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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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Ferret Legging and Rustic Pubs: Escaping the Cotswold Cliches

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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 England’s Cotswolds.

For three decades, I’ve said it’s a temptation for a travel writer to overuse the word “quaint,” and I reserve my use of that word to describe England’s Cotswold villages. The Cotswolds — while a world apart from London — are just a couple of hours’ drive away. This tidy little region of characteristic old towns is perfect for the American traveler looking to balance urban Britain with some thatched cuteness.

Each of Europe’s famous cutesy regions has a historical basis for its present-day charm. For the Cotswolds, it’s a combination of old sheep wealth (big fancy manor houses, gorgeous churches, and stately market towns — all paid for by wool) and isolation. The Cotswolds have been isolated from the rest of England both economically (since the wool trade collapsed) and physically (highway and train service to the region is sparse, making it a kind of backwater that missed the modern economic current).

Of course, these poster-child-pretty English villages are very touristy. And, as in just about any much-promoted region (Germany’s Rhineland, Italy’s Tuscany, Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, France’s Provence), the tourist circuit is a well-trampled route, with parking lots big enough for buses, hotels that can accommodate 50-person tour groups, and huggable traffic-free villages.

The challenge, of course, is to get behind the touristy facade. I make a point to leave Wiesbaden on the Rhine, Greve in Tuscany, and Killarney in Ireland to the big-bus tourists. The towns to avoid in the Cotswolds are Bourton-on-the-Water and Broadway. But there are always alternatives without the aggressive promotional budgets and favor of the national tourist board.

To get beyond the cliches, travelers need to find the rough underbelly. I have an appetite for local scuttlebutt that isn’t promoted by the sanitized, politically correct tourist boards. Ditch the glossy brochures, and gossip with locals in the pubs. Asking a native over a pint about traditions that persist even in the touristy present, I was told of “ferret legging” as a way of testing the toughness of young lads. They’d make the young man put on a pair of baggy pants, tie off the cuffs, then insert two angry ferrets (little weasel-like creatures) who would fight it out inside the pants while he was wearing them. (I don’t know if this still happens…but the image has certainly stuck with me.)

Admittedly, most Cotswold residents who can afford to live in these cutesy towns are escapees from the big city. They’re wealthy and enjoying the idyllic English retirement of their dreams. But the lanes, cemeteries, thatches, and old churches have a plush and fragrant connection with their past.

Cemeteries in Cotswold churchyards are often built up over years of burials, leaving the path to the village church actually lower than the graveyard ground level. Tolkien-esque trees seem to grip old churches. In Stow-on-the-Wold, I swear the side door to the church — flanked by two ancient yew trees — was the sight of the classic “Behold I stand at the door and knock” scene.

In the touristy Cotswolds, spend some time in the less-pretty towns in the less-pretty pubs, and be sure to talk to locals. And if someone wants to drop a couple of angry ferrets down your trousers, buy them a pint and say, “After you.”

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Sweet-and-Sour Lake Hallstatt

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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 Austria’s Lake Hallstatt.

When I think of my favorite places in Europe (other than the great capitals), they are where both nature and culture mix. While big-time resorts with big-time promotional budgets look good on the Web, in reality they’re more concrete than charm, with jammed parking lots and cookie-cutter hotel rooms. I’ll take the offbeat places, where creaky locals walk gingerly on creaky floorboards, where each balcony has a lovingly watered and one-of-a-kind flowerbox, and where swans know just the right time to paddle by for scraps from diners at lakeside dinner tables.

I like to say that the town of Hallstatt, on the lake of Hallstatt (two hours south of Salzburg, in Austria), is “where locals commune with nature.” It’s rare that a town’s charm will get me out of bed early. But there’s something about the glassy waters of Lake Hallstatt viewed from the high end of town: The church spire is mirrored in the tranquil water, and then the shuttle boat from the train station across the lake cuts through — like a knife putting a swirl in the icing on a big cake.

