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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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Cream and Dream in Prague

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Just between you and me, 25 years as a tour guide got me burned out on gelato. I remember as a kid swooning over “Italian Ice Cream” in Germany. And then I oversaw two decades of “it’s to die for” gelato appreciation. Now, as I’m rustling through Europe for four months out of five, I rarely succumb to the temptation to eat ice cream. (It’s a key element to my extremely simple weight-loss program over here.) Yesterday, I was just finishing up my visit to Prague Castle, which brags it’s the biggest anywhere. If exhausting is a measure of big, I’ll buy that claim. You go through the castle like a pinball — it’s all downhill, and everyone funnels out the lower gate.

An incredibly charming schoolboy was hawking Prague’s favorite ice cream. It’s called “Cream and Dream,” which almost makes me blush. Anyway, he lured me in for a taste. Banana was his favorite, so I tried it. I purchased a cone. It almost lived up to its name.

Across the way, I had to update the Barbie Doll Museum. It’s one of those museums that sounds silly, yet is actually great — a vast collection of all things Barbie, dating back to 1959, with social commentary. Looking at the buxom first edition, you can understand why these sirens of capitalist discontent that objectified women’s bodies weren’t allowed here until 1989. (I can’t resist a Nicaragua tangent: Like or loathe their economics, one of the great things about the Sandinistas was that they outlawed using women’s bodies as advertising tools.) I had to tour the Barbie Museum fast because they didn’t let in ice cream. I parked my guide at the stairwell, licking hers and protecting mine.

Barbie in the can and ice cream gone, our next stop was just across the castle lane — the Lobkowicz Palace. I’ve been 10 days now in Hungary and the Czech Republic. They both have a passion for charging admission to dreary palaces stripped bare by the communists and today offering little more than new stucco on high vaulted ceilings as a rack upon which to hang boring stories of local nobles from centuries past.

Just an hour earlier, I had hated the Rosenberg Palace, which is now included in the Prague Castle combo-ticket to make up for the fact that the Golden Lane is closed. I have never understood the appeal of the Golden Lane (even though it’s one of the “Thousand Places to See Before You Die”), and hoped this would be a net plus. It wasn’t.

The Lobkowicz Palace is a new addition to our guidebook; it just opened a couple of years ago, and I’d yet to visit it. As it was late and I was running out of steam fast, I was going to wimp out and just check the details at the ticket booth, but a banner outside claimed it was “Prague’s Best Palace to Visit.” Those kinds of claims generally make me want to disprove them — as they are generally misleading come-ons. So I rallied and got a ticket. It included an audioguide narrated by the count of the palace himself, William Lobkowicz. Audioguides like this one — in which noble heirs of palaces actually walk you through their grand halls and introduce you to great-great-grandpapa in musty old family portraits — are often wonderfully quirky and intimate.

The Lobkowicz audioguide was fabulous. I’m into these lately, with the work we’re doing on our own audio tours, and this one was lovingly designed and produced…and Mr. Lobkowicz had a perfect voice for the project. (Being a count has been outlawed now in the Czech Republic, so I need to bring him down to earth — “Mister” rather than “Count.”)

I was happy to be turned on by the Lobkowicz Palace. I appreciate that they include the audioguide in the visit, and that it brings the place to life and lets you get to know the family — which lost all their possession to the Nazis, got them back for three years after World War II, and then lost them all again to the communists. Now they are embracing the challenge of sharing their noble heritage with their country, and it’s a great gift to locals and foreign visitors alike.

Turning in the audioguide and ready to leave, I gave the clerk my card and told her to thank the count. She asked me if I’d like to meet him. Turns out he, his wife Sandra (a Romanian American he met at Boston College while in exile during the Cold War), and their key curator knew my work and were thrilled to be in the book. Like nobility all over 21st-century Europe, they are working hard to make their vast palaces economically viable as cultural attractions, and need the publicity guidebooks provide.

