Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

Dear Traveler,

As our nation remembers the horrible events of 9/11 on its 10th anniversary, along with commemorating the victims and how so many people suffered on that tragic day, many of us are sorting through our thoughts with the perspective that comes with a little time. Growing from personal tragedy by thoughtful reflection can be a way to honor those who died or suffered.

I was in Italy’s Cinque Terre on 9/11, filming a TV show. I figure that the first plane hit the North Tower just when we were filming the romantic Via dell’Amore, the “Pathway of Love,” which is a lovers’ meeting point between the towns of Riomaggiore and Manarola. I’ve walked it on five or six trips since, and for me, the Via dell’Amore is no longer the “Pathway of Love”… it’s the “Pathway of 9/11.”

Hiking with our TV gear into the next village, we found a tiny bar packed with people as if it were a makeshift theater. Everyone was staring, jaws dropped, at the TV. I saw the smoldering tower and thought it was some kind of a disaster movie. Then people told me the news. My crew and I gathered outside and decided the only thing we could do was to keep on working.

We had a Rick Steves tour group in Vernazza at the time. That evening, all the Americans were huddling together, wondering what would happen next. There was a line at the town’s one public phone booth. There were two distinct camps of travelers: those who thought, “It’s tragic, but there’s nothing we can do, so keep on traveling”; and those who, psychologically, couldn’t continue with their vacation — but also couldn’t get back home.

My enduring memory was of solidarity — Americans caring for each other and locals caring for Americans. All the people of the Cinque Terre were Americans with us; they did what they could to help us out during that disturbing time, when no one knew what was coming next. My Italian friend reminded me of how, a few years earlier, he had taken me to his village war memorial and told me that America had never really experienced a war like Italy had. Shaking his head sadly, he said, “Now, in a way, you have.” (On my website, you can read a compilation of what I wrote back then, along with a poignant collection of emails travelers sent us in the days after 9/11.)

I played out many scenarios in my mind about what would follow. Might this horrible event be a bridge that connected us with a world that already well-understood suffering and national grief on the scale of 9/11? Might it give us empathy? Or would we seek revenge? Would we respond to this despicable act as a crime or as an act of war? And, if an act of war, whom would we fight?

Looking back over the last decade, it seems that by reacting with such fervor to a tragedy Bin Laden had engineered precisely to get that reaction, we as a society richly rewarded his actions. Bin Laden was unable to radicalize Islam himself, but he knew the USA could do it for him. And, from my perspective, we did. In the interest of “national security,” we would compromise the values so fundamental to what makes us Americans. Instead of aspiring to be the gentle giant who responded to overseas crises swiftly and with compassion, or who patiently stood up to the oppressive communist ideology through a Cold War that spanned generations, we became a reactionary, vengeful country that threw out the rulebook — unilaterally going to war, employing torture techniques, and holding suspected terrorists without trial for years on end. And with each step away from our bedrock morals, we unwittingly demonstrated to the Arab world that America was to be feared and hated. Looking back, I don’t think Bin Laden — whose deputy has said, “More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media” — could have hoped for a better result. Could it be that the USA is a different place today not because of 9/11, but because of our extreme reaction to 9/11?

In the travel industry, people stopped buying tours for a while. Many on my staff wondered if we’d be able to survive. For the first time in my career, simply making our payroll was a challenge. I gathered my co-workers and told them, “We’ll be giddy flagships of confidence — for the good of our business and even more important, for the good of our nation.” I knew that in order for Americans to understand things from a broader perspective — and there would be lots to try to understand in the coming years — travel was now more important than ever. While some considered those of us who tried to “take 9/11 in stride” unpatriotic, I had a strong sense that for our very national security it was more important than ever that the USA find ways to be a part of the family of nations. We made a huge effort to keep people traveling.

