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Destination: Italy

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A Busy Day on a Rick Steves Tour

A good tour leader — especially on a Rick Steves tour — creates a learning atmosphere on the bus, laces together a good balance of sights and experiences, and makes sure there’s lots of fun along the way. In this montage of clips, I get a chance to talk about how the European Union funds ethnic regions (in this case, Ehrenberg Castle in Tirol, which spans Austria and Italy); we visit one of my favorite open-air folk museums (Ballenberg in Switzerland); we poke into an old farmhouse to ring some cowbells; and we rip down the mountain on a summer luge ride. All 26 of us enjoyed two trips each on the longest and most exciting luge course in Tirol (Biberwier, on the road between Innsbruck and Reutte).

(My tour assistant, Trish Feaster, produced this clip. She’s blogging about our tour at her website, The Travelphile.)

This is Day 58 of my 100 Days in Europe series. As I lead tours, research my guidebooks, and make new TV shows, I’m reporting on my experiences and lessons learned in Vienna, the Alps, the Low Countries, England, and beyond. Find more right here on my travel blog.

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The Best of What’s New in Europe

Europe is a work in progress. And a big part of my work is discovering what’s new. Here are a couple of my favorite new items in Europe. What’s your vote for the best new sight, museum, or experience in Europe?

Duomo museum

My favorite new sight is the entirely revamped Museum of the Cathedral (Museo del Duomo) in Florence. It recreates the dreamy, almost ethereal space between the cathedral’s west facade and the baptistery across the square. And all of the original statues and bronze panels are placed in their correct locations — and all safely out of the elements.

Paris ferris wheel

The best new amusement I found was the Paris Ferris wheel, spinning slowly next to the obelisk on Place de la Concorde at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées.

view from paris ferris wheel

And the view from the top gives a new angle on Europe’s grandest boulevard, crowned by the Arc de Triomph (with the business district of La Défense beyond).

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Eyewitness Report: The Media’s Painting a Distorted Picture of Europe

We travelers know that the media can make faraway places seem chaotic or unsafe. One of our lead tour guides, Sarah Murdoch, shares her take on things from a smart, solo-woman traveler’s perspective in a wonderfully insightful blog titled “Adventures with Sarah.” In her latest post, she analyzes media-shaped images with her on-the-ground experiences in Rome (Jubilee Year mob scenes), Athens (refugee concerns), Paris (security issues), and London (after the Brexit vote). Sarah’s take is candid, fascinating, and answers questions that many of us logically have…and that’s why I’m sharing it here. Enjoy!

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Top Eureka Moments

Even after decades of visits, Europe still surprises me. Here are a few of my favorite “aha!” moments from my last trip.

Couple

A couple out for a romantic evening proved that in a place as dreamy as Venice, a few €1 boxes of red wine and a shrink-wrapped portion of prosciutto are all you need for a memorable canalside dinner.

Rick Steves and Ibn Battuta

I was having a quiet lunch at my hotel in Romania when I found myself on the restaurant’s wallpaper. And I met Ibn Battuta, who, 700 years ago, was “the Rick Steves of his days, roaming the world to tell everyone what they were missing.”

Boot knife

At a new exhibit in Normandy, I found a knife just like the one I treasured as a kid — sheath and all — strapped to the leg of a paratrooper ready to jump behind German lines the night before D-Day.

Rick Steves and Andy Steves

photo: The Travelphile

Coming home to find my son’s first guidebook, “Andy Steves’ Europe: City-Hopping on a Budget,” on my desk. (You can get your own copy of City-Hopping on a Budget on my website.)

Table with prosciutto and cheese

I never thought I could have too much fine prosciutto and pecorino cheese in Tuscany. But when the gentleman pig farmer laid out a table like this for the fifth day in a row, he confessed, “What I really dream of is a nice filet of fish.” And after yet another meal of so much pork and cheese, I thought, “Hmmm…fish does sound nice.”

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Travel Bite: Beautifully Preserved Lucca, Italy

From time to time, we share a random video to fuel your travel dreams. In this clip from my TV episode about Tuscan side trips, I join a friend for a lazy pedal around the top of the Renaissance wall in Lucca, Italy.

The wide, fortified wall effectively keeps out both traffic and, it seems, the stress of the modern world. Within the wall, which now functions as a circular community park, visitors find a relaxed Old World ambience, elegant streets, and pristine piazzas.