William and Sandra took me through the palace for a more intimate peek at things. We talked about post-Nazi restitution challenges and triumphs, and the fact that many nobles get a bad rap since the French Revolution. (“We’re just real people who own lots of big palaces.”)

Sitting down to coffee with the best view possible of Prague from their noble loggia, we brainstormed ways to get the palace more recognition. Suddenly a cute schoolboy joined the conversation. It was William junior… done selling ice cream for the day.

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Rue Cler: The Ultimate or Not?

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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 Paris’ best market street, Rue Cler.

As a guidebook researcher and travel writer, I’m inclined to look for the “ultimate” in each category: the ultimate medieval walled town in Germany (Rothenburg), the ultimate prehistoric stone fortress in Ireland (Dún Aenghus), the ultimate castle setting in Castile (Consuegra), the ultimate Riviera port town (Vernazza), the ultimate German enclave in Romania (Sighisoara), the ultimate medieval castle interior (Reifenstein castle, in northern Italy), the ultimate hike in England’s Lake District (Catbells above Keswick), the ultimate neighborhood pub in London (The Anglesea Arms, in South Kensington), the ultimate castle in North Wales (nope, I still can’t pick just one)…and the ultimate pedestrian market street in Paris (Rue Cler).

Travelers want “top tens”…favorites. Even our Smithsonian magazine project was driven by the appetite for readers and travelers to know The Best. We needed to offer not just “20 great destinations,” but Europe’s “top 20 destinations.” The new phenomenon in travel publishing is the demand for “top ten” books. I’ll play along, but who can really say “the best” or the “top ten”? (Perhaps that’s why I included England’s Blackpool in the Smithsonian “top 20” — just to playfully punk the whole notion.)

As consumers of information that shapes our travels, we need to see these lists for what they are: not the top, but a collection of favorites. In my work, once I declare a place “the best” or “the ultimate,” I know a rising tide of visitors will wash away some of its magic, and I need to be out there looking for a successor or another place in order to dilute the crowds. As far as Paris’ Rue Cler goes, you’d think there would be a bevy of pedestrian-only market streets with village charm offering alternative opportunities to feel the pulse of a Parisian neighborhood. Every time I get a suggestion, I track it down. And it doesn’t top my favorite. Rue Cler is tough to beat.

To me, Bamberg is really good, but it’s no Rothenburg. Santa Margherita Ligure is really good, but it’s no Vernazza. Burg Eltz is really good, but it’s no Reifenstein. The circular rock forts of the Ring of Kerry are really good, but they are no Dún Aenghus. And, in Paris, Rue Montorgueil is really good, but it’s no Rue Cler. Collect the bests. But as you sort through all the superlatives and all those “bests’ and “ultimates,” go ahead and disagree. Don’t let some fancy travel writer limit your freedom to find your own ultimates.

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Magyar Energy Drinks

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As my plane landed in Budapest, the pilot said, “Thank you for patronizing Lufthansa Airlines.”

Met at the airport by my friend and local guide, Peter, we hit the road immediately for Eger. My goal: to know Hungary outside of Budapest. Hungarophiles are frustrated by American travelers’ lack of respect for anything in Hungary outside its capital.

The capital city does dominate. In fact, in what other country is its biggest city ten times the size of its next-biggest? Roughly 20 percent of Hungary’s 10 million people live in greater Budapest. Athens — with 40 percent of Greece’s 10 million — is more dominant. But there’s no city in Hungary much more than 10 percent as big as its capital. (Debrecen is second, with around 250,000.)

There’s a quirky charm here. Thirty-six miles from the airport, we passed a town called Hatvan. That’s literally “Sixty” in Hungarian — named for being that many kilometers from Budapest. The fine little four-lane highway, built with EU money, felt like it was paved and painted yesterday. Tidy, wooden-railed overpasses make sure wild game (wild boar, deer, fox, and even frogs) can safely pass the traffic. Peter mentioned that in the communist times, only politicians and the elite could hunt. Now hunting is more accessible and popular.

