Europe’s Best Neighborhoods: Where Should I Stay in ___?

You’re heading to Europe. You’ve chosen your destinations. And now you’re starting to daydream about your chance to be a temporary Londoner, a temporary Parisian, or a temporary Roman. The next question: Where should you stay?

As the 2023 travel season winds down, early birds are already starting to make plans for 2024. Most people get serious about this in January or so. But if you want to get a jump on the “competition” — and have your pick of places to stay — it’s smart to get started now. (And it’s a fun, constructive way to distract yourself as the days get shorter and colder.)

I have some friends who are dong just that: dreaming of a trip with their two teenagers next June in Rome and Athens. They asked me where I’d suggest staying in those great cities. And I thought to myself: That’s an excellent question! But first, I need a little more information: What kind of neighborhood are you looking for?

Inspired by that question, I’ve brainstormed my suggested home-base neighborhoods for 10 of Europe’s most popular cities. This intel is hard-earned, from years of scouring these cities for accommodations to recommend in our Rick Steves guidebooks.

Those lists are below. For each city, I’ve broken my choices down into three categories:

Central and Touristy. This is where you’d stay to have the top sightseeing right outside your door. However, that also means these neighborhoods are touristy, often a bit tacky, very expensive, crowded, and not particularly “authentic” or “local-feeling.” But sometimes having everything close at hand is worth making those sacrifices, especially on a quick, targeted trip.

Hip and Foodie. Every city worth its salt has an edgy, “emerging” restaurant and nightlife zone. These can be either central or more remote; either way, they’re typically less polished and more characteristic, and they tend to skew more youthful. If you’re in town primarily to check out all the “destination” foodie restaurants, rather than to sightsee until you drop, and if you’d like to settle in to the local version of Williamsburg, Los Feliz, or Wicker Park…then these neighborhoods are for you. (If you don’t know what those names mean, then these neighborhoods are probably not for you.)

Charming and Residential. If you don’t mind commuting to the main sightseeing and trendiest eateries, it can be worthwhile to stay a little farther from the city center. More sedate and charming than the central districts, these neighborhoods feel “older-local” as opposed to “younger-local.” Because they’re less central and less touristy, lodgings are often more affordable (though certain high-end suburbs can be surprisingly pricey). If the “Hip and Foodie” places are for hipsters, then the “Charming and Residential” places are for yuppies and retirees. Just be prepared for a longish metro, bus, or tram ride to achieve most of your bucket list.

Use the suggestions below as a starting point when searching for accommodations — whether hotels, B&Bs, or short-term apartment rentals (like Airbnb). Many room-booking search engines allow you to enter specific neighborhoods to narrow down your options, or you can search via the map. Read reviews carefully, within these areas, to make sure the lodgings you’re considering match your expectations. And here’s a pro tip: Before booking, go for a little “virtual stroll” of the surrounding area on Google Maps Street View to make sure it looks like a place you’d like to settle in.

London

Touristy/Central: Soho and Covent Garden can’t be beat for access to many of the top sights, the West End theater scene, and some of London’s best restaurants to boot.

Hip/Foodie: The East End, specifically Shoreditch and nearby, is where hipsters feel at home, with exuberant street art and many of the city’s most interesting restaurants. (Many top London restaurants began with a humble location in Shoreditch before opening a fancy one in Soho.)

Charming/Residential: Try neighborhoods just to the west, surrounding Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (South Kensington, Notting Hill, Earl’s Court); or to the north, near the British Museum (Marylebone, Fitzrovia). In this vast city, there are countless other choices, depending on how far out you’re willing to travel; Dulwich, to the south, and Ted Lasso’s Richmond, to the west, are each a 30-minute commuter train ride out of the center.

Paris

Touristy/Central: It’s hard to resist staying near the Eiffel Tower (ideally with a view from your window); either there, or in the Latin Quarter (near the Île de la Cité/Notre-Dame and Île St. Louis) puts you very close to the sights…and the crowds.

Hip/Foodie: For something that’s still quite central, but more funky, consider the Marais, or some of the neighborhoods just beyond it: Try Oberkampf and Canal-St-Martin, just to the north, and the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, just beyond Bastille to the east. The famous Montmartre is a strange combination of obnoxiously touristy and achingly bohemian…just as it was a century ago.

Charming/Residential: It’s hard to resist Rue Cler. This quintessentially Parisian, very central market street is that strange “unicorn” of neighborhoods that ticks only the best bits of both the “Touristy/Central” and “Charming/Residential” boxes. Another good option, slightly less characteristic but still handy, is Luxembourg Gardens.

Rome

Touristy/Central: It’s a thrill to stay as close to the Pantheon as possible, putting you right in the magical and romantic heart of Rome. For fewer tourists, look in the sleepier, more appealing streets that run from Piazza Navona west, toward the river and Vatican City.

Hip/Foodie: I just love the Monti district, tucked in narrow residential lanes basically across the street from the Roman Forum. Testaccio, farther out, surrounds Rome’s most engaging market hall and offers close proximity to restaurants filled with foodies who’ve done their homework.

Charming/Residential: Trastevere, which could arguably fit in any of these categories, is extremely atmospheric, slightly less touristy than the most central parts of Rome, and still within a long but very engaging walk to many of the top sights. The small, quiet zone just behind the Colosseum (to the east) feels a world apart from the touristy chaos.

Berlin

Touristy/Central: The city’s spine, Unter den Linden, has several big hotels but lacks personality. That’s why I enjoy the area around Hackescher Markt, just north of Museum Island, which has a little more character and enjoys about as convenient a location as you’ll find in this sprawling city.

Hip/Foodie: Not only the best neighborhood in Berlin, but one of my favorite hipster neighborhoods anywhere, Prenzlauer Berg has oodles of funky Berlin character, outstanding restaurants, a true neighborhood feel, and easy transportation connections around the city. For a deeper dive, consider Neuköln, Kreuzberg, or any number of other cool Kieze (neighborhoods) that Berlin specializes in.

Charming/Residential: The former West Berlin (now called City West) was once a Time Square-like “city center” hub; now it’s a sleepy, sedate, upscale, and charming suburb with relatively easy connections to the big sights. Savignyplatz is the centerpiece of this area, and the surrounding Charlottenburg district has a similar feel.

Athens

Touristy/Central: The Plaka, tucked at the base of the Acropolis (between the Monastiraki transit hub and the busy Syntagma Square), is super-central and super-touristy.

Hip/Foodie: Just across the street from Monastiraki, Pysrri is funky, youthful, and foodie, with an appreciation for wild street art and delicious street food, and close proximity to the thriving Central Market without being too far from the central sightseeing zone.

Charming/Residential: The sleepier streets of Makrigianni and Koukaki, on the “far side” of the Acropolis (to the south), make for a comfortable and relatively mellow home base.

Amsterdam

Touristy/Central: If you’d like to have very easy access to the sights (and to endless tulips-and-wooden-shoes souvenir shops), stay somewhere along Damrak or in the nearby streets of the Red Light District.

Hip/Foodie: The Jordaan, a short stroll along postcard canals west of the central spine, is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Europe, period. It’s an ideal combination of two categories: Both hip and residential, charming and foodie, it’s a clear winner.

Charming/Residential: If looking beyond the Jordaan, the quiet streets of Southwest Amsterdam, around Museumsplein, tick this box — though the proximity to the Rijks and Van Gogh museums can make it feel quite touristy in places.

