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Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

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

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Bruges: Callused Pinkies, Wobbly Fries, and a High-Calorie Passion for Good Living

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Bruges, Belgium.

Chocolate, beer, canalside bike rides, French fries, carillon concerts…Bruges is an amazing little tourist town. While you might get discouraged as you shuffle through its sights along with hordes of tourists, it’s worth it. The town entertains with a unique knack for excellence and an infectious passion for good living.

Locals swear by their personal favorite chocolatier. They know that when the weather’s too hot, the chocolate-makers close down. The people of Bruges buy their chocolate with a concern for freshness like a muffin-eater does in the USA. Yesterday’s chocolate just won’t do.

Pubs are not just pubs. They are destinations…as the annual visits of many American beer aficionados attest. Pubs in the ye olde center — places you’d think would be overrun by tourists — are the proud domain of locals, who find the fact that monasteries have historically brewed the finest Belgian beers perfectly in line with their personal theology.

French fries (called Vlaamse frites, or “Flemish fries,” for the region of Flanders, in which Bruges lies) are another guilty local pleasure. One time a Bruges chef took me into the kitchen to witness the double-deep-frying process required to make a fry up to Flemish standards. His nervous, giggly reveal reminded me of the kid who showed me my first dirty magazine at the Y back when I was a grade-schooler. He’d pick up a single fat fry, ready for its second hot-oil bath. Holding it at the bottom, he made it wobble, as if playfully sharing a centerfold.

Bruges offers the best carillon concert I’ve found in Europe (normally June-Sept Mon, Wed, and Sat at 21:00; Oct-May Wed and Sun at 14:15). The city puts out benches in the courtyard below the City Hall bell tower. You can hear the tunes ringing out from the tower’s bells anywhere in the town center. But to sit in that courtyard, looking up at the rustic brick tower and hearing the performance, is a ritual for locals…and it just seems right.

Seated there one evening, I gaze up at the lofty tower. Like a kid checks in with his mom and dad before going down a long slide at the playground, the carillonneur pops his head out a window and waves. Then he disappears and begins hammering — literally hammering, as a carillon keyboard looks like the keyboard foot pedals of a big organ, yet are played by the little-finger sides of clenched fists.

After the concert, we clap, and he appears again — tiny head popping out the little window to happily catch our applause. The crowd dissipates. I wait at the base of the tower to personally thank the carillonneur. A few minutes later, he’s at street level, in his overcoat, looking like any passerby. I shake his hand and find myself gripping a freakishly wide little finger. A lifetime of pounding the carillon has left him with a callus that more then doubled the width of his pinky. Just one more artist in the city of Bruges.

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Helsinki: Somewhere Between Bland and Mellow

Helsinki blossoms if you take time for a walk. I came upon the flea market — a square filled with folding tables stacked with stuff. The days are long gone when Helsinki flea markets were full of treasures sold by desperate Russians from just over the border. This was just stuff being shuffled from one family to the next.

Wandering under the sun through the square, I closed my eyes and listened to the soundtrack of 300 Finns at a flea market. It was almost silent. I could have been in a mountain meadow. At this moment, Finland seemed somewhere between bland and mellow…very orderly.

Two powerful icebreakers were moored across the harbor. Since they are capable of breaking through 15 feet of ice, you know this place gets cold in the winter. At the shore is a wooden deck with washing tables built out over the water. The city provides this for locals to clean their carpets. A good Saturday chore in the summer is to bring the family carpet down to the harborfront, scrub it with seawater, and then let it air-dry in the Baltic breeze. Whenever I’m in Helsinki, I go to a neighborhood sauna. The sauna on the cruise ship from Stockholm or in the hotel is just not right. I want to be with Finns, not tourists. My guidebook has long described one particular sauna as being in a poor neighborhood where people don’t have saunas of their own. That’s old news. Now, like so many old neighborhoods, with the general affluence of our age, this place is becoming trendy.

People of all walks of life come here for a relaxing break. It’s a personal thing…a time for some peace and quiet. Finns say the sauna is a great equalizer — here, wearing nothing and slapping your back with birch twigs, there are no bosses. Everyone’s equal. The sauna has a particular appeal during the long, cold winters. There’s a big cooler just inside the door where people put their drinks (if you want a beer, you have to bring your own). It’s stacked with BYOB bottles and frozen bundles of birch twigs.