Short tunnels come with the fanfare of a big one. The length of a land’s tunnels is a function of the height of its mountains. Hungary’s highest point is just 3,000 feet…so the tunnels are tiny. More than a thousand years ago, the Magyars migrated here from Asia and staked their claim to this basin, defined by a rim of mountains. All week here, the weather has been rolling through like a bowling ball. Everyone seems to know that if it stormed over there…it’s coming here.

With capitalism, life in Hungary has sped up. At a gas station mini-market, half the drink case is taken by energy drinks: Along with Red Bull, there’s Hell, Burn, Bomb, Playboy, Adrenalin, and Monster. Some of these exceed legal limits of power drinks in Western Europe.

We talked of the changes Hungary has experienced in the last 20 years. Peter remembered that when the Berlin Wall fell, he journeyed with his family as a schoolboy to Italy in their puddle-jumping Skoda car. They would roll down the autostrada, hugging the shoulder and marveling at how high-powered cars would zip by. In the last years of the Cold War, Hungarians were free to travel to Austria. Everyone had the same dream. They’d routinely bring home three things: refrigerator, color TV, and VCR. They’d put the TV and VCR inside the fridge. Then, in good Hungarian style, they’d pay duty on the fridge and tip the customs man — who wouldn’t look inside (where the TV and VCR were cooling).

In those days, there was a social ethic that it was OK to steal from your company or the state. Everyone cheated. The saying went: “If you don’t steal from the state…you steal from your family.”

Driving by Hungary’s Lake Balaton, the inland sea of this landlocked land, we saw huge communist-era hotels evoking the days when Eastern Europeans would all go to the same place for the same R&R. Poles would take a mountain break at Zakopane. Bulgarians hit the beach at Varna on the Black Sea. And Hungarians would enjoy Lake Balaton. Peter recalled how, back then, all Eastern European tourists toted the same brown-cased Soviet-made cameras. You could tell the year of an apartment by its wallpaper design. Grandiose scenes — like the Swiss Alp fantasy — might fill an entire wall. You’d stare at the wall and call it a vacation.

But all that is ancient history. Anyone under thirty barely remembers the communist times. Traveling in Hungary today, you enjoy a small country with an enormous past and an endearing pride. Hungarian-Americans seem to be notorious know-it-alls when they visit the old country. Several times, I heard them referred to as “New York Magyars” by locals who understand it’s a huge world out there…but there’s no place like home.

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Vernazza: Barnacles, Lorenzo, and a Scraggly Vagabond

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 Cinque Terre, on Italy’s Riviera.

When I first described and recommended Italy’s Cinque Terre in the late 1970s, there was almost no tourism here. The economy was sluggish…and so were the people. Sitting in doorways seemed to be a major pastime. Menus were humble and in one language. I remember local wine sold in bottles without labels — very cheap and not very good. (And back then, “very cheap and not very good” was just fine with me.) It was a world apart, where few spoke English and the American traveler was rare. Its remoteness was the foundation of its poverty.

Today its remoteness is a draw. The five (cinque) towns are affluent, and the region is a national park. Now it seems to be on the itinerary of almost every tourist in Italy. Fancy restaurants abound, as do boutique hotels. There’s a fascinating metabolism here — because of the prime location, tourism brings locals their livelihood as reliably as the tides bring nourishment to barnacles.

Many Cinque Terre seniors who can afford to live elsewhere, do. They see the rustic nature of the towns as more of a negative than a positive. In fact, a big trend in the Cinque Terre is elderly apartment-owners moving into the big city for a more comfortable place to live out their golden years. They hire Eastern Europeans to manage their apartments, renting to tourists who arrive with each train.