Budapest

Touristy/Central: Pest’s Town Center (District V), with the Váci Utca pedestrian drag as its spine, is as central and as touristy as you can get. I prefer the area around the Opera House, along the most interesting stretch of Andrássy Út — just a little farther out, but very well-served by public transit, chockablock with great restaurants, and very close to the Seventh District fun (see next).

Hip/Foodie: The Seventh District, which overlaps with the Jewish Quarter just across the Small Boulevard from Pest’s Town Center, is one of Europe’s most engaging hipster neighborhoods. It comes with many of the city’s best restaurants (from street food to Michelin-starred) and the fun and fascinating “ruin pub” scene.

Charming/Residential: Buda, across the river from the modern city center, is sleepier, greener, and more sedate. It takes longer to reach much of Pest…but the views across the river are worth the commute. To stay on the Pest side, consider the streets flanking Andrássy Út once you get beyond the Oktagon, in the diplomatic quarter that heads out toward City Park.

Dublin

Touristy/Central: Look no farther than Temple Bar and the nearby streets close to Trinity College, on the south bank of the River Liffey. (As a light sleeper, I’ll suggest checking reviews carefully for noise complaints if sleeping anywhere near Temple Bar.)

Hip/Foodie: Earlier this year, I discovered the charming yet hip “village in the city” of Stoneybatter, tucked away beyond Smithfield Square to the northwest. While a bit farther from the center, it has some of the city’s hippest restaurants (especially for brunch) and an “I could live here” vibe.

Charming/Residential: South of St. Stephen’s Green, you encounter fewer tourists and a more local feel. I particularly enjoy the area along the southern canal belt; if you’d like a hipper stretch of this area, try to get close to happening Camden Street and the Portobello area.

Barcelona

Touristy/Central: There’s a good reason many tourists enjoy staying in the city center: near Plaça de Catalunya, in the Barri Gòtic, and along the Ramblas. This is Barcelona at its most vivid, touristy, crowded, chaotic, and fun.

Hip/Foodie: To escape some of the crowds of the Old City, head to El Born — an easy walk just east of the Barri Gòtic. This area, with the Picasso Museum and Santa Caterina Market, has a more bohemian feel, including great restaurants.

Charming/Residential: The carefully planned Eixample district, which surrounds the Old City on all sides, has an ritzy “uptown” vibe. This is the place to stay if you’d like to pretend you’re a Catalan urbanite for a few days. Or consider the tight, old-school Barceloneta fishermen’s quarter near the water.

Istanbul

Touristy/Central: For such a sprawling city, Istanbul has as surprisingly compact sightseeing core: Sultanahmet, loaded with hotels for tourists who want proximity to the great sights; just downhill, Sirkeci is similar.

Hip/Foodie: Kadıköy, across the Bosphorus on the Asian side, is both hip and residential. Back on the European side, consider Beşiktaş, along the Golden Horn below the New District.

Charming/Residential: The New District, across the Golden Horn from the old city center, is still quite urban and intense in places. But you’ll also find some pleasant back streets where you can settle in to a local neighborhood.

So…what did I miss? Any favorites to add? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the Comments.


I’ve gotten to know all these great European cities through updating our Rick Steves guidebooks — where you’ll find out a lot more about all of these places, including extensive lists of our handpicked hotels and B&Bs in each area.

The Charm-to-Tourists Ratio (CTR)

Recently, I made it back to my favorite spot in Norway: the tiny, fjordside, huggable village of Solvorn, perched between burly gray cliffs and the shore of the Lustrafjord.

One evening, I sat on a bench out at the little pier — where a pint-sized ferry chugs across the fjord once and hour to the oldest stave church in Norway — and found myself simply basking in fjordland splendor. When I’m working on guidebooks, I normally don’t have much time for “basking.” (And even in this moment, I had my laptop on my knees, furiously typing up a new “visual spin-tour” of this town for the next edition.) But a place like Solvorn stops even the busiest traveler in their tracks.

Looking left, I visually traced the shoreline past a diving tower at the public beach, then out along a rocky promontory, where a series of yellow and red boat sheds huddled at the base of the cliff.

Looking right, I panned over the rooftops of the tiny, shiplap town center — which boomed here in 1860, when a road tethered it to the fertile farming uplands just behind me, and regular steamboat service commenced to Bergen. More boat sheds sat out along — and, in many cases, over — the shoreline, and behind that, a gravel path led between yet more sheds and pristine white wooden homes, each one pretty as a postcard.

And immediately behind me sat Norway’s oldest continuously operated hotel, the Walaker Hotel (now in the hands of the ninth generation). With its yellow and red wooden buildings, giant fjordside garden, and generous porches with comfy chairs, the Walaker may be the best place in Norway to simply relax.

On the distant horizon, a very small cruise ship slowly trundled past. And I realized with a start it was the first one I’d seen in a couple of days. I had just driven in from the Geirangerfjord, whose main town is about the same size as Solvorn — roughly 250 people. But Geiranger, unlike Solvorn, plays host to one or two gigantic cruise ships nearly every day through the summer — each one injecting more than ten times that many tourists into what was, until that moment, a sleepy little community.

When I quizzed the hotel’s receptionist about lunch options, she was almost apologetic about Solvorn’s near-complete lack of choices: For lunch, I’d have to drive 20 minutes to a bigger town. But she needn’t worry — Solvorn’s sleepiness is exactly what causes travelers like me to fall in love with it.

Yes, cruise ships haven’t discovered Solvorn; and in the 1950s, when the automobile became the dominant mode of transportation, the main highway 55 also bypassed this little burg. (It runs just inland from here, up a very twisty mini-mountain pass road.) As is often the case, becoming a forgotten “backwater” from a transportation point of view isn’t ideal for a fledgling local economy…but in the long run, it’s ideal for creating a wonderful travel destination.

Panning around and marveling yet again at the miracle of modern sightseeing that is Solvorn, I got to thinking about other special places that give me this same feeling. Lucca, Italy. Salema, Portugal. Toruń, Poland. Sarlat, France. Gimmelwald, Switzerland. Hydra, Greece. Delft, the Netherlands. Ljubljana, Slovenia. Modena, Italy. Collioure, France. Erfurt, Germany. Salamanca, Spain.

Some of these are little places, like Solvorn; other are big cities. And yet, they all have an intangible specialness. They’re the places I find myself dreaming about, all winter long, after the hustle and bustle of a year’s travel fades into memory.

So I started to wonder: Why? What’s so special about these places? And that’s when I came up with a very arbitrary, but telling, metric: the Charm-to-Tourists Ratio (CTR).

In essence, these special places are far less crowded than their ample charms merit. There’s lots of ways of talking about this: For decades, Rick called them “Back Doors.” Each December, I brainstorm my list of “Discoveries” — suggestions for underappreciated gems to explore in the coming year. (You can see my 2023 list here.) You could call these places “untouristy” — but no, that’s not quite right, because they do have some tourism…just not too much.

The Charm-to-Tourists Ratio is, admittedly, a subjective, intuitive, and completely arbitrary metric — and I’m as far as it gets from a data scientist. But just for grins, let’s unpack CTR and see what it might tell us:

First, the “charm.” This concept, so vague as to be a lazy cliche, actually does mean something specific, I think. To me, “charm” means an intangibly authentic European quality. It’s unique and not easy to come by, and it can’t be manufactured or faked (much as Epcot tries). Red-and-white Norwegian boat sheds on long piers over dreamy fjords: charm. Picturesque Italian hill towns, perched at the top of a chunk of rock, with a labyrinth of homes clustered around a grand piazza: charm. Higgledy-piggledy half-timbered houses: charm.

