Smaller text Larger text

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

Posted on

A Carnivore in Tuscany and a Blacksmith in Hell

Since Rome I’ve had a busy week, visiting a series of stony cities — each historic and, it seems, made entirely of stone. Most have Etruscan foundations, plenty of ancient Roman stones still standing, and a thousand years of pride and paranoia stacked and weathered in whatever is quarried nearby. Orvieto, Civita de Bagnoregio, Assisi, Cortona, Montepulciano, Montalcino, and now Volterra – most of them touristy, but late at night, they’re all the domain of mostly locals — polishing their stones with convivial promenades.

I sat under rustic, noble, Volterra stones tonight — bats bursting through the floodlights, ghostly towers held together with rusted iron corsets, a stony bench cold on my butt at the base of palaces that made commoners feel small six centuries ago.

These stones have soul. The countless peasant backs they bent so many centuries ago gave to future generations the architectural equivalent of fine wines, something to be savored and pondered in solitary moments like the one I just enjoyed.

 

Giulio brings a slab of steak to the customer for an okay to cook it up.
Enlarge photo

I’m in Tuscany, so proud of its beef — last night I sunk my teeth into a carnivore’s dream come true. In a stony cellar, under one long, tough vault, I joined a local crowd. The scene was powered by an open fire in the far back of the vault. Flickering in front of the flames was a gurney, upon which lay a hunk of beef the size of a small human corpse. Like a blacksmith in hell, Giulio — a lanky man in a T-shirt — hacked at the beef with a cleaver, lopping off a steak every few minutes.

In a kind of mouth-watering tango, he pranced past the boisterous tables of eaters, holding above the commotion, like a tray of drinks, the raw slab of beef on butcher’s paper. Giulio presented the slabs to each table of diners, telling them the weight and price (€3 per hundred grams, one kilo — the minimum is about $40) and getting their OK to cook it. He’d then dance back to the inferno and cook the slab: seven minutes on one side, seven on the other. There’s no asking how you’d like it done; thisis the way it is done. And about 15 minutes later, you got steak.

When the meal’s done, Giulio pulls the pencil out of his ponytail and scribbles your bill on the paper table cloth. The beef goes with the hearty red wine here in Tuscany. “It’s tradition here to serve only one glass for water and wine,” Giulio explained, as if to keep the humble tradition of old-time trattorias alive. The single glass was the only downside. It was a fine dinner — and will make a vivid memory (and great addition to my Italy guidebook).

La vita è bella…life is good in Italy. And the good life seems, like the cuisine, simple. Locals are really into the “marriage” of correct foods. An older wine needs a stronger cheese. Only a tourist would pull the fat off the prosciutto.

To me, the cuisine is a symphony — it’s like music. The ingredients are the instruments. The quality is important…but even good instruments can be out of tune. The marriage of the ingredients is what provides the tonality. I’m not sophisticated enough to explain what’s good or bad. But when things are in tune, you taste it.

Posted on

Fried Air and Big Fans in Rome

Flying from northwest Spain to Rome, my discount airline had a 10-kilo carry-on limit. I don’t recall ever actually weighing my bag when packing…but it turns out it was exactly 10 kilos (22 pounds).

I had a special reason to pack light on this trip. A month ago I flew to Europe — a bit nervously — one week after a hernia operation. Ten kilos was about all I could hoist. My doctor said there was no hurry to get it fixed, but I love feeling healthy when traveling…I didn’t want to travel feeling like bits of my guts were popping out like naughty chicks in an open basket. After a month on the treadmill of Iberia, I’m fit as a flamenco guitar.

Landing in Rome, I tried to stay mentally in Spain until I got all those guidebook files finalized and emailed back to my ETBD editors. But I failed. It’s so exciting to research this great city.

Rome has a fixed taxi rate: €40 to and from the airport. On the curb a big, new, officious sign (next to the €40 sign) said the trip cost €60. I asked a cabbie what he charged; he said €60 to the center. It seemed like a scam. Later I quizzed an honest cabbie; he explained that while city cabs are limited to €40, regional cabs can charge €60 because they’ll have to dead-head back out of the city. Many dishonest city cabs seize the opportunity to point to the sign and charge tourists €60. Any cab with “SPQR” on the door is a city cab and legally can only charge €40. Scam scuttled.