Back in my rented room (Zimmer in German), my hostess is Frau Zimmermann. For years I stayed in her place mainly because I couldn’t get over the idea that her name meant “Mrs. Room-for-rent-man.” Her breakfast room is where I came up with the descriptor “well-antlered.” That means more than just lots of trophies on the wall. A well-antlered place creaks with tradition, from the homemade marmalade to the down-filled comforters, and from the apron that the hostess wears to the fact that you don’t email your credit card number to make a reservation…you just phone her, agree on a date and price for your room, give her your name, and then show up.

As I dine lakeside in Hallstatt, the swans crane their necks for bits of bread. With a generous basket to parcel out, I feel like I’m running an orphanage. As they stretch greedily, reaching for each bit of crust I loft, I think they do it well enough that if they were cranes, they’d be swaning. Free bread makes the once-graceful swans a flailing gaggle of hungry grubbers.

Traditional green felt hats distinguished by jaunty decorative feathers are big in Austria. On my first trip to Europe, when I was just a teenybopper, my Dad and I each bought one of these characteristic hats and had a friendly competition filling it with souvenir pins and fancy feathers. Now, 40 years later, I happen to be in town during the annual feather-in-the-hat party, and local men are all out with their finest Tirolean-type hats — each with a very proud feather sprouting from the rim. Many men have handlebar moustaches to match. Watching them strut around in their lederhosen worn shiny by a lifetime of such rituals, I consider life before tourism here in what would have been a remote community at the deepest point of a long, dead-end lake.

Facing the lake is the home of a man who fills his house with debris he’s collected from bottom of Lake Hallstatt. Of course, the history here goes back literally millennia. But the most fascinating treasure from the lakebed dates from just 65 years ago. It’s the trove of Nazi paraphernalia he’s gathered, including piles of war medallions. As I try to sort this out, his explanation makes perfect sense: When it became clear that Germany would lose World War II, throughout the Third Reich, anyone who had won any honors would chuck them any way they could. Lakes offered a perfect solution. In a post-Nazi world, who wants trophies honoring their heroic contribution to that regime on their wall or bookshelf?

As the swans grab their bread, as Frau Zimmermann hangs her comforters over view balconies to fluff up and air, and as the men display their hat-capping finery, I gaze out at the lake. I imagine a scene two generations earlier, when once-fierce Nazi heroes, now filled with fright, came to the lakeside under cover of darkness, and hurled their treasured medals — evidence of their complicity with Hitler — into Lake Hallstatt…my vote for the most beautiful lake in Austria.

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Setting an Ambush in Tangier

I can’t think of any big city in Europe where you wake up literally at “cock crow.” The roosters of Tangier, even more than the minaret’s call to prayer, make sure the city is awake early…and today, my day began at cock crow.

I step to my hotel window and see Europe across the busy strait, and ponder the view. In the distance is the Rock of Gibraltar. Seeing clearly every boat between here and there, I can understand why Britain is determined to keep that strategic piece of rock — and why, through much of the 20th century, Tangier was considered too strategic to be controlled by any one country, and therefore was jointly ruled by the European powers. No boat enters or leaves the Mediterranean without being noticed by Gibraltar or Tangier.

The vast majority of tourists here in Tangier are day-trippers. But, in spite of its “Arabian efficiency” (hotels have lots of doormen and maids, but their printers function more as wrinklers if you happen to be a travel writer in need of a printout), I like to spend the night.

Meeting my TV crew, we catch a taxi up to the kasbah (castle). I hear a tap-tap-tap, look back, and see my back window filled with the toothy grin of a little boy. He leapt onto the cab for the ride, legs and arms spread across its back side with nothing to grip. Seeing a sudden stop about to happen and with nothing to hold onto, his smile disappears and he slinks back, eventually hopping safely off the cab. Later, he and a little girl hop onto the rear bumper of a delivery truck, hitching an exciting ride as it threads through the keyhole gate out of the kasbah and down into the old town.