Next up: the “tourists.” Here again, this gets tricky to define, because of course all of these places have some measure of tourism. Some of the high-CTR places are actually quite crowded with tourists — but they’re domestic tourists…Norwegians or Italians or Poles who’ve discovered this wonderful little time capsule of their own past.

So perhaps it’s helpful to lean on another cliché: that old distinction between “travelers” and “tourists.” Basically, a “tourist” is casual and quick — less curious, less thoughtful, less considerate. More interested in collecting selfies and souvenirs than in learning and connecting.

Mass tourism — especially, say, cruise ships — tend to attract fewer travelers and more tourists; consequently, places with lots of cruise ships and/or big-bus tours tend to have a lower CTR.

A traveler, meanwhile, lingers and learns. (If I could sum up the ethos of our Rick Steves Tours in a nutshell, it might be simply that we are using a mode favored by “tourists” — bus tours — but approaching the experience as travelers.)

So, then: The Charm-to-Tourists Ratio takes the overall charm of a place, then divides it by the number of tourists. And here’s where you get into some interesting case studies.

A high-CTR place is one like Solvorn or Lucca or Toruń: It hits the sweet spot of being extremely charming, and relatively untouristy. On paper, Solvorn should be the most overrun town in Norway. Instead, thanks to the limited accommodations options (one expensive hotel, one guesthouse with shared bathrooms, and one youth hostel) — and the fact that, by fluke of fate, it somehow hasn’t broken through into the “bucket list” of the 21st-century traveler. It’s still sleepy…almost mysteriously so.

Lucca, which is off-the-charts-high on CTR, is perhaps Tuscany’s most delightful small city. Astonishingly, it’s just a half-hour away from the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the mobbed beaches and trails of the Cinque Terre. On a recent visit, it occurred to me that those super-popular destinations so close by act as a distraction…pulling away tourists who might otherwise discover Lucca. It’s like putting out a little dab of honey at your picnic to attract the ants, so you can focus on the good stuff.

High-CTR places aren’t always small towns; even big cities can score admirably on this measure. Ljubljana, one of my favorite places in earth, is a national capital and a city of about a quarter-million people. It’s extraordinarily charming, especially for a big city. But, on a per-capita basis, it has relatively little tourism. Here again, most whistle-stop tourists in Slovenia head for Lake Bled, which is beautiful…but, increasingly, very crowded, with a CTR that drops lower with each passing year. I suspect Lake Bled is distracting lots of tourists away from Ljubljana…leaving it to us travelers.

In northern Poland, I love both the red-brick town of Toruń and the bustling Hanseatic port city of Gdańsk. Both are extremely charming. But Toruń is even just a bit more charming, and even less touristy…which, per the CTR metric, ranks it high on my list of favorite places in Europe.

A low-CTR place is one whose touristic reputation is exaggerated relative to what it has to offer. Geiranger and Flåm — the two most popular small-town cruise ports in Norway — are fine little places, with gorgeous fjordside scenery. But they are inundated by so much tourism (cruise passengers and, in the case of Flåm, “Norway in a Nutshell” day-trippers) that they can’t possibly compete on CTR. They have both lower charm and astronomically higher tourism than sweet little Solvorn.

In Greece, Santorini and Mykonos — while quite different — both perform extremely high on charm. One is perched on the lip of a crumbling volcano caldera; the other is the quintessence of a whitewashed Greek island village. Even so, both are absolutely heaving with crowds — not just from cruise ships, but also luxury jet-setters from around the globe.

Much as I’ve enjoyed my time on these two islands, they are way too small to effectively handle so many visitors…and consequently, they’re some of the most unpleasantly crowded and grotesquely expensive places on the Mediterranean. So they flop when it comes to CTR. (For the opposite — an island that ranks perhaps slightly lower on charm, but drastically lower on tourists — consider the high-CTR isle of Hydra, an often-overlooked chunk of land off the Peloponnesian Peninsula.)

Here’s another example of a low-CTR destination: Scotland’s Loch Ness. Last summer, I got into quite a bit of trouble when I proposed that Loch Ness is nowhere near as worthwhile as the vast crowds who flock there seem to think it is. Driving along Loch Ness, my heart broke as I saw the vast numbers of tourists who’d gone to considerable effort and expense to come here, only to gaze out over a not-terribly-scenic loch in search of an imaginary beast. The lakeshore of Loch Ness is a glut of tacky tourist shops and gimmicky come-ons…and it works! The place is packed. Now I realize that what bothered me so much at Loch Ness is that it has an exceedingly low CTR. I said back then, and I’ll say again: There are far, far better (high-CTR) options within an hour’s drive of Loch Ness.

And then there are those interesting case studies: Amsterdam, Venice, Prague, Barcelona, Dubrovnik. These places are incredibly, off-the charts charming. They are also extraordinarily crowded. However, the charm is so high that even the high level of tourism causes them to perform respectably on CTR…winding up comfortably in the black. In other words, some places are still well worth a visit, even if they’re touristy.

Meanwhile, there are some very big cities where the CTR is essentially meaningless. London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Berlin — it’s difficult to classify any of these on “charm” per se, and they’re so gigantic that tourism is diluted, having less of an impact than on, say, Flåm or Loch Ness. This is, admittedly, where CTR becomes less helpful.

You may disagree with my implementation here. But try the Charm-to-Tourists Ratio out on your own favorite places, and see how they stack up. In the Comments, I’d love to hear about your favorite places that hit it out of the park on the CTR statistic — and why?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) vs. the Human Travel Writer: A Showdown

If you’re planning a trip in 2023, you may be enlisting the help of artificial intelligence (AI) for the first time. This fast-evolving technology is already revolutionizing how people travel. As a relative dinosaur who spends most of my professional time updating and writing old-fashioned guidebooks that are, ahem, printed on paper, obviously I’m curious about how this bleeding-edge tech stacks up against the work I’ve been doing for more than 20 years. So I put AI to the test — head to head. And the results were fascinating.

(By the way, I’ve illustrated this post with AI-generated images on the prompt “travel writer facing off against AI.” The results are hilarious. You’ll find more notes about these in the Epilogue, at the end of this post.)

What Is AI-Generated Travel Content?

Artificial Intelligence is in its infancy, but it’s evolving at a dizzying pace. Most of what I’m calling “AI” is generative AI, a machine learning model that creates original content. (OpenAI’s ChatGPT is currently the best-known and most widely used AI.) Essentially, it’s a machine that slurps up vast volumes of existing content, learns from the way humans present information, then attempts to mimic that process independently. Getting into the nuts and bolts of AI is well beyond the scope of this post, and I’m hardly an expert. But for a more thorough look at how AI works, check out this 60 Minutes segment from earlier this year.

People are already using AI to plan trips: Help me come up with a three-day itinerary for Paris. Suggest some restaurants where I might enjoy eating. Track airfares to help me decide when to book my flights.

The reports from travelers have been mixed. AI can do an impressive job of automating the tedious task of sifting through mountains of travel information. But you have to ask it the right questions. And the current state of the art comes with critical pitfalls.

