

Kitsch, gaudy hotels, leggy temptations, and lots of lights. Blackpool extends its season into the winter with its Illuminations festival. Vegas is bright as day all night. Strolling each resort, you mingle with people in love, families awestruck at dancing water shows, and gangs of friends letting loose. You also see lost souls, the consequences of a lifetime of bad diet, people who can’t afford limos in limos, and lots of booze. Gambling offers even perennial losers a chance to win. Blackpool, like Vegas, tried to become a family destination. But apparently adult distractions are more profitable. So, Vegas sidewalks are littered with playing-card-sized call-girl ads.

Las Vegas and Blackpool each have their own Eiffel Tower (where you can “see Paris” without really leaving home) and a busy schedule of dazzling shows that keep big stars big long after their general sales potential has ebbed. Blackpool employs the British equivalents of Cher, Barry Manilow, and Donnie and Marie — who are all still in their prime on The Strip. (I was marveling at giant billboards of Marie Osmond — several stories tall. Her big smile was everywhere. Then I noticed rice or something clogging the little triangles between her whitened teeth.)

In Vegas, people seriously compare the buffets. (For $24.95, you can eat as much as you want for 24 hours. The shrimp is great at the Mirage.) And in Blackpool, people talk about fish-and-chips as if it’s high cuisine. “Hen parties” roam, the bride wearing her veil and slowly sucking her way through a crude lollipop. Both Blackpool and Vegas make your next stop either more dreary…or more pristine.