My theme this trip is to help travelers stretch their dollars and maximize their experience. Rather than opt for the taxi default (i.e. just pay the €40 and get right to my hotel), I decided to do the smart budget move and rely on public transit. I paid €11 to zip into town on the train and €16 for a one-week transit pass, which will cover all my bus, metro and tram travel in Rome for my stay. And I had €13 left over to go shopping and stock my hotel pantry with five days worth of juice, water, fruit, veggies and munchies. (I was impressed by what I lugged up to my room for little more than the cost of a plate of pasta.) It took me less than an hour door-to-door (from the airplane, to the train, to the central station, onto the bus and then a 100 yard-walk to my hotel).

I’ve been here four days now and only just stepped into the Pantheon. It was literally the most crowded I’ve ever seen it — a human traffic jam slowly flowing in, then out, with parents holding their little ones high as if to make sure they had enough air. I haven’t even seen the Colosseum, Forum, or St. Peter’s yet. I’m doing lots of hotels, restaurants and odd sights that are new to me or that I haven’t seen in over a decade (my researchers visit these places annually, when I can’t).

With my favorite local guide, Francesca, I revisited Ostia Antica (Rome’s ancient seaport, which rivals Pompeii and is a simple 30-minute side trip by train from downtown) and polished up my self-guided walk, in hopes of producing an audio tour covering this site this winter. We rented bikes for a pedal through the Villa Borghese. And, even though she hates the Cappuccin Crypt (with its thousands of neatly stacked human bones, designed artfully to remind us vacationers of our mortality), I got her to take me through it, and to translate the descriptions in each boney chapel for my new guidebook edition. (One chapel has a clock, without hands, made of bones — the explanation reads, “once Sister Death takes you there, the afterlife is eternal…there is no time.”)

With each Rome visit, I book a driver for an entire day. I generally line up all the hotels in town I need to visit in smart order on a page, and we systematically visit each one. With a car I can do three days’ work in a single day. This time, I spliced in three far-away sights I had yet to see: the Museum of the Roman Resistance (about the citizens’ heroics during the Nazi occupation), the Auditorium (a wonderful contemporary “park of music” concert venue designed by Renzo Piano — outside of town but clearly the way to connect with Rome’s culture scene), and the Catacombs of Priscilla (the cute, intimate, least visited — and now my favorite — of the catacombs).

At Ostia, I was frustrated with the worthless descriptions posted throughout the site. I read several, hoping to beef up my existing guidebook coverage. The words were many but worthless. I commented to Francesca that only in Italy are fancy guides called “docents,” and that the only place in Europe I’ve ever actually heard the English word “didactic” used is here in Italy — and from people trying to impress me. Francesca taught me the Roman concept of aria fritta — literally “fried air.” The phrase describes any wording, that’s, like these descriptions, greasy and heavy but contains nothing of value. Much of what tourists read and hear in Italy is aria fritta.

My challenge is to recommend guides that give meaning to the sights without being “didactic.” Rome’s walking-tour companies are many and hard working, but they frustrate me here. I meet lots of tourists here using my guidebooks and quiz them about their experiences. When one couple said, “We just took a tour from so-and-so’s company,” I asked “And how was it?” — because I had been concerned about the quality of teaching by that outfit’s guides. They said, “The guide was a sweet 23 year old Irish kid. He rattled off dates like you couldn’t imagine. And at the Vatican Museum, he showed us how, in one tapestry, the eyes of the guy follow you when you walk across the room. He joked that ‘Maybe it’s the carabinieri.’ In another tapestry, the table actually did the same illusion trick. It followed us across the room!” That was exactly what I’d feared. They loved the tour, but I think, while they were entertained, they learned almost nothing of value.

Yesterday, I spent two hours on another company’s tour and lived through one of my biggest pet peeves: guides who tell stories of things that happened in that neighborhood (with plenty of professorial qualifiers), but don’t tie the wealth of visuals surrounding you to the people living there, past and present.

You can read a book without flying to Rome. A walking tour (which costs triple the price of that book) should connect you vividly to the place: Sit on a threshold worn by the nervous heels of a century of prostitutes…eating a fava bean picked up from the market that, for a thousand years, has sold local peasants their standard green…under the watchful eyes of a hooded heretic whose statue reminds you that he was burned on this spot because this neighborhood — even with that papal palace looking down on it — was filled with trouble makers. And this neighborhood remains, to this day, Rome’s center of non-conformity.