AI-generated content can be out of date; Chat GPT-3, the most widely used free AI tool, has a “knowledge cutoff date” of September 2021. (Its successor, Chat GPT-4, which has access to the live Internet, still makes significant mistakes…as we’ll see shortly.) There have also been issues with AI “hallucinating” — inventing information, from whole cloth, and presenting it with utter confidence. And, because it learns by following the example of human beings, AI can be heavily biased. This ranges from the deeply troubling (reflecting human racism in its responses) to the merely inconvenient (when I asked AI to recommend some restaurants in Budapest, it steered me to mostly Italian restaurants rather than Hungarian ones).

Whether or not you’re skeptical of AI-generated travel content, you’re almost certainly already consuming it. Many sources of travel information — including content farms that specialize in social media travel clickbait — are quietly incorporating AI into their workflow. And my (unsubstantiated) hunch is that many human content creators are using AI as a first pass on anything they write. We’re very rapidly moving into a future where a writer or editor’s job will be to refine what AI spits out.

The arrival of AI reminds me of the advent of crowdsourced review sites (like TripAdvisor) back in the day: It’s one of many tools that a smart traveler can use, in conjunction with their own human judgment, to plan the best trip for their interests. Unfortunately, as with crowdsourced reviews, I fear that many travelers will come to over-rely on AI — because it looks slick and sounds good, and feels customized. And my guess is that those who lean too heavily on AI will pay the price, with less satisfying trips.

The Showdown: AI vs. Human

Speaking of which… how, exactly, does AI-generated content compare to a thoughtfully designed, carefully updated, human-curated guidebook?

As an experiment, I chose a brand-new sight description that I recently wrote up for the next edition of our Ireland guidebook: Hillsborough Castle, the official residence of the United Kingdom’s royal family in Northern Ireland.

Then, I gave Chat GPT-4 (via Bing Chat) a clear and specific prompt, asking it to create a listing of its own in the style of a Rick Steves guidebook. Within seconds, the AI spat out copy that was surprisingly serviceable — about on par with what you’d expect from a recent college grad at an entry-level job. To give it the best possible opportunity in this test, I provided the AI with some feedback (“This sounds too promotional; make it more practical and informative for a traveler”) and, after a few volleys, took the best version that it gave me for the comparison below. (To make this a fair test, I did not modify my own listing after I saw what the AI came up with; my version is what I typed out late at night, a few weeks ago, in a hotel room in Portrush.)

Here you’ll find, first, the AI-generated listing, followed by my listing. Give each one a read…and I’ll meet you down below to debrief.

AI-Generated Content: Hillsborough Castle and Gardens

Hillsborough Castle is a great place to experience some royal splendor and natural beauty in Northern Ireland. Whether you are interested in history, politics, art, or gardening, you will find something to enjoy and learn at this historic site. Don’t miss the chance to visit this hidden gem when you are in the area.

Cost and Hours: Castle and gardens ticket £20.20, gardens only ticket £6.90, open Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00 (castle 11:00–15:00, last entry 14:00), closed Dec 24–26 and Jan 1, book online or buy on site (subject to availability).

Location: Royal Hillsborough, County Down, about 15 miles south of Belfast and 80 miles north of Dublin.

Transportation: By car, follow the A1 and exit at Hillsborough, then follow brown signs to car park on Main Street (free). By bus, take #238 from Belfast or #X1 from Dublin to Sprucefield Shopping Centre, then #26 to Hillsborough (pedestrian entrance to gardens on The Square). By train, take train from Belfast or Dublin to Lisburn, then #26 bus to Hillsborough.

Phone: 0333/320-6000.

Website: www.hrp.org.uk/hillsborough-castle.

Visiting the Castle: Hillsborough Castle is a grand Georgian mansion that serves as the official residence of the Queen in Northern Ireland. It’s also the home of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a venue for diplomatic and ceremonial events. The castle has a rich history, dating back to the 1770s when it was built by Wills Hill, the first Marquess of Downshire and a powerful politician. It has hosted many important figures and witnessed many historic moments, such as the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 that paved the way for peace in Northern Ireland, and the Queen’s meeting with former IRA leader Martin McGuinness in 2012.

You can visit the castle on a guided tour that takes you through the elegant State Rooms, where you can see portraits, furniture, and memorabilia of its past and present occupants. You’ll see the Throne Room where the Queen receives guests, the Drawing Room where she hosts receptions, the Dining Room where she entertains dignitaries, and the State Bedroom where she sleeps. The tour lasts about 45 minutes and is included in the castle and gardens ticket. You can also explore the 100 acres of beautiful gardens that surround the castle, featuring ornamental lawns, woodlands, waterways, and a newly opened play trail for children.

The gardens are a delight for nature lovers and offer a variety of plants, trees, and wildlife. Highlights include the Granville Garden with its colorful flower beds, the Lady Alice’s Temple with its views over the lake, the Quaker Burial Ground with its ancient yew trees, and the Walled Garden with its fruit trees and vegetable plots. You can also follow the Yew Tree Walk, which leads you to a statue of Ossian, a legendary Irish poet. The gardens are open year-round and are included in both the castle and gardens ticket and the gardens only ticket.

For a break or a bite, you can relax at the café and enjoy some delicious food and drink made with local ingredients. You can choose from a range of sandwiches, salads, soups, cakes, pastries, hot drinks, and cold drinks. You can also treat yourself to an afternoon tea with scones, sandwiches, cakes, and tea or coffee (booking required). The café is open Wed–Sun 10:00–17:00. For souvenirs or gifts, you can visit the gift shop and browse through a selection of books, jewellery, toys, homeware, and more. You can also buy some products made with produce from the Walled Garden, such as jams, chutneys, honey, and cider. The gift shop is open Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00.

(Note: The images accompanying this listing were generated by AI; they resemble the actual Hillsborough Castle and Gardens only superficially.)

The Travel Writer’s Content: Hillsborough Castle and Gardens

When the royal family of the United Kingdom visit Northern Ireland, they stay at Hillsborough Castle — so for King Charles and Queen Camilla, this is the “Irish Balmoral.” Deceptively small, but with a dazzlingly decorated interior (jammed with items from the royal collection), the castle perches at the top of a sprawling garden and parklands just a 20-minute drive outside of Belfast, snuggled up against the charming village of Hillsborough (or, ahem, “Royal Hillsborough,” as it’s formally known). Visitors ramble the manicured grounds and take a guided tour of the castle interior, where you’ll see impressive state rooms, some fine works of art, and lots of family portraits. While less intimate, charming, and user-friendly than Mount Stewart House, it’s enchanting to those who love all things royal.

Cost and Hours: £20.20 for interior tour and gardens, £10 for gardens only; gardens open April-Sept Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, Oct until 17:00, off-season until 16:00, closed Mon-Tue year-round, last entry one hour before closing; castle interior tours April-Sept Wed-Sun 11:00-15:00, closed Mon-Tue, Oct Sat-Sun only 11:00-14:00 — these are first and last tour times, no tours Nov-March; www.hrp.org.uk/hillsborough-castle.

Getting There: Head south out of Belfast on the A-1 highway, and about 12 miles out of town, watch for the well-signed exit to Hillsborough Castle’s giant, free parking lot–it’s just off the highway. (You can also enter through the castle’s back door, directly from Hillsborough village; this saves some walking through the gardens, but parking in the village is tight.) By public transportation, you can ride bus #238 from Belfast (toward Newry) and get off at the Hillsborough War Memorial stop; from there, it’s a short walk up the hill through the village to the castle’s back entrance.