Sitting there, naked and sweating, surrounded by sauna experts, not knowing a word of Finnish and not knowing the routine, I felt a little gawky. Locals can seem stern and off-putting. But as soon as I talked to someone, I realized how deceiving that impression is. It’s a lost opportunity when tourists let their awkward self-consciousness bully them into silence. Break the silence and you’ll likely enjoy a warm avalanche of acceptance — and a great conversation. Almost always, when locals look unfriendly… it’s a misperception. I bet they feel a similar awkwardness — or at least believing that assumption helps me break the ice.

Leaving the sauna, I walked back to my hotel — impressed again at the way five million Finns can maintain a distinct culture here in this far-northern corner of Europe.

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Aerø: Everything’s so…Danish

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is the Danish isle of Aerø.

While big cities often mask the distinctive features of a nation, I find the rural corners and small towns give a better insight into what makes a particular culture unique. A strong social ethic permeates Danish society, and you really feel that on the quiet and sleepy little isle of Aerø.

On Aerø, you’re welcome to pick berries and nuts, but historically the limit has been “no more than would fit in your hat.” For years I’ve been recommending Mrs. Hansen’s bike-rental depot next to the gas station at the edge of town. Recently, a big hotel in town (with far more economic clout) decided to rent bikes, too. I saw Danish communalism in the reaction of a local friend of mine: “They don’t need to do that — that’s Mrs. Hansen’s livelihood.” Of course, there’s no law forbidding it, and with our social ethic, we’d just say competition is good. But in Denmark, to look out for Mrs. Hansen’s little bike-rental business was a matter of neighborly decency.

I love to rent a bike from Mrs. Hansen and pedal into the idyllic Danish countryside, where I find myself saying “cute” more than I should. When in the Netherlands, I have a running joke with my guide friends. We say, “Everything’s so…Dutch.” Now, in Denmark, I say, “Everything’s so…Danish.”

Denmark is, simply, cute. Travelers here find the human scale and orderliness of Danish society itself the focus of their “sightseeing.” The place feels like a pitch ‘n putt course sparsely inhabited by blonde Vulcans. And survey after survey finds the Danes the most content and happy people on the planet.

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The Camino in Spain: Trod, Trek, or Trudge

I’m out on a dusty trail in Spain where pilgrims have trod for a thousand years.

We’re filming, and we debate words like that. Do pilgrims “trod,” “trek,” or “trudge”? They don’t trudge — that rhymes with “grudge.” Trod sounds a bit dreary; trek sounds a bit light. We end up saying “walk.” The trail — the Camino de Santiago a.k.a. the Way of St. James — is really full because this is a Holy Year, and the feast day of St. James is approaching. Pilgrims are timing their journey to arrive on that day in Santiago, where the remains of the saint are supposedly buried.

Witnessing this timeless quest and its elevated thinking is inspirational…and in striking contrast to where I was just one day earlier — Pamplona — for the crazy running of the bulls. (In Pamplona, a drunk guy in a bar explained to me that each of the six bulls that run in the morning meets its matador that evening in the bullring. Then, as if sharing a priceless tip with me, he said, “But a bull can escape that fate by simply breaking his horn on one of the barriers during the stampede.”)

Meanwhile, on the Camino, pilgrims come in all types. Prepackaged groups, which I think of as “pilgrim teabags,” have clean, matching T-shirts. Each hiker is issued a mass-produced walking stick with a decorative gourd tied to the top; each stick also has a dangling scallop shell with a brightly painted cross of St. James.

Other pilgrims are humble church groups from distant Catholic lands. We encounter an otherworldly group from Lithuania with its raspy, amplified chant-leader shuffling along. The group members are carrying an old boom box, a nearly life-size cross, and various statuettes. Eager to film them, we drive ahead and wait — as if preparing an ambush. Our cameraman scampers to get just the right vantage point while I sit in the car. Then, a few minutes later, with their intentionally monotonous chant, they walk by my open window — just inches from my eyes. I wish my eyes were a camera. While we get a great wide shot, that close-up pilgrim-pass-by is one of the most vivid images we’ve ever missed while shooting.

