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The Real Meaning of Christmas

Community center in Managua

Dear traveling friends,

This mural reminds me how travel can help us be one with the world.

It can help us to see truths we’d never appreciate if we stayed home.

While, at first, these truths can sometimes rub us the wrong way,
once we get comfortable with them, we’re thankful for the broader perspective.

This humble yet poignant painting gracing a community center in Managua reminds me how people in places like Nicaragua and El Salvador can have an advantage when it comes to understanding the real meaning of Christmas.

It’s my Christmas wish that your travels give you a bounty of reasons to be thankful and celebrate all that is good in our world.

Rick Steves

P.S. How have your holiday travels enriched your understanding of the real meaning of Christmas? It would be a gift to hear your stories.

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Flashing Back on a Decade of Holiday Beer Labels

For me, one of the delights of working at Rick Steves’ Europe is the way my staff mixes fun, creativity, talent, and hard work. Each year we brew a holiday beer as a staff event, and our art department comes up with our own beer bottle label. Here’s a review of a decade of Rick Steves’ Europe-produced beers. I wish you could taste them, but at least you can enjoy the creative talent of our art department.

“Mona Drinks” is a reference to our beloved Mona Winks guidebook, which was filled with self-guided tours of Europe’s top museums (now out of print, but resurrected as the audio tours in our free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe™ App):

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“Mona’s Back,” from 2002, was a statement in the year after 9/11 that we were traveling on:

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The “Immaculate Consumption” was built on sketchy archaeological evidence that there may have been beer at the manger on that first Christmas:

 

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“Ale 70 Shows” refers to our anthology of TV shows that has grown every two years — from 36, to 43, to 56, to 70, and so on. We’re at “over 100” now, but at the time, “All 70 Shows” seemed like quite a pinnacle”:

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The “Eyjafjallajökull Steam Ale” from 2010 commemorated the Icelandic volcano commonly known as E-15 (for the number of letters that followed the first letter in its unpronounceable-to-most name):

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And 2013 saw the first appearance of Santa Steves:

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Anyway…here’s to a wonderful Christmas and happy holidays to all.

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Stayin’ Alive at the Rick Steves’ Europe 2014 Christmas Party

Last weekend, we packed nearly our entire staff onto a party boat and sailed the Puget Sound for our annual Christmas party. The views were breathtaking…and so was the dancing. I just have to say, this holiday season, I’m thankful that I have a staff here at Rick Steves’ Europe that I enjoy taking out for a peaceful little dinner cruise (or even something a bit more upbeat). We’re letting our hair down here in the off-season, and ready for the best year ever for touring in 2015. Merry Christmas!

 

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New content now available on Rick Steves Audio Europe app

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I have a lot of fun and rewarding projects on my desk – and one that I am particularly passionate about is our free app, “Rick Steves Audio Europe™.”

Why am I so in love with this thing? Because it’s packed with practical information (both self-guided audio tours of Europe’s greatest cities, galleries, and museums, and the very best of our radio interviews organized in country-specific playlists) that will make people’s trips more meaningful. It’s free. And tens of thousands of travelers are using it. Any time I drop into the Pantheon in Rome, St. Mark’s in Venice, or Versailles outside of Paris, I see travelers using our app. They’re having a great time immersed in the cultural wonder of the sight…and I am literally in their ear (my voice is anyway).

Each year we add to the material already available with Rick Steves Audio Europe, and last week we spliced in 26 new radio interviews.

Learn how to download the app (it’s free and easy) at www.ricksteves.com/audioeurope. It is such a treat for me to be able to interview such beautiful minds and inspirational travelers and an even bigger treat to be able to share these conversations (so beautifully edited by my radio production team) with you.

New radio interviews spliced into all the existing ones on the Rick Steves Audio Europe app include:

 

Britain (Beyond London): Isles of Britain, Scottish Hebrides, Scottish Secession: Before the Vote

Eastern Europe: Adriatic Coast, Albania, Prague’s Coronation Way

France (Beyond Paris): Discovery of France, French Riviera Highlights

France (Paris): French Impressionism, How Paris Became Paris, Paris Day Trips

General Europe: Class of 1500, European Education, European Media, Challenges for European Women

Germany/Austria: Swiss Mix, Walking Vienna

Greece/East Mediterranean: Greek Islands

Ireland: Faeries of Ireland

Italy: Italian Rails II, Italy – North vs. South II

Netherlands/Belgium: Amsterdam by Bike, Amsterdam Update

Portugal: Portugal’s Algarve

Spain: Live Like a Spaniard

Turkey: Cruising the Bosphorus

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Rick Steves Tour Guides’ Tour: Best of Turkey Is a Huge Hit

Each year, we host a tour guides’ summit for a week here in Seattle. About a hundred of our guides gather to train, brainstorm, and celebrate. Ideas — both great and crazy — are generated. Last year, our Turkish guides proposed my favorite idea: “Let’s host a Best of Turkey tour exclusively for the Rick Steves guides this winter!” I loved it. Our Turkish tour partners arranged the bus and hotels, and we subsidized it so it was really cheap for our guides. The first 25 guides to sign up were on. Needless to say, it sold out quickly.

Our 2014 Best of Turkey “Guides’ Tour” just wrapped up last week, and it was a huge success. But it was more than just fun. Our guides got to experience a country many of them didn’t know before (our Best of Turkey itinerary is one of my personal favorites), and they had the experience of actually being a tour member. Several are raving about the value of a professional guide actually following another guide in a new and at times overwhelming country for 13 days. We hope to make this an annual off-season vacation for our hardworking guides. Together in 2014, they successfully guided about 800 tours on 35 itineraries with 19,900 tour members. I think they deserve a chance to kick back and let someone else do the guiding for a change.

In these photos, you’ll see 25 Rick Steves’ guides (from 12 different countries) enjoying our Best of Turkey tour — riding balloons, sipping tea, getting a flaming shave (extremely close), sitting on a carpet in a mosque with an imam, exploring ancient sites, doing some sexy window shopping, trying out some woolen winter gear — all while following the expert guidance of Mert Taner.

If you are a Rick Steves tour alum, perhaps you can spot your own tour guide: Toni (France tours), Mark (England), Virginie (France), Tricia (Italy), Chris (France), Nina (Italy), Susanna (Spain), Daniela (Switzerland), Sarah (Italy), Jamie (Italy), Nina (Holland), Don (Italy), Andrea (Germany), Etelka (Czech Republic), Martin (France), Stephanie (Netherlands), Gillian (England), Virginia (Italy), Eszter (Estonia), Cary (Germany), Federico (Spain), Colin (Scotland), Nicole (Sweden), and Anastasia (Greece). Do you see your guide?

All of these guides — and about a hundred more — will converge on our offices next month as we kick off our 2015 season of tours. This annual event, a tour guide summit/tour alumni reunion/”Test Drive a Tour Guide” series of lectures, all happens the weekend of January 16-17. For all of the details, click here.

Guides selfie