We’re in Tangier’s kasbah to film the tour groups herded through their predictable series of Kodak moments. I want travelers to side-trip from Spain to Tangier — but also to understand the consequences of opting for the popular bus tour. Waiting in the fortress square for the tour group, I feel like part of an ambush. The snake charmers are poised to turn on the charm. The folkloric musicians have taken their places. The woman at the gift shop stands ready at her door. Little kids organize their postcards. My cameraman locks the camera onto the tripod, which makes that loading-a-shotgun sound you hear in TV westerns. Then, like Apaches coming over the bluff, the tour group appears and follows their guides trustingly into the square. The snake is yanked out of his box, the drum and squawky horn play, and the folkloric three-stringed guitar player gets the tassel on his fez orbiting his head. Some giggling tourist gets a big, lazy reptile for a necklace, and all the group snaps photos. Moments later, the group is gone — rushing to the carpet shop — and the snake is thrown back into the box, lid shut, baking in the midday sun.

I don’t often think about animals. But imagining snakes in dark, hot boxes awaiting tour groups has me noticing the rough lot in life of animals in Tangier. A few minutes later, in the market, I see a writhing burlap bag lashed to the rack atop a beat-up old car— it’s filled with chicken awaiting sale at the market. Then I nearly step on a scrawny cat with a fishtail hanging out its mouth like a Bogart cigarette.

Cats seem to scavenge, stretch, and yawn everywhere. A family of cats fills a crusty doorway. A small truck pulls up, and a man with white gloves grabs five kittens, one by one. With each grab, the little cat stiffens its legs and is tossed ingloriously through a hole into the van. When the man with gloves runs out of kittens, he goes for the mother. She snarls. He jerks back. She scampers. The toothless man who feeds the cats — a fixture on this square — clearly knows that a trip in the white-gloved man’s truck is a death sentence, and shoos away his feline friends. The cats scram as the man in the gloves has a word with the toothless cat-lover.

Then a funeral procession interrupts the scene. Ten men surrounded by a happy commotion of children parade by, singing a religious song with the reverence of “Happy Birthday.” The body, wrapped in a blanket and set in a bed of fresh hay, is jiggled on its wooden rack as all the men jockey to “give the departed one a shoulder,” and the mobile ritual disappears around the bend.

Later, back down by the port, the same tour group passes me, heading down to catch their ferry. I see them clutching their bags and purses, attracting hustlers like flies. Saying no just makes things worse. Just as on my last visit to Tangier, when I encounter groups like this, I can only think, “self-imposed hostage crisis.” And when exploring this travelers’ fantasy on my own, I can only think, “How could anyone be in southern Spain — so close — and not hop over to experience this wonderland?”

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Rome by Night

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 Rome after dark.

Once you’ve been out on the town in Rome after dark, going out for the evening in a big American city is never quite the same. Rome has a few fast-food joints, but they’re held at bay by a stony cityscape that celebrates slow food instead. Waiters have worked so long together that they seem to communicate on their own frequency as they scurry their dishes back and forth. Scruffy boys selling single roses circulate among sidewalk tables, testing a wary truce they’ve worked out with the restaurateur — and finessing sales pitches that almost add charm to the ambience. Cars are lodged sloppily on curbs, and black-and-white notices announcing the newly dead are pasted haphazardly to walls.

Each slice of downtown Rome changes throughout the day and evening. What might be a tiny vegetable market in the day (Monet painting) becomes a destination for dressy couples going out to eat in the evening (how do her high heels work on the cobbles?)…and then, late at night, an edgy gathering place for those who ate at home and are now all about drinking. Squares enlivened by fountains shine after dark. While the architect who designed those Baroque fountains had no inkling of electronic illumination, the fountains seem made-to-order for thoughtful floodlighting.