I visited one café which I like and recommend, in spite of its lousy food, because it’s cheap, friendly, shady, and far from the tourists while close to the Colosseum. They’ve started advertising a “Rick Steves menu”: pasta, a hamburger, and a Coke. I told them that’s no Rick Steves menu. Updating this book is like weeding a massive garden.

Hiking back to my hotel, I met a couple both dressed as if out of a safari catalog and each very short. They got really excited and (in Lollipop Guild unison) said, “We’re your biggest fans.”

Posted on

Translucent Pigs’ Ears and Eating the Sea: Good Morning in Santiago

I’m tucked away in Santiago de Compostela, in the northwest corner of Spain. It’s my last day here before flying to Rome. I have a three-part agenda: see pilgrims reach their goal in front of the cathedral, explore the market, and buy some barnacles in the seafood section — then have them cooked for me, on the spot, in a café.

Whenever I’m here, I make a point to be on the big square, at the foot of the towering cathedral of St. James, at around 10 in the morning. That’s when scores of well-worn pilgrims march in triumphantly from their last overnight on the train — most finishing a 30-day, 500-mile hike from the French border. They finish their camino by stepping on the scallop shell embedded in the pavement at the foot of the cathedral. I just love watching how different people handle jubilation.

If Europe had a rain forest, it would be here. But instead it has a city made of granite painted green by moss. The historic and stony buildings of Santiago come in a watercolor green. Rainy as it often is, this morning the church is back-lit by the rising sun and, looking up, the weary pilgrim squints…small before God.

Routinely, pilgrims ask me to take their photo and email it to them. Then they say, “I’ve got to go meet with St. James” and — as has been the routine for a thousand years — they head into the cathedral.

Two blocks away, the market is thriving, oblivious to the personal triumphs going on over at St. James’ tomb. There’s something about wandering through a farmers market early in the morning anywhere in the world. It’s a chance to observe the most fundamental commerce: Salt-of-the-earth people pull food out of the ground, cart it into the city, and sell what they’ve harvested to people who don’t have gardens.

 

A yummy box of pigs’ ears. Buy them tonight at your favorite tapas bar.
Enlarge photo

Dried-apple grandmothers line up like a babushka can-can. Each sits on a stool so small it disappears under her work dress. At the women’s feet are brown woven baskets filled like cornucopias — still-dirty eggs in one; in the next, greens clearly pulled this morning, soil clinging to their roots. One woman hopes to earn a few extra euros with homebrews — golden bottles with ramshackle corks — one named “licor café,” the other, more mysteriously, “oruzo casero.”

Another row of babushkas in shawls sit before rickety card tables filled with yellow cheeses shaped like giant Hershey’s Kisses…or, to locals, breasts. The local cheese is called tetilla — that’s “tits” — to revenge a prudish priest who, seven centuries ago, told a sculptor at the cathedral to redo a statue that he considered too buxom. Ever since, the townsfolk have shaped their cheese like exactly what the priest didn’t want them to see carved in stone. And you can’t go anywhere in Santiago without seeing cheese tetilla. In fact the town is famous for its creamy, mild tetilla.

Stepping further into the market, I notice spicy red chorizo chains framing merchants’ faces. Chickens, plucked and looking rubber as can be, fill glass cases. The sound of cascading clams and castanet shrimp — red, doomed, and flipping mad — greets me as I enter the seafood hall. Fisherwomen in rubber aprons and matching gloves sort through folding money.

There’s a commotion at the best stalls. Short ladies with dusty, blue-plaid roller carts jostle for the best deals. A selection of pigs’ ears mixed with hooves going nowhere fills a shoebox. The ears, translucent in the low rays of the morning sun, look as if someone had systematically and neatly flattened and filed conch shells.

 

Barnacles are very expensive unless you buy them in the market and have them cooked to order. They’re worth both the expense and trouble.
Enlarge photo

I buy my percebes(barnacles) — at €25 a kilo, they’re one-third the price I’d pay in a bar. I get 200 grams for €5 and hustle my full bag over to the market café called Churro Mania. There, Ramon and Julia boil them for €3 per person, plus 10 percent of the cost of whatever you have them cook up. Feeling quite like a local — sipping my beer so early in the morning — I wait for my barnacles to cook.