In the months after 9/11, I remember giving my travel talks to large groups. There was some question whether it was even appropriate to encourage travel and vacationing while our nation was in mourning. But the organizations who invited me to talk soldiered on. The Society of American Travel Writers asked me to be their keynote speaker in Las Vegas, and the AARP hired me to come to Houston to give a big talk at their convention. In my first big speaking gigs after 9/11, talking about packing light and catching the train seemed silly considering the trauma our nation was going through. My message morphed into a political one, encouraging Americans to travel because we need to better understand our world with firsthand, people-to-people experiences. It was a scary experience from a speaking point of view. But, in a nation that seemed determined — in lockstep — to shrink back from the world, I felt driven to advocate the opposite response, to embrace the world. By standing in front of a group and saying, “Get a grip, America,” it seemed people needed permission to move on. People found it cathartic. The SATW and AARP talks were perhaps the most exhilarating of my career. This was the year I came to see the role of a travel writer as being like the medieval jester — to go out, learn what’s happening outside the castle, come home, and tell the king the truth.

In the long run, the impact of 9/11 on our business has been both expected and surprising. Predictably, our tour sales took a big dip in 2002, and we no longer sell Swiss Army knives (because you can’t carry them onto an airplane). Just as predictably, after a couple of years of post-9/11 jitters, demand for travel surged once again. But 9/11 also inspired me to speak out more boldly about the politics of travel. I now routinely give talks about the value of travel as a force for peace all over the country. And that talk spawned a new book that was named the travel book of the year in 2010 by the SATW — Travel as a Political Act.

I noticed that the US State Department has issued a travel advisory for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In our post-9/11 world, considering the importance of building bridges rather than walls, I’d like to issue an advisory against not traveling. In fact, on 9/11/11, I’ll be in Europe myself…traveling on and immersing myself in our beautiful world, just as I have been for the last decade.

Happy Travels,

Rick Steves

In June, U.S. Catholic magazine published an interview with me on how to travel not as a political act, but as a spiritual one. The entire Q&A is now available online.

As a Christian, I enjoy being open to spiritual experiences while on the road, and there’s no more spiritual experience than traveling to the developing world. To be with the world’s struggling and downtrodden is to be with Christ. My expertise as a writer and guide, however, is traveling through Europe, which also offers plenty of opportunities to get close to God. Here’s my guide to five places in Europe that stoke my spirit.

In celebration of this blog being awarded “Best Travel Blog” by the Society of American Travel Writers, this week I’m taking some of my (and your) favorite blog entries out for a victory lap. I hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane.

Today’s entry was originally posted on April 11, 2011.

I spent the afternoon in my hotel room, splicing all the little changes and discoveries into what will be the 2012 edition of my Rick Steves’ Rome guidebook. Stepping out for just a quick little break is dangerous. There’s a mean current here and, turning the corner from my hotel, I got swept out into the Roman sea — so filled with colorful and fragrant distractions. I didn’t get back for hours. It really was like swimming in a current.

Tiny black cobbles slope downhill to the ancient street level at the Pantheon’s portico. From there, I look up at a symphony of images: designer shades and flowing hair glinting and backlit in the magic-hour sun; a flute section of ice-cream-lickers sitting on their marble bench in the spritz of the fountain under the obelisk exclamation point; strolling Romanian accordion players who refuse to follow the conductor; and the stains of a golden arch on a wall marking where a McDonald’s once sold fast food, as if to celebrate its demise. The entire scene is corralled by pastel walls — providing the visual equivalent of good acoustics.

As I let go of the Pantheon’s Egyptian columns, the current sweeps me past siren cafés, past the TV news crew covering something big in front of the parliament building, and out into Via Cavour. This is the deep end, which hosts the rough crowd from the suburbs who come in to the center for some cityscape elegance and concrete-people friendliness. They’ve gooped on a little extra grease and are wearing their best leggings, heels, and T-shirts.

Veering away from the busy pedestrian boulevard, I come upon Fausto, a mad artist standing proudly amid his installation of absurdities. While crazy, he always seems strangely sane in this world. And this year, with the opening of the giant and trying-too-hard MAXXI modern art gallery (11 years and 150 million euros for very little), Fausto seems downright brilliant. He’s the only street artist I’ve met who personally greets viewers. After surveying his tiny gallery of hand-scrawled and thought-provoking tidbits lined along a curb, I ask for a card. Giving me a handmade piece of wallet-sized art, he reminds me his “secretary” is at the end of the curb — a plastic piggy bank for tips.