Back in 1999, I went to Rome ready to make a TV episode entitled “The Best of the Eternal City.” But as the millennium approached, the best of the Eternal City was all still under scaffolding. I was traumatized. I remember sitting down with my producer and cameraman at the hotel’s breakfast table and exploring our options. Half the visual icons of the city were marred by scaffolding. Not only would the show be ugly if we shot it as planned; but by the time it aired, all the scaffolding would be down, and the famous sights would be better-looking than ever — and just perfect for a TV crew like ours.

We considered going home; heading for Sicily to film a program there; or rewriting the script to give Rome a new angle. I had never done this before (and I hope to never do it again), but we decided to salvage something out of Rome and come up with a new script. The show was called “Rome: Baroque, After Dark,” and shooting the city after dark turned out to be a delight. Rather than arenas and temples, we enjoyed convivial piazzas with kids who kick soccer balls until midnight, hand gestures that mean “absolutely delicious,” and men fawning over their neighbors’ Vespas.

The shoot worked out fine. And two years later, in the next millennium, we came back and shot the show we had intended to shoot in 1999. The scaffolding was all down, and the Eternal City was spiffed up fit for a caesar.

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Birthday in Tangier

Monday was my birthday, and no one in Morocco knew it. To celebrate, I took a couple of hours alone just floating through the back streets of Tangier…observing.

Looking at a window filled with photos of adorable little boys wearing fezzes and gauzy girls dressed like princesses, I realize why I like the display windows of family photographers throughout the world. They show the cultural ideals to the extreme — the way mothers dream their children might look — and provide insight.

I don’t know if men run the show here, but they outnumber women in the cafés 100 to 1. I want to take a skinny teenage girl’s photo. She giggles with her friends, shows me her wedding ring, and says her husband would have her head if she let me do that. Yesterday my local friend told me, “Moroccan men like their women meaty, not skinny. But that is changing with the young generation and television.”

Old men walk around like sages in robes with pointy hooded jellabas. It makes me wonder whether a teenager might say, “Dad, I know you wear it and Grandpa wore it, but I’m just not going to wear the pointy hood.” Seeing these old men in pointy, rough cloth hooded robes, I keep wanting to ask, “Where’s the gnome conference?”

Wandering through the market, I collect a collage of vivid images. A butcher has made a colorful curtain of entrails, creating mellow stripes of all textures. Camera-shy Berber tribeswomen are in town today selling goat cheese wrapped in palm leaves. A man lumbers through the crowd pushing a ramshackle cart laden with a huge side of beef. He makes a honking sound, and I think he’s just being funny. But it isn’t the comical beep-beep I’d make behind a wheelbarrow. Small-time shipping is his livelihood, the only horn he has is his vocal chords, and he is on a mission.

Wandering deeper into the back lanes, I see henna stencils in plastic wrap — a quick and modern way to stain the designs onto your hands. Another gnome walks by with a pointy hood and a long beard — half white and half hennaed red.

Tiny shops buzz with activity. One small place, no bigger than a small bedroom, has been divided horizontally with a second floor five feet high. It houses a rickety loom on each level, employing four men who wiggle in and out of their workstations each day… all their lives.

Around the corner, the click-click-click of a mosaic maker draws me into another tiny shop, where a man with legs collapsed under himself sits all day chiseling intentionally imperfect mosaic chips (as only Allah is perfect, the imperfection is considered beautiful) to fit a pattern for a commissioned work.

It’s pouring rain, water careens down the stepped brick lane, and, exploring on, I feel like a wet dog. Drenched, I follow a colorfully scarved women into a community bakery. She carries a platter of doughy loaves under a towel ready to be baked into bread. The baker, artfully wielding the broom-handled wooden spatula, receives her loaves. He hardly misses a beat as he pushes and pulls the neighborhood’s baked goods — fish, stews, bread, sunflowers, and cookies — into and out of his oven. After observing the baking action, I’m dry in minutes.

Spending my birthday in Tangier, barely seeing another tourist, I am struck by how the energy here just makes me happy. This Moroccan city is not pro-West or anti-West. It’s simply people making the best of their lives. This society seems to be growing more modern and affluent…and on its own terms. And it’s a joy to experience it.