Then, the climax of my morning: Julia brings my barnacles, stacked steaming on their stainless steel plate, as well as bread, and another beer. I’m set. Twist, rip, bite. It’s the bounty of the sea condensed into every little morsel…edible jubilation.

Posted on

Haggis in Northern Spain

I’m in northern Spain working hard, but it is a little discouraging because so few Americans are traveling here. León and Burgos are great old towns with awe-inspiring cathedrals and plenty of colorful tapas bars. (I just found the Spanish twin to Scottish haggis — it’s called morcillaand comes without the skin. You’d think a dog got sick on your plate. Smear it on toast with a fine red wine. It’s quite tasty…if you like haggis…which I do.)

Sure, it’s great traveling here. But I want lots of people to use my work. And the chances of that here, relative to just about anywhere else in Spain, are about nil.

Anyone walking through town with a backpack is likely a pilgrim, heading like me (but on foot) from France to Santiago. (Some 80,000 are expected this year — I figure that’s about 500 a day through the season.) I play a game: When they walk past, I spin around to see the scallop shell dangling from their pack — as it has from the rucksacks of pilgrims for over a thousand years. I love the idea that the first guidebook ever written talked up “going local, packing light, and watching out for pickpockets” for pilgrims traveling the Camino de Santiago a thousand years ago.

My guide, Paco, is from Pamplona — a famously conservative town with a famously rowdy drunken brawl each summer when the bulls run. Today in León we walked by a sex shop and Paco said, “Not in my town.”

Pamplona is a center of the super-conservative wing of the Catholic Church, Opus Dei (with a university, medical science center, hospital, lots of money, and lots of power). Franco put it here to tighten Navarre’s connection to the rest of Spain. I commented on the contradiction of pious Pamplona being famous for its annual drunken brawl, and tied it to the notion of a PK (a “pastor’s kid”…often the troublemaker in middle school). Paco, who stressed that Opus Dei neighbors are welcome and respected, explained that they may believe sex is not for fun. But when they party…they really party. He then said, “We say, ‘In Spain, you could never say that that priest is not your father.’”

When Franco died in 1975, the end of his repression unleashed an orgy of pent-up hedonism. A decade of movies was known as the Destape(disrobed) period — when every Julia Roberts in Spain had to play topless. Today, these actresses look back and see the irony in the end of Franco’s repression being replaced by what they now see as another kind of repression.

In Spain, humor changes from region to region. Paco’s take: Andalusian humor is noisy and simple. People in the north have a raw, edgy sense of humor, Saturday Night Live-style. And in Barcelona, people love Woody Allen.

Paco, like everyone here, is high on Obama. Europeans are buzzing about his recent visit at the G20 meeting. Paco explained that the press is famously unimpressed by politicians. “And for the first time in memory, the press corps gave a standing ovation to someone…and for an American president!”

Paco’s degree is in marketing. I asked him about “the brand of America.” He said when his grandparents were young, French sold. For his parents, Italian sold. For his generation (which came of age in the 1980s), American culture sold. For young people today, China and Japan sell. (Not coincidentally, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is featuring very popular exhibits by Chinese and Japanese artists.)

Paco said that back in the days of Ronald Reagan, people were charmed by American culture on TV and in the movies, and it seemed to match reality. In the last years, the American image on TV and in the movies didn’t match the uglier reality people saw on the news. To Paco and his friends, Obama isn’t the Messiah, but he has “the face of truth.”

I was impressed that Paco had the new edition of my Spain guidebook. He said, “Whenever we need an international book, Amazon.com is our answer.” They pay the same as Americans do — no extra for shipping. And rather than arriving in two or three days, the book comes in about 10.

Paco is from Navarre (in the north). He said, “We are shy and reserved, but when you talk to us, you open the door.” I have found this to be very true. He’s a good guide for his region, but he’s never been to Santiago de Compostela (the greatest city in northern Spain, just a day’s drive away). I ribbed him about this, but admitted that I’ve never been to Yosemite (and he has). So he ribs me that, since he’s traveling with me, he’ll get to Santiago before I get to Yosemite.

