From time to time we share a random video clip to fuel your travel dreams. Join us today as we visit the lowest point on earth — the fabled Dead Sea — where locals rely on the water’s minerals to keep their skin young. En route to the Dead Sea, Medjool dates are ripe for tasting in Jericho.
Watch my complete TV episode about Palestine online for free at on our website.
It’s always exciting to be standing at the departure gate of a new year, and when it comes to touring in Europe, I’m eagerly packed and ready to go. In fact, I’ve got one of my best-ever years of travel in the works — and it includes a little tour guiding.
For 25 years I personally led lots of Rick Steves Europe Tours, but for the last decade or so I’ve ridden along as a tour member instead. My big news for 2016: I’ll actually be leading a couple of tours. While we’re keeping the specific dates a secret, one will be a My Way tour and the other will be one of our Best of Europe tours. And I can hardly wait!
I was recently asked about my “top ten magic moments” in Europe. I thought I’d share them with my blog friends:
1. Hang out on the cliffs (literally) of the West Coast of Ireland — where they say, “Ahh, the next parish over is Boston.”
Dingle perches on the westernmost tip of Ireland — and Europe, for that matter.
2. Be all alone in the Pantheon early or late in the day, in the building that — more than any other — gives us a feeling for the magnificence of splendor of Rome at its zenith.
3. Play backgammon in a rough-and-tumble Istanbul suburb with handmade dice on a board with softer wood worn below the harder wood, while I’m surrounded by whiskered tea drinkers as curious about me as I am about them.
Playing backgammon with new friends in Turkey.
4. Sit outside the stout walls of quiet Dubrovnik in a rustic bar sipping a local beer while cruise ships sail into the sunset.
5. Be on St. Mark’s Square late in the evening, when the orchestra seems to be playing just for fun — and only the locals and hardcore romantics remain.
6. Stand atop the glass dome of the Reichstag in Berlin, survey Germany’s capital, and marvel at how far Europe has come both in rebuilding and in weaving their economies together so that a huge inter-European war is now inconceivable.
7. Canoe down the Dordogne River in France under imposing castles, working up an appetite for foie gras, fine cheese, and full-bodied red wine.
Canoeists get a dramatic view of the French village of Beynac from the Dordogne River.
8. Stand atop the Rock of Gibraltar looking out at Morocco and consider the strategic importance of a fort here — effectively bottling up the Mediterranean in the old days.
9. Go to a working-class neighborhood sauna in Helsinki (where people can’t afford their own private sauna) and sweat naked with blonde strangers.
10. Tight-roping for three hours on a ridge high in Switzerland’s Alps, with lakes on one side stretching all the way to Germany, and the ultimate mountain view on the other: the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau cutting like glass into the blue sky. The long, legato tones of an alphorn in the distance announce that the helicopter-stocked mountain hut is open, it’s just around the corner…and the coffee schnapps is on.
Find your own private ridge to hike in the Swiss Alps.
Do you have a favorite magic moment in Europe? I’d love to read about it here. Thanks.
Our weekly public radio program, “Travel with Rick Steves,” is aired on more than 300 stations around the USA and is available to anyone as a podcast. And, with the help of great guests and travelers like you calling in, we produce about 40 hours of travel radio a year. Lately, we’ve enjoyed conversations with such luminaries as American historian David McCullough, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, travel legend Paul Theroux, and even rock star astronaut Chris Hadfield.
It’s “talk radio,” we’re talking travel, and I’d love for share the conversation with you. We pre-record the programs in clumps and before each recording session, we invite those on our “Radio News” e-list to join the conversation. If a guest or topic is of interest and you’d like to be on the show as a caller, you simply submit a request with a question or comment on the topics we’re discussing. (We also stream the raw recording sessions for those who’d like to hear the show being taped.)
To be notified with an email about our next topics and recording dates and have a chance to actually be on the show, you simply need to join our radio email list. Just go to our radio page and scroll down until you see “Sign Up for Radio News” on the right side of the page. (We only use your email address to notify you about upcoming recording sessions – nothing else. That’s a promise.)
We’ll be hosting 100 of our best European tour guides in mid-January and recording interviews over five days on fascinating topics. To get in on the fun and help us out at the same time, please sign up on our radio list.
Happy travels!
Rick
From time to time we share a random video clip to fuel your travel dreams. Join us today as we visit Château de Vaux le Vicomte, which gets my vote for the most beautiful château in all of France. (Compared to Versailles, it’s more intimate, and comes with a fraction of the crowds.)
Watch the complete “Paris Side-Trips” TV episode online for free.