With our daughter Jackie blogging about her adventures in Spain and Portugal, I’m taking a break from my blogging. I’ll be blogging from Norway later in July. But for now…let’s stow away for some teen travel fun in Spain with Jackie. I’ll see you there.
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
Jackie Steves Goes to Spain, Leaving Mom and Dad Only a Blog to Read
When I was a young guy, my friends knew how well I cooked. When there was a big party, they said, “Why don’t you bring chairs?”
I still don’t bring any dishes to a party…but what I cook up is travel plans. I just love helping friends and family plan their trips. It’s what I do. In the last week, I’ve been immersed in helping plan our daughter’s Iberian escape.
(Later in the summer, Jackie will be assisting on our family tours — Rome to Paris, two weeks — orchestrating the kids’ activities. But on the way to Rome, she’s dropping into Spain for her own little vacation.)
As a parent (and her travel advisor), I’m excited to follow her adventures in Spain and Portugal. In fact, starting Sunday, I’ll be letting Jackie and her best friend, Zoe, take my blog stage and pack us all along for the adventures of two 19-year-old young women in Iberia.
With all the heavy news lately and my penchant for steering this blog into politics, their report will be a breath of fresh teenage air. Imagine just flitting around Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon with your BFF simply to enjoy the art, beaches, food, and boys.
Every day for a couple weeks, we’ll hear from Jackie and Zoe about their escapades. As a travel teacher, I’m personally fascinated by the party-centric hostel world that teen travelers enjoy. It’s something I can never report on. But Jackie sure can. I’ll be right there with you, commenting as the Dad 5,000 miles away to their blogs, and I hope you can travel with all of us too.
Then, when Jackie and Zoe finish their trip, I’ll hop back in: blogging from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Germany for the rest of July and August.
By the way, if you’d rather have anxiety-ridden and polarizing politics instead, my take on the tumult in Iran is featured in an editorial exclusive to the Seattle Times.
Surviving the Psychological Economic Crisis
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| Anticrisis Menu. Business is slow at many of Europe’s restaurants. Prices are certainly not going up and many are coming down. Enlarge photo |
While in Spain recently, I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that read “Surviving the Psychological Economic Crisis.” If you lost your job or your retirement savings, the crisis is real. But apparently lots of people are still working and still committing themselves to travel this summer. I’m leaving for Norway in four days and ready for fish balls.
Having just been in Europe for two months, I was trying to get a feel for how the “crisis” was playing out in the tourist industry there. It’s hard to say. It seemed many restaurants were deathly quiet…almost too quiet to properly assess for my guidebook research. That was both scary and frustrating. But many of the sights were packed as never before. Dubrovnik was a literal human traffic jam at the height of the midday cruise ship crowd scene. The month before, in Rome, I joined the touristic mosh pit as thousands of visitors oozed slowly into and then out of the Pantheon. It was literally wall-to-wall people as I’d never experienced before. And everyone seemed to be having a blast. Regardless of whether numbers are up or down, those who are able to travel seem to be happy as could be. Everywhere I went, I was impressed by tourists on a travel high.
Clearly business is down in Europe. Guides told me the spring was saved only by the work they got taking school groups around. Group bookings are way down. In Eastern Europe, many hotels that generally accommodate groups have simply shut down. Travelers encounter restaurants both more generous and more aggressive. You’ll notice prices are being kept low. Many places advertise desperate specials. I even encountered “anticrisis menus” in Spain. While restaurants are feeling the pinch and creatively trying to win the business of diners, once they have you at the table, you need to be careful that they don’t push extras on you. Be clear, be strong, and understand the prices before you order. A restaurant I really like in Rome has great prices, but a 20 percent cover. Suddenly it’s not such a great deal.
Little hotels are being hurt as big hotels drop prices to attract business. Suddenly a small family-run guesthouse that used to be a fine value at 80 euros is no less expensive than the big, four-star, business-class hotel with rooms on the push list.
Cities are being more aggressive too. In Florence, everyone pays 4 euros each to book entry to its more popular museums. Even local tour companies need to prepay and prebook admission times long in advance. My favorite Florentine tour company is reeling from the cost as they booked thousands of entries at the start of the season, expecting a busy schedule of their groups visiting the Uffizi and Accademia. Now that the season is here, they are not running as many tours as anticipated…and the city won’t refund all those 4-euro booking fees.