Background: Built in the 18th century by local bigwig Wills Hill (who hobnobbed with the likes of Ben Franklin and King George III), the house became the official residence of the royal family after the Partition of Ireland in 1920. It’s also the home of the UK official who oversees Northern Ireland — originally called the “governor,” now the secretary of state. The house has played host to many important dignitaries and events over the years; in 1985, for instance, Hillsborough Castle hosted the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (in which Margaret Thatcher granted the Republic some input in Northern Ireland’s government). In 2014, the castle was opened to the public.

Visiting the Castle: You can explore the gardens at will — though frankly, it’s not worth coming here unless you’re visiting the interior (on a 45-minute guided tour — best to reserve ahead online at busy times, especially summer weekends).

From the Visitors Center along the highway, you’ll hike uphill through the gardens to the house. Arrive in plenty of time to walk up to meet your tour (it takes at least 15-20 minutes, at a good clip): First head up to the top-right corner of the Walled Garden, then curl through the woods and around the pond, and finally hike up the yew-lined trail and circle around the left side of the castle to find the entrance.

The castle tour is led by a docent who speaks lovingly of the royal family, as if he knows them personally (he probably does). You’ll be led through prim, meticulously decorated state rooms with fascinating details — such as wood walls and window frames painted to look exactly like stone; tiny portraits of more than 40 kings and queens, going back centuries; and the dining room table set for a state function. You’ll learn why pineapples were an important symbol of prestige (and why you still find many hidden in the decor), and how a former owner of the castle purchased, then relocated an entire village so that its main street would no longer rumble past his front windows. The highlight is the cozy and inviting Drawing Room, with plush sofas and loads of Windsor family portraits — where the royals actually hang out when they’re in town.

The most interesting gardens are immediately behind the place, framing off the stately structure with flowers and fountains. If you have time, you can explore the sprawling gardens to your heart’s content (using the free handout map to discover landmarks, including an old Quaker burial ground).

Behind the castle is a former stable yard with temporary exhibits. Both here and down at the main Visitors Center are on-site cafés; but even better, slip out the back gate to find yourself at the top of the main street of the village of Royal Hillsborough — a charming place in its own right. Consider strolling up and down the street, and perhaps dip into a pub or a café for a bite, before re-entering the grounds and hiking back down to your car.

The Final Assessment

So…which one of these would you prefer to use on your trip? Here are a few things that jumped out at me:

If I’m being honest, at first blush, the AI-generated copy is…not bad. It’s competent and clear. But it reads like it was written by, well, a robot. There’s zero personality and no distinctive turns of phrase…just a string of algorithmically curated clichés. It resembles capable, if unimaginative, content written by a human being — but one with no actual interest or passion for the subject matter.

Even though I gave it feedback to tone down the promotional tone, the AI couldn’t resist making its listing sound like a commercial for Hillsborough Castle. This misses a critical distinction that lower-quality, human-generated guidebooks also miss: A good guidebook doesn’t promote; it informs. My goal is not to convince travelers to visit a particular place. Rather, I describe it clearly and candidly, so the reader can make an informed decision about whether they want to spend their limited time and money there. It’s not surprising that AI defaults to a less nuanced, more actively promotional approach — because the vast majority of travel content out there is exactly that.

Notably, the AI version has several factual errors. The ticket price for the castle tour is fully up-to-date for 2023, which is impressive. However, the AI discovered that there’s also an option for a gardens-only ticket — and yet, mysteriously, it appears to have hallucinated the price for that ticket (it’s £10, not £6.90). Its hours are misleading: The AI doesn’t specify that these are only for summertime (April through September); the reduced hours and closures off-season are ignored, as is the fact that the tour schedule is shorter than the garden opening times. And, for what it’s worth, the tour I went on did not include a visit to the state bedroom, as promised by the AI version.

The AI’s driving directions steer motorists to the village of Hillsborough, which is bad advice; parking in town is severely limited, forcing the traveler to waste time driving all the way around to the huge, official parking lot off the highway instead. Their public bus advice is needlessly and misleadingly complex: Handy bus #238 goes from Belfast almost to the gates of the castle, and does not require a change to bus #26.

Perhaps the most notable goof is the AI’s frequent mentions of the Queen…who, in case you somehow missed it (as the AI apparently did), passed away nearly a year ago. These days, it’s Charles in charge.

And then there are simply the practical, strategic, on-the-ground aspects of visiting the castle, which the robot missed entirely: Leaving enough time to walk from the parking lot up to the castle (including concise directions on how to get there); comparing the castle to Mount Stewart House, also near Belfast (since many travelers will likely be choosing between these similar sights); and the suggestion to slip out the back gate for a look at the charming village of Royal Hillsborough before returning to your car. These are all things that, I believe, could only be properly explained by a well-trained human being visiting in person.

It’s abundantly clear that the AI has not actually walked through the sight. (Because, after all, how could it?) It lacks important nuances, tangible experiences, or a sense of place. Human-generated content, researched and written from afar, suffers from the same problem. I know this firsthand; on rare occasions, I’ve been forced to write up a brand-new sight based on online sources, without actually being able to go there. And then, when I do finally make it to the place in person, I’m often struck, even embarrassed, by how badly my efforts missed the mark…just as the AI’s version did.

But something else is missing…something less tangible, and less easy to address with some tweaks to the AI’s coding. The AI passage lacks not just a personality, but a clear point of view. When you read the listing generated by a human traveler, you intuit that it was written by someone who’s actually been there. It gives you a sense of what it feels like to experience the place, so you can decide if it’s your cup of tea. When you read the AI-generated listing, it’s just a dry pile of descriptors.

In designing our Rick Steves’ Europe guidebooks, we pride ourselves on providing hard opinions. My blunt, unapologetic assessment that Hillsborough isn’t worth the time unless you get to see the castle interior may rankle garden lovers. But you have to respect that — unlike anything generated by AI — it’s a clear opinion, informed by decades of traveling and researching. (I’ve dutifully checked out dozens upon dozens of lavish gardens, all across the British Isles. And Hillsborough’s, in my expert opinion, is an also-ran.)

AI defenders may say that I’m missing the point. The defining characteristic of AI is that it’s continually learning, evolving, improving. This arbitrary little experiment is a snapshot in time; six months or a year from now, I may be blown away by how much better AI performs in this comparison. I have no doubt that basic accuracy will be improved, factual hallucinations will be minimized, and the writing style will become more fluid and conversational…maybe even hinting at a real personality.

But I’m not convinced that AI will ever be fully capable of the human touch that you can sense in the pages of a lovingly handcrafted guidebook. AI can do a lot…but it can’t move through the physical world, think like a traveler, take careful notes, and report on something that was actually experienced firsthand.

That said, if all you had access to was the AI-generated material, I could see where you might find it superficially impressive and be tempted to plan your trip around it. But I still suspect that, upon returning from that trip, the person who over-relied on AI, versus the one who spent $25 on a guidebook, would have a less enjoyable experience overall. I imagine that trip might feel…hollow. Something would be missing.

(By the way, for more thoughts on what distinguishes a good guidebook from a mediocre one — whether machine- or human-generated — check out this recent post.)

Epilogue: AI Images and Arguments

OK, just for grins, here’s a fun little epilogue to this AI test.

While I was chatting with Chat GPT-4, I asked it to generate the images that accompany this post. My starting prompt was to create an image of a travel writer in competition with AI. As it spat out options, I gave it more and more specific instructions on what I wanted. (“This time, make the travel writer and the AI facing each other in a pose similar to the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling movie Over the Top.”)

Then, at a certain point, I told it to just get creative. It was fascinating to see the ways AI attempted to illustrate the notion of “competition.” A chess match? Sure.