On my first visit to the Cinque Terre town of Vernazza, I couldn’t afford a good restaurant meal. But I met a gentle restaurateur named Lorenzo. I’ll never forget how he looked at me, a scruffy backpacker who rarely was served a hot meal. Knowingly, he said, “Sit. You must be hungry. I’ll feed you.” I sat. And he did. Caring strangers I met in my vagabond days of travel, like Lorenzo, left a lasting impression on me. I think I see people more positively than I otherwise would have, if I had never been in need and never ventured far from home. In fact, perhaps being in need far from home is something more risk-averse people should let happen once in a while.

Shortly after my visit, Lorenzo died — in the prime of his life — a victim of cancer. For twenty years, his daughter Monica has been my best friend in Vernazza. When I look into her piercing eyes, I see Lorenzo’s compassion and love. And I’m happy to bring my groups to Monica’s family restaurant — to eat on the same castle-view perch I did back when Lorenzo wore all the hats in his little restaurant and fed scraggly vagabonds.

Every year, we need to update our guidebook listings on the five Riviera ports that make up the Cinque Terre. Because locals are so eager to get into our guidebook (considering all the business it brings), the Cinque Terre assignment can be a challenge. Like, I imagine, a boxer finds going 12 rounds exhilarating, I find it exhilarating to fend off the wanabees and collect the gems of the Cinque Terre worth recommending.

The powerful appeal of these five unique villages gives an intensity to everything about tourism here. Locals need to make their money (they shut down in the winter), travelers need to have the time of their lives, and I need to get it right for the guidebook. With my hectic research schedule and the busy lives of local chefs, one of my favorite moments is around 11 p.m., when both the chefs and I have finished our work for the day. They sit at bars with small tables facing the sea, having a strong drink and a cigarette. I take a slow walk without an agenda, no camera or notepad…just being in the Mediterranean town of my dreams. All of us are savoring the place we work to share with travelers…a little chunk of Europe that we love, season after season, as much as anyone.

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Living with David

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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 actually a work of art: Michelangelo’s David, in Florence.

Some people are not impressed by beauty. They can still enjoy art. I love the thought that art is more than beauty. It’s the closest thing to a time-tunnel experience we can have in our travels. Really. It can take you back. But only if you know the context in which it was created. Who paid for it and why? What was going on at the time? Was the artist just earning a paycheck, or did he have something to say? Were he and his patron in synch or at odds?

Of course, when you look into the eyes of Michelangelo’s David, you’re looking into the eyes of Renaissance Man. Sizing up the giant of medieval darkness, man at the turn of the 16th century had decided he could triumph and step into the modern age. It’s humanism, and it’s also local pride. Michelangelo sculpted David in a time when city-states were proud. Florentines were a particularly proud bunch. While the people of Siena might take a statue they believed brought them a plague, break it into bits, and bury it all around the city of Florence, people in Florence would urinate into the river as if they were peeing on Pisa — a rival town just downstream. David was an apt mascot for proud and confident Florence. God blessed David, enabling him to slay the much stronger giant. And God blessed Florence, enabling it to rise above its crude city-state neighbors.

Other art also takes you traveling and takes you back. Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait, the first of its kind, is of a proud dandy — a cultural leader who deserved respect and good pay. He had just traveled to Italy, where painters were better respected than in his homeland Germany, and where they were given more esteem and more money.

Vincent van Gogh’s Potato Eaters takes you to a humble home of a farm family in 1885 in Belgium. Five salt-of-the-earth peasants with bony fingers share a lamp and a plate of potatoes. Van Gogh knew these people. Before being a painter, he tried to be a pastor. He lived, worked, and clearly empathized with poor miners and farmers. He cared about their lot in life, portraying them gnarled and ugly…but noble at the same time. And with this painting, his first masterpiece, he takes us there.

A helpful mindset when enjoying art in your travels is to imagine the reality of the artist and of the people for whom the art was created. If they had never seen a photograph, a movie, or never traveled. If they believed that God threw lightning bolts when he was angry. If they thought women were evil, Caesar was God, or pewter goblets represented the good life. Munch’s Scream doesn’t just scream. It screams for a reason.