We stake out a position in a medieval village. This is the standard, ghostly quiet village pilgrims pass all along the route. Its only shop is a vending machine cut into a stone wall. An ancient woman scrubs her laundry at a creek-side place where women have done this for centuries. A shepherd scoots his gangly flock over a tiny bridge.

In this peaceful corner, our mission is to interview pilgrims about their experiences. We meet a New Yorker who has just hiked for days across the vast Spanish plain and learned nothing about life or himself. He is, in his words, “a little pissed off with it all.” And we come upon a bouncy flower child from Berlin — a 20-year-old girl hiking alone, singing to herself, and radiant with the value of this personal journey. She speaks to us as if she were a real saint come to earth. Talking with her, I feel like I have just entered a Botticelli painting.

An Englishman we meet is doing the trail in three successive years because he can’t get enough time away from his 9-to-5 job to do it in one 30-day stretch. While he walks, he has been reflecting on simplicity. Everyone we meet (except for the one pissed-off guy) is having a richly rewarding time. I keep thinking how a standard RV vacation — with its Swiss-Army-knife of comforts — couldn’t be more different than this chance to be away from the modern world with all that it entails.

Of course, I’m in the fast lane of normal, workaday life and just observing. (And my mind is in a completely different space compared to the pilgrims. Last night, as I was crowded by my hotel’s shower curtain, it occurred to me that no hotel in Europe has invested in the wonderful bent curtain rods that arc out — giving big Americans in need of elbow room a more spacious place to shower.) Each time I talk to someone on the Camino de Santiago, I’m inspired to find a way to set aside the month it takes to walk from France to Santiago. Someday I will.

In Santiago, we greet pilgrims as they enter the last stretch. A bagpiper stands tall under an arch, reminding us this is a Celtic corner of Spain. Playing the theme to Star Wars adds an incongruity to the ambience — reminding me of the challenges a pilgrim encounters as he or she struggles, often in vain, to leave the modern mindset.

But then, on the square in front of the cathedral of Santiago, I witness joy and jubilation sweep over those who finish this journey — as I do each time I’m here. Whether religious or personal, the commitment required to do this trip is great…and the rewards are even greater.

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Visit Blackpool and Las Vegas to Put the P in "Pristine"

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Blackpool, England.

I was in Las Vegas recently. While immersed in the fun with people from all walks of life, I couldn’t stop thinking about England’s Blackpool. Both resorts provide their country a place where a strata of society can get down to the basic mission of life — mating — and then offer an affordable escape for that same gang to enjoy an invigorating break from a life of meaningless work.

Kitsch, gaudy hotels, leggy temptations, and lots of lights. Blackpool extends its season into the winter with its Illuminations festival. Vegas is bright as day all night. Strolling each resort, you mingle with people in love, families awestruck at dancing water shows, and gangs of friends letting loose. You also see lost souls, the consequences of a lifetime of bad diet, people who can’t afford limos in limos, and lots of booze. Gambling offers even perennial losers a chance to win. Blackpool, like Vegas, tried to become a family destination. But apparently adult distractions are more profitable. So, Vegas sidewalks are littered with playing-card-sized call-girl ads.

Las Vegas and Blackpool each have their own Eiffel Tower (where you can “see Paris” without really leaving home) and a busy schedule of dazzling shows that keep big stars big long after their general sales potential has ebbed. Blackpool employs the British equivalents of Cher, Barry Manilow, and Donnie and Marie — who are all still in their prime on The Strip. (I was marveling at giant billboards of Marie Osmond — several stories tall. Her big smile was everywhere. Then I noticed rice or something clogging the little triangles between her whitened teeth.)

In Vegas, people seriously compare the buffets. (For $24.95, you can eat as much as you want for 24 hours. The shrimp is great at the Mirage.) And in Blackpool, people talk about fish-and-chips as if it’s high cuisine. “Hen parties” roam, the bride wearing her veil and slowly sucking her way through a crude lollipop. Both Blackpool and Vegas make your next stop either more dreary…or more pristine.