The Campo de’ Fiori, which creates its own current, feels like a punished child. Just last week, after a Roman teenager drank herself into a coma, the police forbade drinking outside of bars and restaurants — and now it’s like someone turned on the lights at a party before midnight. Farther down the street, the fun is replaced by an uptight vibe. It’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s headquarters, with military police poised as if expecting an attack. There’s a sourness among locals on the street here. This marks the point of what used to be a very helpful and popular bus stop that was replaced with police vans to provide security for Italy’s bombastic leader. Locals gossip that he wears a bulletproof vest and shows his teenage girlfriend videos of him with president Bush at Camp David for foreplay. To some Italians, Berlusconi is everything they wish they could be, exaggerated. Some marvel at how he stays in office. Others understand that when a politician owns his own media empire and has 24/7 news networks at his service, even a Berlusconi can hoodwink an electorate.

I pass a homeless man, tattered but respectfully dressed, leaning against a wall savoring a cigar and a bottle of wine while studying Rome’s flow as if it had a plot. I chat with twins from Kentucky, giddy about their Roman days as they celebrate their fortieth birthday. Their Doublemint smiles on high energy make their very presence on the streets of Rome an ad for embracing the good life.

On Piazza del Popolo (no one can figure out whether it’s named for the poplar trees that framed it, or the people who fill it), a very good Michael Jackson, with shifty shoulders and transformer ankles, moonwalks — sending a huge crowd into orbit. Moving on, I slip into a church just as the ushers close the doors for the 6:30 Mass. Inside, the white noise of Roman streets becomes the incense-d hummm of a big church with a determined priest and not enough people. I slip down the side aisle, hands folded as if here to worship, to catch a glimpse of a Caravaggio, that thriller of the 17th century.

Stepping back outside, I’m at the north entrance of the city. Piazza del Popolo was a big deal before the age of trains and planes. The 16th-century pope pulled out all the stops to welcome pilgrim Europe (anyone arriving from the north). Twin domed churches create a trident of straight boulevards emanating from an obelisk, taking pilgrims lacking maps or guidebooks to whatever they hiked here for: the Vatican to the right, the ancient city directly ahead, and the other big pilgrimage churches (St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore) to the left. Three churches on this square, each dedicated to Mary, set the religious tone for any pilgrim’s visit to the Mecca of Christendom.

Determined to swim back to my hotel to get back into my data-entry task at hand, I pass the same well-dressed bum with the cigar and the buzz, still intently caught up in the plot of the city. I imagine being in his pickled head for just a moment.

The twilight sky is just right for sales now, as guys from Somalia launch their plastic florescent whirlybirds high into the sky while their friends slam plastic doll heads into boards so hard they become spilled goop, and then creepily reconstitute themselves, ready for another brutal slam. These street trinkets that somehow keep illegal African immigrants from starving make me wish I had bought all the goofy things people have sold on the streets of Rome over the years — from the flaming Manneken-Pis lighters to the five-foot-tall inflatable bouncing cigars to the twin magnets that jitter like crickets when you play with them just so — and made a museum.

Finally I swim with a struggling stroke back to the safety of my hotel, where none of that Roman current is allowed in. The problem: While taking a break from inputting all I’ve learned, I come home with even more to input. In Rome, one thing leads to another, and, if you’re trying to get on top of your notes, it can be dangerous to go out.

I have some very exciting news: This week I was honored with the “Oscar” of travel writing – the Society of American Travel Writers’ Travel Writer of the Year Award. In addition to this grand prize, my on-the-road blog posts won the gold medal for Best Travel Blog. Since I have so much fun sharing my travels with you – and the judges singled out your thoughtful comments as one of the strengths of this blog – this award means a great deal to me.

In celebration, I’d like to take some of my favorite posts out for a victory lap. Beginning Monday, I will run a “Best of Blog” series for one week. Over the weekend, please use the comments section below to nominate your favorite entry to be included in the lineup. Which of my blog entries have stirred your wanderlust, or caused you to think differently about travel and the world? I’ll try to add one or two of your suggestions to next week’s series.

Thank you, Society of American Travel Writers, for these great honors. And thank you, my readers, for being my virtual travel partners!

How does somebody do the inglorious legwork it takes to become such a “distinguished” travel writer? This clip will give you a sense of my daily routine while I’m updating guidebooks in Europe.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.