Here you can browse through my blog posts prior to February 2022. Currently I'm sharing my travel experiences, candid opinions, and what's on my mind solely on my Facebook page. — Rick
My website has been entirely redesigned to make it an even better place to prepare for your next trip. Today, check out my “Explore Europe” section, where you can zero in on all my articles, TV shows, and other resources covering the destinations of your dreams. How does the design work for you?
Can you find what you need?
After over a year of hard work, I’m proud to announce our beautiful new Rick Steves.com website! At the beginning of the development process, my team and I thought a lot about what we wanted out of a new website. After hours of discussion, we circled back to the beginning: our original mission to inspire, inform, and equip Americans to have European trips that are fun, affordable, and culturally broadening. Today I am proud to say that this new website does just that. It’s full of free tools and resources to help you dream about and plan for your next trip. Over next few days, I’ll highlight some of my favorite features.
We’re still tweaking the design, but we feel it’s ready for you to give it a spin. We’re still discussing how to both keep it lively and changing, and at the same time make it an easy-to-navigate almanac of information that our travelers can turn to when planning a trip.
Please take a moment to poke around, and tell me what you think. I’d love to hear from you.
After sharing the fun of our annual guides’ summit, we wanted to answer the most common question we hear: “What does it take to be a Rick Steves tour guide?”
To be honest, we don’t have a set procedure. We have about 130 lead tour guides. Most are Europeans, but plenty are Americans. Many are already professional guides working with (or fleeing) other tour companies. A few are friends of our company who have been with us since they were kids, packing boxes in our mailroom. These days, our guides are mostly established professionals who come to us with impressive experience along with an enthusiasm for guiding “the Rick Steves way.”
For an insight into the way our guides are managed, here’s an interview with Steve Smith. One of our very first guides (#4, to be specific), Steve led our entire tour-guiding team until his retirement in 2018.
How did Steve start? Back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed “pack man” for the phenomenal way he sold our suitcases and backpacks. He’s our in-house Francophile, who single-handedly established our France program (co-authoring my France, Paris, and Provence guidebooks, and turning this sandwich-munching Viking into a person with a love of France). And all along, I count him as one of my best friends. With the short interview below, I’d like you to meet Steve Smith.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
There’s no one recipe for how to become a Rick Steves guide. But our current crop of guides has set the bar extremely high. All of our guides have several things in common: They are very well-traveled, they love Europe, and they’re excellent teachers who can convey their passion and in-depth knowledge of Europe, its history, and its culture to a group. Most of them spend extended periods of time in Europe, studying or working; most currently live in the country where they guide, speak the local language, and have a lifestyle that allows them to be on the road for up to three months each year. And every single one of them excels at organizing, leading and teaching people .
When our tour guides were in town a couple of weeks ago, they experienced a lot of the NFL playoff hype… and many have become hardcore Seahawks fans. In fact, the 12th Man now has a passport and is showing up in places like Prague, Budapest, Hawaii, Ireland, Madrid, and Paris. Go Hawks!
I just had the joy of hosting an NBC film crew in my living room to talk about marijuana while setting up for this Sunday’s Super Bowl party. Why? To share my ideas on the fact that the two states that legalized the responsible recreational and adult use of marijuana are the same two states with Super Bowl teams.
During the interview, I said, “The people of Washington State and Colorado are wonderful people. You could debate whether we’re smarter, healthier, more outdoorsy, happier, or more free than people from what I call ‘the lower 48.’ But there’s no doubt that the two states that legalized the recreational use of marijuana for adults are the two states with the best football teams in the entire USA. And we’re about to see which of them is number one.”
The interview is scheduled to air this weekend on NBC’s Weekend Today Show. But you don’t need to tune in all weekend to watch it. I’ll post a link to the interview, once it’s available online.