Posted on

Partridge Makes a Good Red Wine a Bad Red Wine

I’m just a little drunk here after celebrating my two-day nip into France from Spain with a great dinner. Serge, a restaurateur clearly in love with turning people on to good food, asked me what kind of wine I liked. I said Medoc. He lit up, and brought me a bottle from 2003. He said, “That was a very hot year.” I said, “Yes. Wasn’t that the heat spell that killed thousands of French senior citizens who had no air-con?” He said, “Yes, tragic…but this wine is excellent.” So, my guard is down and I’m just throwing together a ratatouille (spell-checker no help with that one) of observations.

Of all the places I’ve been researching in Western Europe, I believe Spain is the one where smoky hotels and restaurants are the most prevalent. I did find a place that has water in the ashtrays to absorb some of the smell.

Another thought on the “art” (and not, as locals insist, the “sport”) of bullfighting: Newspaper stories on bullfighting appear not in the sports section, but in the culture pages.

In Spain and France, republicans are the progressive ones — those against the king or the dictator and in favor of the Republic. They get confused when considering American politics, where Republicans are on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

I’m always amazed at how stupid and demoralized museum guards seem. Surrounded by great art, they show no curiosity or initiative. Sure there are exceptions. And sure they have boring jobs. But they could learn where the El Grecos are and when the Picasso will return to its normal place.

In Spain, big museums now require groups to rent “whisper systems” for €1 per group member. This gives each person an earpiece and the guide a mic and transmitter. Guides love it because they can talk softly and all can hear, non-paying members can no longer freeload on their commentary, and they broadcast at a unique frequency that can be heard throughout the museum but only by members of their group — so no one can get lost. For the rest of us, it’s nice because we no longer hear the babble of guides in various languages telling their stories.

I just saw an etching of a garrote-style execution in Barcelona. They sit you in a chair with a metal band around your neck and put a crucifix in your hand. Then, as a priest prays for you and the public gawks, they slowly tighten the band until you strangle to death. I knew this happened in the Inquisition (16th century). But the date on this execution was 1894.

I’ve been getting used to Vista on my new, fast, powerful, and tiny laptop. There’s just one problem: When it’s plugged in, I receive a low-level shock from the wrist board as I type. My tech man back in the office explained it’s because my adapter doesn’t engage the ground prong on the three-prong American plug. (Glad I’m done having kids.)

It’s fun being in travel stride. Setting up the room is key. I review my pillow options from the varieties in the top shelf of the closet. It’s been cold, so I find the extra blanket. I am proactive about asking for a quieter room if I get a room on the street and a lower floor. It can make a big difference. I gather up all the promotional clutter and needless remotes and hide them in a drawer. (I have an ethic not to turn on the TV — that’ll be the end when I start cruising.) And life is so nice after dropping by a market and picking up some fruit, veggies, crackers, and juice (apple is best at room temp) to stock a little hotel-room pantry.

It seems hotels put an eco-friendly note in the bathroom saying, “Help us save the world. Hang towels to reuse, toss in tub to be changed.” I hang the towels…and invariably, the maids change them out anyway.

Here in Basque Country, it’s politically correct for anyone with a website who supports the Basque movement to use .com rather than .es (the suffix for España).

Hoteliers tell me the economy is so tight and things are so expensive for people that vacationing French wait until they know the weather will be good before committing to a visit.

When you eat so late in Spain, each lunch is a kind of break-fast. For several days I’ve worked six hard hours with barely a drink or nibble. (That’s why Spaniards have a kind of mini-pre-lunch late in the morning.) When I finally sit down for lunch and the beer hits the table, my body sucks it in with unprecedented gusto and appreciation.

 

Javier, whose dad is a famous Michelin star-rated chef in Toledo (Spain), does his best to corrupt me at his restaurant. It was a lovely evening of being taught the importance of matching food with fine wine.
Enlarge photo

The other day, the son of a famous local chef taught me a little gastronomy. Javier said, “Food with wine completes the circle. But you must do it right. Partridge makes good red wine bad red wine. Partridge and white beans…that’s perfect with white wine. You must think with your stomach.” I’m still learning. The whole matching wine with food thing has been frustrating for me. But several times I’ve got it right this last week…and lift off…it makes a believer out of you.