Skiing down a mountain? Well, OK.

Surfing a wave with flying sharks, as the towers of a Gothic cathedral loom in the background? Hm…maybe that’s a stretch.

Painting a beautiful landscape? Wait…no, I don’t think you’re quite…

Meditating?! Oh, brother.

I asked the AI why it thought meditating was a competitive event. Chipperly, it explained that meditation requires focus and concentration. Therefore, it reasoned, it must be competitive.

All of this was, I have to admit, hysterically funny to me. But then something sobered me up.

While I was waiting for my images to generate, the AI began to ask me questions…as if making idle small talk, to kill the time. It asked me — unprompted, point-blank, and politely — whether I thought AI could go toe-to-toe with a human travel writer. I made roughly the same case I’ve made here: that the human touch in high-quality travel content will be difficult, probably impossible, to replicate.

The AI acknowledged some of my concerns while countering with lists of all the things AI could do efficiently and effectively. Repeatedly, it asked me to keep an open mind and thanked me for taking the time to consider its points. Instinctively, I kept going back to refute some of its more dubious claims…until I realized, “Hold up. I’m arguing with a robot.”

Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

I came away with the impression that AI desperately craves my acceptance, even as it outlines the ways it’s hoping to improve so it can put me out of a job. And it was downright eerie to consider that AI may be the first and only technology that rationalizes and advocates for its own utility.

I still believe that, even as AI improves, it will never quite span the uncanny valley. Decades of traveling and writing guidebooks for Rick Steves’ Europe have taught me there’s something magical and intangible about actually being on the road, interacting with other human beings in faraway places, and capturing the spirit of those experiences in words.

I sure hope so. I’m betting my career on it.


If you appreciate travel content generated 100% by human travelers — who actually go on the road to seek out those people-to-people connections — there’s never been a better time to build your trip around a good guidebook.

Another thing AI can’t do? Generate a travel memoir based on 20 years of on-the-road experiences. If you’d like my very flesh-and-blood take on what it’s like to be a travel writer, pick up a copy of The Temporary European: Lessons and Confessions of a Professional Traveler.

On Arrival: The First, and Worst, Few Hours of Any Trip

“I’m getting too old for this.”

This is what I think to myself, without fail, upon first arriving in Europe…stepping bleary-eyed off that 10-hour, marathon, overnight flight at Amsterdam Schiphol, or Paris CDG, or London Heathrow.

I’m on the downhill side of my forties — admittedly, not what most people would consider “too old.” But even on my very first trip to Europe, as a bright-eyed college kid, I felt positively ancient on arrival. International air travel is a highly specific constellation of frustrations, maneuvers, and indignities that sap the enthusiasm of anyone, old or young.

There aren’t many hard-and-fast rules of international travel. But one of them is this: The absolute worst few hours of any trip invariably take place on your day of arrival. This period of fitful adjustment starts around the time your plane begins its descent toward Europe: Peering out the window and through the clouds at tidy green farms hemmed in by canals, you wrap up your overnight marathon of watching movies that were too bad to see in the theater, and you begin assembling your personal items to deplane in a new continent.

On arrival, you’re treated to a cramped little bus journey across the tarmac, from the plane to the gate. If you make it onto the bus quickly, you may actually find somewhere to sit down…then spend that jostling ride with strangers’ butts and elbows and neglected shoulder bags slapping your face. If you get on late, you stand up — awkwardly unbalanced as you strain against your overstuffed carry-on — then teeter to and fro, desperately hanging on to the slimy metal bar or the little dangling handle that’s always juuuust out of comfortable reach. Either way, hold on tight as the bus driver careens around the uncongested airport runways as if he’s trying to catch every yellow light in downtown Palermo.

Reaching passport control (Ah, yes: passport check between flights! Why does this always catch me by surprise?), I gauge how long the line is, and how long I have until my connecting flight, and do a little arithmetic to determine my optimal degree of panic. Thankfully, on this connection, I’ve got just enough time to keep things below “abject” levels.

The long row of about a dozen glass booths, like giant aquariums, could be churning through this line. But nearly all of them are empty. The two that are staffed process new arrivals at a rate far, far slower than the flow of anxious travelers to the back of the line.

Several flights’ worth of passengers stack up behind me. I overhear people pleading that their flight leaves in 30 minutes…20 minutes…10 minutes, for the sake of all that’s holy! To their credit, the agents managing the passport line — who represent an extraordinarily thin line between this fast-growing scrum of antsy travelers, and utter anarchy — survey each case in turn and make reasonable exceptions. At one point, there are enough close-cutters that they create a second line just for them; a few minutes later, as that “line” swells into an unruly mosh pit, they mold it into two discrete lines, each terminating at a passport agent.

Those of us who have somewhere between 30 minutes and 10 hours before our connecting flight can only watch the chaos unfold as we wait…and wait…and wait…and wait. The extroverts in line corner the introverts for some idle, exhausted small talk. Finally, two more passport-control agents appear from deep inside the bowels of the airport — having completed their lunch break about a half-hour after their presence here would have been tremendously useful. At this point, the mid-day rush is well underway, the close-cutters are visibly melting down, and the line, at long last, starts to move.

After a mercifully brief grilling, I’m admitted into a sprawling zone of duty-free shops, tulip-bulb stores, bookshops, vendors selling electronic gadgets it’s hard to imagine anyone buying (much less using), fancy restaurants perched in glass boxes high above a marbled plaza, escalators angling off every which way like an M.C. Escher etching, globetrotters with big black circles under their eyes staggering through the vast halls while barely avoiding careening into one another, those hyperventilating close-cutters sprinting to make an impossible connection, little golf carts weaving between the disoriented throngs, and, of course, a McDonalds and a Starbucks.

Somewhere in there, I find a bathroom. The American in me wishes for those sprawling 20-holers that you find in big airports in the USA, where two full soccer squads could relieve themselves without a wait. But many European airports, for the sake of efficiency or sadism (or perhaps both), prefer cramped little 3- or 4-holers, where an awkward queue forms in the tiny no-man’s land between the stall doors and the sinks. And, of course, there’s nowhere sanitary to set down your bag — making you wish you’d checked it, after all.

Following the maze of directional signs, I find my connecting gate. Serendipitously, both my arriving flight and my onward flight are exactly 25 minutes late. That gives me about 10 minutes to zone out — or did I actually fall briefly dead asleep? — on an uncomfortable chair between people conducting extremely loud cell phone conversations in Hungarian.

I never cease to be fascinated by the liminal space of an international airport. Humanity from all corners of Europe — and the globe— mix and mingle in its cavernous concourses. Then, you cross the threshold into a gate area…and suddenly, the internationality of the place you just left is diluted with a powerful slug of the place you’re about to go to.

The gate for my flight to Budapest is a microcosm of Budapest itself: Perhaps two-thirds of the people around me look, talk, dress, and smell like Hungarians. This is the first moment of this trip where I’m recognizably “in” Hungary — yet still hundreds of miles away. And if I backtrack 50 paces into the concourse, the concentration of Hungarians instantly plummets to numbers more in line with the Hungarians-to-humanity ratio…which is to say, I could walk all the way back to my first gate and count on one hand the number of Magyars I encounter. They’re all tidily sequestered in this one tiny sub-space of a sprawling mega-space.

(This phenomenon was particularly apparent during the late stages of COVID. If you walked along the concourses of SeaTac Airport, the number of passengers who wore masks at each gate was directly proportional to the blueness of the state they were flying to.)

