Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

I just flew to Europe — as I have every year at this time since the 1980s — to kick off another spring of exploring, researching, learning, tasting, and sipping. I’m starting in Sicily, and I’d love to introduce you to some of my new Sicilian buddies.

Starting today, I’ll be posting daily for the next hundred days or so, reporting on my experiences and lessons learned. (Knowing how super-serendipitous Palermo is, I’m sure tomorrow’s post will be a fun one!) On this trip, I’ll be reporting from Sicily, Naples and the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Portugal, Paris, Ireland, the heart of England, Scotland, Germany’s Black Forest, Alsace, the great cities of Switzerland, and more —  spending about a third of that time researching my guidebooks, a third tagging along with Rick Steves’ Europe Tours (in Sicily and Ireland), and a third with my crew making new TV shows.

So, I hope you’ll enjoy stowing away with me — for a hundred posts in a hundred days — here on my blog and via Facebook. And please let your travel companions know, too. 2017 promises to be a great year of travel, and I’d love to have you all come along.

Happy travels!

Over the last few months, millions of Americans have been inspired to, in their own way, celebrate and defend what they believe makes our country so…American. Last Wednesday, I declared that I’d give a donation equaling the sum of every dollar spent over the course of two days at ricksteves.com/shop to Bread for the World, an advocacy organization that’s devoted to giving hungry people a voice in Washington DC.

An impressive 627 of you responded, spending a total of $17,274 on our Rick Steves guidebooks, DVDs, travel accessories, and travel bags. That’s more than double our normal sales. Thanks!

As promised, I’m giving an amount to Bread for the World equal to your collective shopping spree. And — further motivated by our government’s threat to drastically cut domestic and foreign aid programs — I’m tripling the amount and upping my gift to $50,000. Thinking about how this money will help advocate for poor and hungry people in our nation and around the world brings me (and, I hope, all of us) real joy.

Industrialists pay for lobbyists to defend the interests of the extremely wealthy (tax cuts and fewer regulations for corporations) — often at the expense of the poor. But who lobbies for the hungry? With this small fundraiser, collectively we are funding lobbyists to explain to our government what we believe America should be: We are a great and wealthy enough country that we should have no hungry people, and our trade policies should not make the lives of hungry people south of our border more difficult. That’s what advocacy is. And, while I wish our leaders could simply do what they know in their hearts to be right, the reality is that they tend to do what lobbyists encourage them to do. With this $50,000, we are giving hungry people a chance to have their needs heard in Washington DC. That’s why, now more than ever, I prefer advocacy to charity.

For Bread for the World (and other advocacy groups), the work has never been more critical. They are making a huge difference. This donation will empower them to help soften drastic changes in government policy that will make life even more difficult for hungry people in the United States and worldwide. I have friends who are dedicating their lives’ work to the cause at Bread, and what they accomplish truly inspires me. This gift will help them get traction with their hard work.

I’m thankful for your support in this small but exciting initiative. To me, this is helping to make our country the great land we know it can be. Thanks again and happy travels!

I find that when you travel, you can look back at your own country from a distance and see its challenges in high contrast. And when I look back at America, I see a land with a troubling gap between rich and poor — a gap that’s only growing wider. While I’m inclined to get mad, I’d rather make a difference. You too? Here’s how: from now through Thursday, for every dollar spent at ricksteves.com/shop, I’ll give a dollar to Bread for the World. (This is not just our profit. I’ll match everything you spend on any guidebooks, DVDs, travel accessories, and travel bags between now and midnight on Thursday, April 20, 2017.)

That’s right: if $50,000 is spent at ricksteves.com/shop (and I hope we hit that mark), I’ll send a check for $50,000 to Bread for the World, an advocacy group that lobbies Congress on behalf of hungry people. This video I made recently in D.C. is a little explanation of their work:

I’ve worked side-by-side with Bread’s staff, and I understand how much they accomplish. That’s why I’m so committed to supporting their work.

And today, Bread for the World’s work is more important than ever. One in six children in the United States is “food insecure,” meaning they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. It’s shocking to me that, at the end of each month, hunger surges in America…and lines at food banks grow. Just before the arrival of their next paycheck, millions of Americans simply don’t have enough money to put food on the table.

Our government’s proposed response: Make drastic cuts in programs that help poor and hungry Americans in order to afford tax cuts for “job creators” and a stronger military.

This would have a tragic impact on our nation’s most vulnerable. The impact of government programs like SNAP (formerly food stamps) and school lunches is massive. Sure, private charities are helpful and important. But government programs provide 20 times as much food to needy people as all the churches and charities in the country combined.

