Destination: Uncategorized

After a short but delightful break back in Seattle, I’m returning to Europe today. It’s my first time on Icelandair, connecting through Reykjavík. I find sharing my experiences and lessons learned on this blog — and reading your comments — curiously enjoyable. I’m sure I’ll be blogging furiously over the next sixty days of travel.

Here’s the plan: I’m flying to London today, sleeping in York, then hopping aboard one of those Rick Steves Best of Scotland bus tours (under a pseudonym, so the group doesn’t know I’ll be joining them). Then I’ll spend a week in Berlin and Prague before meeting my co-author, Steve Smith, in Alsace to work on our France guidebook. Steve and I then join producer Simon Griffith and the crew to film two new TV shows around the Loire (shows we’re nicknaming “Great 17th-Century Cribs”) before I meet up with Trish Feaster to be the first to use our brand-new Rick Steves’ Northern European Cruise Ports book (which will be overnighted to me, hot off the press). We’ll jump ship near the end of the cruise in St. Petersburg for a Russian adventure before flying home (with a two-day layover in Iceland).

These itineraries are a tricky balance of guidebook and bus tour research; scouting for upcoming TV scripts I plan to write and produce; actual TV production; and just flat-out enjoying the fun places my travel dreams are taking me. For this trip, along with producing two new TV shows in France, I’ll be working hard on our next new guidebook — Rick Steves’ Scotland. And I’ll be scouting upcoming TV shows in Scotland, Berlin, Prague, Alsace, and St. Petersburg. (This work is never-ending. You’re welcome to send me comments of sympathy.)

I hope you and your globetrotting friends can travel along with me this summer. Please share this link without anyone you think might enjoy it. You’ll next hear from me in Old York.

Ciao,

Rick

Each year, my art and marketing team put together a 96-page, full-color booklet that showcases our tour program. We could have the best tours in the world (actually, we do) and not sell very many without the help of that team’s amazing talent to help show them off. Their work is made easier by the wonderful photographs of Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli.

A fun chore for me is to survey the possible cover photos and help pick the best. Here you can see our favorite shots for the last three years (top row), and the six top suggested photos for the cover of our 2014 tour catalog. Which of the six photos makes you want to buy a tour?

We ended up choosing Porto — that’s the one with all the old boats that ship kegs of port wine down the Douro River to Portugal’s second city…and a real Back Door.

When I’m packing for a trip, I review the itinerary to see how mobile I’ll need to be. If I’m flying to meet a cruise ship, and then flying directly home from the last port, I can pack heavy. If I’m heading out on a TV shoot and will have a car for the entire trip, I’ll lighten up on the “packing light” stuff. But if I’m going to be changing cities every couple of days and using public transportation (trains and buses) rather than a car, I get serious about mobility and packing light.

Flying home from my two-month spring 2013 trip, I weighed my luggage at the airport check-in desk: 11 kilos (24 pounds). A week before that, I took an hour to photograph each category of my luggage on my hotel bed (to incorporate into my new and improved travel skills lecture).

I’ll share all the details in a later post, (but for now, you can see our “his and hers” packing lists at- Pack Smart and Travel Light by Rick Steves). I will say there are two kinds of people you meet on the road in Europe: those who pack light, and those who wish they’d packed light. I’ve got it down and I love it. What’s your best tip for packing light?

I live out of these two bags for two months at a stretch: My Convertible Carry-On (9″ by 21″ by 14″, $99.99). I helped design this bag…and I love it. And, for running around on the street, I use our cute little Civita Day Pack ($24.99).

People ask me, “Exactly what do you pack for one of your two-month trips?” They insist on every detail. To answer that question, I spread absolutely everything out on my bed on the south coast of Portugal. There I was…naked with my camera. And this is it. For a third of my adult life (four months a year), this is my entire material world.