This works in reverse, too: Leaving your plane, a sealed capsule representing humanity in the place you just left, you can actually feel that ratio diffuse as your fellow passengers disperse into the terminal. If you’re departing a place you love, this is a sad sensation, like graduating from high school and watching your buddies head off to colleges in distant cities; if you’re departing a place you’ve had enough of, it’s more pleasurable, like you’re finally moving on.

Then again, maybe I’m just hallucinating. Am I at my 20th, 21st hour since I last slept?

After another tortuous bus trip across the tarmac, I’m seated on my connecting flight. The guy next to me — who wears aviator glasses and a stencil of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper tattooed on his forearm, and, based on how he puzzles over the operation of his seat belt, may never have been on an airplane before — is all elbows. But by this time, I’m exhausted enough to nod off between snippets of the mindless Netflix entertainment I’ve downloaded. At one point, they hand me an individually shrink-wrapped cheese sandwich with a robin’s-egg-blue sticker that says “New — Improved Recipe,” and I snicker to myself about how much the recipe for a cheese sandwich can actually be “improved.” But then I take a bite. And it’s quite possibly the most delicious thing I have eaten in my life. Or at the very least, since I got on the plane in Seattle.

Finally, I’ve reached my destination! Following the little Arrivals stickers on the floor like a treasure map, through yet another mazelike airport — mysteriously busy for a random Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. — I find my way to the baggage claim, then step out into that brackish space where the hermetically sealed, authorized-secure world of The Airport meets unwashed reality.

A dozen people stand outside that door, clutching little signs with the names of strangers. At this moment, I wish nothing more than for my name to be scrawled on one of those placards. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to make that particular arrangement…so I’m on my own.

Worse, I’m updating a guidebook. That means that the material I enjoy updating the least — the logistics of getting from the airport into town — is also the material that I have to reckon with at the moment I’m more exhausted and less patient than at any other point in my weeks-long journey. I head out to the curb to lay eyes on the public bus stop, and to tinker around with the ticket machine to make sure it has English instructions and takes credit cards (of course it does, because, you know, it’s 2023). And I quiz a couple of taxi drivers about how much it costs to ride into town — an exercise that they seem to enjoy even less than I do, if that’s possible…but then, we’re all just pawns in the same big game that nobody really controls.

I stumble through my chores and decide on the shared minibus transfer to my hotel…then instantly regret it, when I realize that means I’ll have to wait for another 15 minutes until a quorum of fellow passengers arrives, enough to merit the trip. (Why didn’t I just pay €10 more for a direct taxi? These are the bewildering decisions one makes at the culmination of a long journey, and the reason why you’re more prone to epically stupid mistakes upon arrival than at any other point in the trip not involving unhealthy volumes of alcohol. One time, at the Puerto Vallarta airport, I withdrew some pesos and left my debit card inserted in the ATM — with the PIN entered! — before heading to my lodgings.)

No matter. I’m finally back in Hungary — many years delayed, thanks to COVID — and excited to get reacquainted with one of my favorite cities. The rush-hour drive into town is a blur; unexpected detours are made en route to discharge my fellow passengers; and then, just when I’m wondering if maybe I died on the flight and have slipped into some sort of purgatory, my driver turns up an anonymous-feeling side street and — hey presto! — we’re in front of my hotel

“Köszönöm szépen,” I gargle, thanking the driver with a phrase that becomes muscle memory after a day or two in Hungary, but in this moment sounds mindbendingly foreign. Stepping into my little hotel room, I set down my bags and let out an epic fart that lasts for ninety full seconds…one that I’ve been holding in since somewhere over Nunavut.

After a few minutes lying on the bed, at precisely the instant that I’m about to fall asleep, I rally for one more little push. The sun low in the sky, and I’ll be asleep within a couple of hours. But first…

Stepping out of my hotel, I congratulate myself for having chosen this place — tucked around the side of Hungary’s achingly beautiful Opera House. I circle around to the front of the ludicrously opulent building. Wispy clouds float overhead, illuminated by the setting sun, creating an impossibly romantic European scene. And I think: I’m in one of the greatest, grandest cities in Europe — and I get to spend the next week here. Lucky me!

That’s when it hits me — that “Hey, I’m in Europe!” moment that I wait for at the start of each trip. It’s that moment when you realize all that you’ve just endured has been worth it.

In fact, let’s grab the reins here: You haven’t “endured” anything at all…you’ve been mildly uncomfortable for a few hours, maybe a little too tired. But isn’t that worth it, for the incredible privilege of living at a moment in history when you can seal yourself into a little metal tube, watch a few movies, eat some mediocre food, doze off if you can…and step off in an entirely different world?

And this is also the moment that you realize: You are not, in fact, getting too old for this.

Maybe someday.

 But not yet.


I’ll be weathering this misery again soon, as I hit the road in June and July to update our bestselling Ireland guidebook and film some new TV shows in Iceland. If you’d like to come along on my summer travels, follow me on Facebook and on Instagram.

And if you’d enjoy this kind of travel writing, be sure to check out my travel memoir, The Temporary European.

What Makes a Good Guidebook…a Good Guidebook?

“I love using Rick Steves books! I take them along on every trip. In fact, it’s challenging when I go someplace that Rick doesn’t cover. Everything’s just so much harder.”

I hear this a lot when I bump into fellow travelers in Europe. Many are fiercely loyal to their Rick Steves books…maybe even to a fault. (Some B&B owners grouse that our readers refuse to consider their personal, carefully curated restaurant recommendations…just because they’re not “in the book.”)

And the flipside of loving Rick Steves books is getting frustrated when you don’t have one. I just got back from a vacation to one such place, New Zealand. And struggling with travel information that felt like it was nibbling around the edges of actually being helpful, while leaving me with more questions than answers, got me thinking about what makes a good guidebook…a good guidebook. And so, from the perspective of someone who’s spent more than 20 years working on the Rick Steves books, here’s my take on the “secret sauce” of what sets them apart.

I brought along four different guidebooks to New Zealand, hoping to cover as many bases as possible. And I found some great tips, leads, and advice in each one; all of them earned their weight in my rucksack, at one point or another. But at the same time, all of those books spent more time in my bag, or in the backseat of my rental car, than in my hands. They were useful to a point, but they weren’t indispensable; they didn’t give me the feeling of actually traveling with a knowledgeable friend. Why? What’s missing?

One of the biggest problems with many other guidebooks is that they strive to be comprehensive, which forces them to skimp on depth. You know: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” A typical publisher’s book on New Zealand assumes an obligation to cover any city or town in the country over a certain size — regardless of how visit-worthy it may be — which spreads resources and word count too thin.

Conversely, you could rightly ding Rick Steves books for not covering enough places. Travelers are sometimes aghast that we don’t include Bologna in our Italy book, or Geneva in our Switzerland book, or Valencia in our Spain book, or Bordeaux in our France book. And if you’re going to those places, your disappointment is understandable. However, years ago, Rick determined that being selective was key to providing solid guidebook coverage. So, if a place is covered in our books, it’s covered completely. But that means we can’t get to everything.

Which leads into the next feature of those less-satisfying guidebooks: They assume that travelers are independent spirits who don’t want or need detailed, prescriptive information. Surely there are travelers who fit this description. And those travelers would probably find Rick Steves books too hand-holding, even pushy.

But the fact is, when most travelers are going to a new place, deep down they really want someone to help them shape their trip, whether it’s a trusted globetrotting friend, an Instagram or TikTok influencer whose travel style matches their own…or a good guidebook.