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While our tour business at Europe Through the Back Door was slow for the first four months of the year, things have snapped back. People are less nervous about the safety of their savings, and with summer approaching, are booking tours at the last minute as never before. Suddenly we are calling guides who we thought would have no work from us and asking if they’re available to take groups in the summer and fall.
Iran: Death to Election Fraud
Readers have been asking me for my take on the situation now unfolding in Iran. How have my experiences filming a public television show there last year shaped my impressions of current events?
I plan to explain my thinking about this issue in an op-ed piece for the Seattle Times,which is scheduled to run in next Sunday’s edition (June 28). Since we don’t know how this situation will end, of course it’s far too early to talk about cause and effect. But, as someone who has traveled to Iran recently, this is my hunch:
When I visited Iran a year ago, I sensed that they would eventually win their freedom — but it had to be on their own terms. Crucially, what’s going on today in Iran is an organic process, not something brought about by foreign meddling. In my mind, this gives it a legitimate chance of success, and our stance so far of simply staying out of their way is the best thing we can do.
However, even if we have no direct involvement with the Iranian protests, I like to think that we have contributed to the cause of Iranian freedom in some way. When I was in Iran and our own presidential election was heating up, it occurred to me that the Bush (and, seemingly, McCain) policy of tough-talking rhetoric might actually empower Iran’s leaders to more effectively preach their message of fear and hate. But under an Obama Administration, our government’s attitude (if not our policy) about how to engage the Muslim world has changed. President Obama’s stated philosophy of respect and listening makes it harder to demonize the US, and the “Death to America” chants don’t quite have the gravity they once did. I have to wonder if our president’s more respectful stance toward the Muslim world might have had some effect on events there today (and particularly on Ahmadinejad’s ability to harness his people’s anger against us).
I do find it fascinating that rather than our government radicalizing the Iranian masses, it’s the Iranian government itself that is radicalizing its masses. And by drawing a line in the sand, as their supreme leader did last week, they may have underestimated their young population’s passion for freedom.
(PS: I’d like to assure those of you who wondered why I removed my longer entry on this subject from the blog — and suspected I couldn’t handle the hot topic — that I don’t consider this very hot. I just wanted to use much of that material in my op-ed piece in a big-city newspaper rather than here. Sorry. I’ll bring it back when I can.)
Media Musings
I was just in LA working to promote my new Travel as a Political Act book. I got to be on the Tavis Smiley Show(which will air nationally on PBS starting this Friday). He is a beautiful man, and it was a joy to sit down with him (cameras rolling) and explain how my passion for getting value out of travel fits his passion for America getting it right.
It’s occurring to me that being a PBS celebrity and living in Seattle isn’t the best recipe for getting media exposure. Media is commercial — advertising is its lifeblood. I went to Rachael Ray headquarters last week in NYC for an “informational interview” with one of her editors. While she may be the emerging Martha Stewart (and I find her smile strangely mesmerizing), it was clear from our meeting that my passion for people-to-people travel didn’t fit their corporate-friendly approach to tourism. We politely chit-chatted for a few minutes, each of us wondering, “Who set up this interview?”…and then said “best wishes,” knowing we were as different as a front door and a back door, and that nothing would come of that meeting.
On the other hand, I’ve been able to talk with Bob Edwards (PBS and Sirius — big mind, inspirationally insightful, a thrill to talk with for 40 minutes), Alan Colmes (Fox Radio — a fun and very engaging man), lots of NPR hosts, and the extremely progressive Pacifica radio in LA. In each case, we had enthusiastic conversations, and know that we’ll be talking more in the future.
Getting all this media to promote a book is exhausting, time-consuming, and an almost demoralizing struggle. But yesterday I sat in a chair still warm from the interviewee before me — Francis Ford Coppola. If the exposure was worth it for him to talk up his new movie…I guess it’s worth it for me to talk up my new book.
One thing has occurred to me over the 20-some interviews I’ve done in the last week: Encouraging people to make travel a political act may get me on progressive radio stations, but that kind of travel is something the industry in general will never embrace. Tourism is huge money, with lots of investments, and it’s a challenge to keep travelers blindered and focused on the commercial aspect of tourism.
By most accounts, tourism and armaments are the two biggest industries on earth. Using tourism to build understanding between cultures and peoples helps the short-term bottom line of neither.