When it comes to fighting hunger, Bread for the World’s advocacy work leverages my charitable giving more than any organization I know. You can imagine it’s all-hands-on-deck now, as Bread works expertly and passionately to encourage legislators in Washington DC to spare programs vital to hungry people — both at home and abroad.

As money has become “free speech” in our society, those without money have become silenced. The impact of the money we’ll raise in the next two days is so exciting. Again, for every dollar spent at ricksteves.com/shop from now through tomorrow, I’ll give a dollar to Bread for the World. Please join me in this initiative to give a voice to the voiceless. Thanks.

I just gave a $4 million apartment complex for homeless women and kids to the YWCA. Let me explain why.

I know vacation travel is supposed to provide a break from the grinding reality of our workaday lives. But for me, travel and the peace of mind of having a roof over your head have always been associated.

Before “Europe Through the Back Door,” my travels were “Europe Through the Gutter.” Slumming through Europe as a teenage backpacker, life for me was the daily challenge of finding an affordable (i.e., free) place to sleep. With my rail pass, I’d sleep on a train four hours out, cross the tracks, and sleep four hours back in. I’d sleep on a ferry (covered by the rail pass) between Stockholm and Helsinki on successive nights to afford spending entire days of sightseeing alternating between the two most expensive cities in Europe. I’d sneak into my friends’ hotel rooms and sleep on the floor (restlessly and stressed-out…but free). I’d sleep free on the pews of Greek churches, on the concrete floors of Dutch construction projects, and in barns at the edge of unaffordable Swiss alpine resorts. How else would a white, middle-class American kid gain a firsthand appreciation for the value of a safe and comfortable place to sleep?

In my earliest days as a tour guide, I’d put people in terrible rooms just so they would better appreciate having a nice home as their norm. I’d intentionally not have a hotel reservation for my groups until late in the afternoon…just to put my tourists through the anxiety of not knowing if they’d have a roof over their head tonight. The intended souvenir: More empathy for the homeless. (This experiment was very short-lived. These days, of course, our tours pursue enlightenment more maturely, gracefully, and effectively.)

I traveled in Central America, where I learned civil wars that I thought were between communists and capitalists were actually between obscenely rich oligarchs and landless peasants. I hung out with poor Christians who took the Biblical Jubilee Year (the notion that every fifty years the land is to be re-divided and debts are to be forgiven) seriously…even though rich Christians assumed God must have been kidding.

Back home, one of my pet social causes has long been affordable housing. Twenty years ago, I devised a scheme where I could put my retirement savings not into a bank to get interest, but into cheap apartments to house struggling neighbors. I would retain my capital, my equity would grow as the apartment complex appreciated, and I would suffer none of the headaches that I would have if I had rented out the units as a landlord. Rather than collecting rent, my “income” would be the joy of housing otherwise desperate people.  I found this a creative, compassionate and more enlightened way to “invest” while retaining my long-term security.

This project evolved until, eventually, I owned a 24-unit apartment complex that I provided to the YWCA. They used it to house single moms who were recovering hard-drug addicts and were now ready to get custody of their children back. Imagine the joy of knowing that I could provide a simple two-bedroom apartment for a mom and her kids as she fought to get her life back on track. Imagine the joy of giving people who dedicate their lives (through their work with the YWCA) to helping these people in need the facility to better do their work. To me, this wasn’t particularly noble or compassionate…it was just thoughtful use of my capital. Working with the YWCA and the Rotary Club of Edmonds, I wrote an essay about this vision, and we publicized this creative way of putting a fortunate person’s retirement nest egg to work in a powerful way.

With the election of our president and the rise of a new, greed-is-good ethic in our government, I want to be more constructive than just complaining about how our society is once again embracing “trickle-down” ethics, and our remarkable ability to ignore the need in our communities even as so much wealth is accumulated within the top one percent of our populace. I’m heartbroken at how good people, dedicating their lives to helping others (through social organizations and non-profits across our society), are bracing for a new forced austerity under our government of billionaires.

So, inspired by what’s happening in our government and in an attempt to make a difference, I decided to take my personal affordable housing project one step further: I recently gave my 24-unit apartment complex to the YWCA. Now the YWCA can plan into the future knowing this facility is theirs. And I’ll forever enjoy knowing that, with this gift, I’m still helping them with their mission.

The gap between rich and poor in our country continues to widen. And I believe needs — such as affordable housing — will only increase as budget cuts are implemented. Organizations like the YWCA will need to pick up the slack. If our country truly wants to be great, we need creative thinking connected with our hearts. And it’s my hope that love and compassion can trump values of crass commercialism, greed, and “winners” beating “losers.”