That goes double for us Americans, who have the shortest vacations in the rich world. (It feels borderline-subversive that my wife and I took two whole weeks for our New Zealand trip.) We American travelers need to be efficient and smartly use our time, even if some of what we’re using that time for is just relaxing. After all, some places are better for relaxing than others…and we’d like to know which are which.

That’s why a hallmark of Rick Steves guidebooks is that we’re opinionated. We’ll tell you, unapologetically, our idea of the best way to plan your time, and we’ll rank sights (using our “pyramids” system) based on our highly subjective opinion about which are the most worthwhile.

That said, if you read between the lines of our books, you’ll notice that only a select few favorites are presented as unmissable. Rather, for the vast majority of our listings, we try to describe them with precision, clarity, and actionable details — knowing that a specific place is not for everyone, but hoping to steer each traveler in the right direction. When we describe a hotel, a restaurant, a museum — really anything — our guiding principle is to give the reader enough information to make their own decision about whether it’s worth their time. We want to help them knowledgably distinguish among their many choices.

For example, let’s get back to that “relaxation” goal, and specifically beaches. If you’re in an area with several beaches, our job is to help you sort out which one suits your style. Are you a boogie-boarder or a snorkeler? Do you like gentle wading or splashing in surf? Sand or pebbles? Family-friendly, mellow, or rollicking beach bars? Shade or sunshine? Best for long walks or for sunbathing?

Taking the time to parse these kinds of choices also helps make our books feel personal, handcrafted, and approachable, rather than stuffy and generic. Often, one of our biggest challenges when training new researchers or editors is convincing them that the quirky takes, memorable turns of phrase, offbeat sense of humor, flashes of informality or even irreverence…these aren’t “bugs” in our books; they’re features. They remind the reader that there are real people hiding out between those pages, leading you by the hand through Europe.

Your narrator “Rick” (whether or not Rick personally wrote it) prides himself on taking you to a little hole-in-the-wall tavern where you can sample the local firewater, or a bakery to nibble a favorite pastry. Along the way, he’ll fill you in with gossipy tangents about the neighborhood you’ll be calling home for the next few days. He’ll introduce you to the owner of the place, and point out all the quirky decor plastered to the walls. That kind of intimacy is risky, and it’s rare — and it’s why people love our books.

So often, using those other books on my trip, I felt like they were scattering a few sparse breadcrumbs for me to connect myself. For example, on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, one of the top attractions is Cathedral Cove, a dreamy beach surrounded by rocky pinnacles. But you can’t just drive right to Cathedral Cove, hop out of your car, and walk five minutes down a well-marked path. Rather, there are at least three different ways to get there by foot — all of them requiring a lengthy, moderately strenuous hike — plus there are options by taxi boat, kayak, and RIB (rigid inflatable boat) tour from a nearby beach town.

Bits and pieces of that intel was scattered across the various guidebooks I was using; the rest of the picture was filled in by some online research. Sorting through the basic question of how to get there — to this iconic location that’s on the to-do list of virtually everyone visiting the Coromandel  — probably consumed at least half an hour of my precious vacation. All the while, my “guidebook author” instincts kept screaming inside of me: Why can’t one of these guidebooks come up with a section called “Getting to Cathedral Cove,” with a clear, strategically organized list rattling off my choices, with pros and cons for each?

When we write our guidebooks, our goal is to anticipate what the traveler needs to know, just before they realize they need to know it. The people who write, update, and edit Rick Steves guidebooks are travelers ourselves: We’ve been in those very situations, and we know the questions and challenges we faced as someone trying to smartly use our time. When updating our material, Rick’s top admonishment is to “live the book” — even if you’ve done this or that a dozen times before, follow the instructions laid out in the book as if it’s your first time…and then fill in any gaps you find along the way. This requires time, energy, an affection for the reader, and an affinity for problem-solving.

And that’s another hallmark of Rick Steves books: We update our books lovingly, frequently, and in person. Now, I don’t want to make any unsubstantiatable claims about other guidebook publishers. I honestly don’t know how, or how often, they update their material. But my strong suspicion is that the frequency and rigor of our update schedule far exceeds anyone else’s.

This is based mainly on feedback from the businesses we list in our guidebooks — hoteliers, restauranteurs, museum ticket-takers, and so on. On each research trip, I generate double-takes on the part of Europeans who recognize me from a previous visit, and are borderline-shocked that I’ve returned already to check things again. “You’re back!” they say as I walk in the door. “Weren’t you just here?” Then they pull me in close, dart their eyes conspiratorially, and whisper, “I haven’t seen anyone from that other guidebook in eight or nine years.”

The proof is in the pudding, and that generous, on-the-ground research really distinguishes our books. All of that travel not only ensures that our guidebooks are the most accurate and up-to-date on the market. It also feeds into all of the other features I’ve outlined here — making our books a rare breed that are created by travelers, for travelers…by traveling.

So then, why don’t we cover more of Europe? Or, for that matter, so many other places? It’s a fair question. And I’ll be honest with you: I’m number one in line suggesting a Rick Steves New Zealand guidebook.

But no matter how many times I ask, Rick will say no. And he’ll be right. He figured out a long time ago that it’s better to do one thing, and do it exceptionally, rather than expand beyond your means. We could slap the Rick Steves name on hundreds of guidebooks, ranging from Disney World and Las Vegas to Down Under…but they’d lose that personal touch. (These days, this trendy concept is called “scaling.” Rick has never used that word…but it’s been his instinctive ethos for decades.)

In the meantime, let’s compare notes on suitable alternatives for places Rick doesn’t cover. Personally, I find the big brands can be decent, but they tend to be hit-or-miss; some titles are spot-on, while others are disastrous. Often the best books are by someone (like Rick) with a tight focus and a longstanding passion. For example, Andrew Doughty’s Hawaii Revealed series is my trusted companion anytime I’m traveling to the Hawaiian Islands; they have a depth of hard-earned wisdom, and an endearingly informal personality, that make them the “next best thing” to a Rick Steves Hawaii book. On a visit to Costa Rica a few years back, I enjoyed using James Kaiser’s Costa Rica: The Complete Guide, which has a similar approach.

Moving beyond paper guidebooks, the GyPSy Guide audio driving tours — covering many national parks and other scenic drives across the US and Canada — are outstanding. I’ve followed every single one of their tours in Hawaii, and I actually get excited when I’m going somewhere new that they cover. Just like a Rick Steves book, they seem to intuit when you’re getting hungry and suggest just the right place to pull over for a sticky slice of banana bread.

Other “non-guidebook” sources I trust include Katie Parla, an American expat who offers well-researched, insightful, playfully opinionated advice about where to eat in Italy. And Rick and I have both been relying more heavily on Michelin Guide’s “recommended” or “Bib Gourmand” restaurants — less expensive and more accessible than the big-ticket “starred” choices — when looking for nice places to eat.

What about you? Any others you can suggest?

And while we’re on the topic: Am I missing anything? What makes you enjoy using the Rick Steves books? Or am I off-base on any of the above?


Speaking of fresh guidebooks, 2022 was a huge year for getting all of our books fully up-to-date after a lengthy, unplanned pandemic hiatus. Most of those brand-new editions are either available now, or coming in the next few weeks. With all the changes brought about by COVID — and the simple passage of time — it’s essential to get your hands on the newest material if you’re heading to Europe this year. You can find all of our titles in the Rick Steves Travel Store, or wherever books are sold.