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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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Travel Writer Cheats…Stunning the World

My friend Michael Shapiro recently did an (Google-able) article for the Washington Poston a little scandal caused when Lonely Planet author Thomas Kohnstamm admitted he cheated on his guidebook research chores. The media jumped on this to discredit the world’s greatest guidebook publishing company and Michael wanted my take on things. I thought you might enjoy the interview.

Michael: I’m working on a Washington Poststory about guidebooks and how they’re written. As you may guess, the jumping-off point is LP’s Kohnstamm and his recent comments about plagiarism, payment, trading positive coverage for favors, and his claim that he didn’t visit some of the places he wrote about.

Rick:It is a trust to write and research a guidebook. The formula is more shoe leather than genius. While LP is not updated as often as I’d like it to be, that is the nature of the book business when you are trying to stay in business. It’s not easy to both publish good guidebooks and be profitable. I have always found LP books to be among the best and fear this Kohnstamm thing is a bit of a anomaly.

Michael:Do you visit all the places mentioned in the books? If not, from where do you get the information?

Rick:I visit virtually every place mentioned in all my books. Lately, as our scope has grown, I have research assistants and co-authors helping. On a rare occasion I will list something as an option without visiting it but am careful to give it no opinion or assessment, just explain that it exists (e.g. an embassy, tourist office branch, or Laundromat). In these cases, I get the info from the tourist office or from people who run hotels who rely routinely and happily on that service for their clients. I guess my biggest “cheat” is listing a remote agriturismo someone I trust raved about. But, again, in this case I am careful simply list it with no assessment.

Michael:Washington Post travel editor KC Summers told me you’re open about taking freebies — do you feel this can affect your recommendations in any way? Are freebies or discounts inevitable? Do you disclose that you accept some discounts or freebies?

Rick:I take freebies. I know many journalists make a huge point about not taking freebies to avoid corruption (and then proceed to write as shills for the local tourist industry). My job is to sort through all the come-ons and deceptive advertising and bogus sights and activities and distill things down for my American readership, which has the shortest vacation in the rich world, along with a dollar in the tank.

I was in Portugal last week. In six nights in Lisbon, I slept in three different hotels — all for no charge. One was provided by the tourist board — a fancy “design hotel” which I did not like. Staying there affirmed my feeling that “design hotels” are passionate about “function follows form” — bad news for my travel priorities. The two other places have been in my books for years. One is reported (from my reader feedback) dirty. The other has prostitutes loitering on that block. By staying at each place, I’ll know them more intimately (the hotels). Ironically (and don’t tell them), a place that gives me a free room is more likely to be down-graded or dropped from my guidebook because by actually sleeping there I’ll learn about a noise problem in the wee hours, thin walls, or horrible breakfast that I might not discover with a quick visit. (I believe anyone who claims to actually sleep in all their recommended accommodations has a small book or is lying.)

Many small guesthouses have been in my books for years. I send them a quarter of their business and they would never want to charge me. I believe I am incorruptible when it comes to my listings. I have never hidden that fact that I take free rooms and a free meal now and then. One night last week I popped into three different fado bars to check out the music and ambience. I told them what I was doing, paid for nothing, and had a very productive night assessing where my readers might want to go for their local musical experience next year.

Michael:Beyond his inflammatory comments, Kohnstamm raised larger issues — not enough time to visit all the places listed, incentives to accept freebies that could affect judgment, and so on that he suggests affect many writers and guidebooks. Your thoughts?

Rick:My understanding is that guidebook researchers and writers are generally no longer getting royalties. This demoralizes a hard worker. I believe I’m one of the few travel writers today still getting royalties. That makes my pay based on the quality of my work and the long term loyalty I have to the project. I stick with my publisher and with my readers and with my guidebooks through thick and thin. Consequently, I make good money with the books.

Michael:How many titles do you now sell?

Rick:I have 30 titles on the bookshelves now and sell probably about half a million books a year.

Michael:How many total books per year are sold worldwide?

Rick: I have no idea. But I do know that 12 million Americans travel to Europe each year and I believe that the very best selling guidebook to any European country from the USA (which happens to by my Italy guidebook) sells well under 100,000. In other words, there’s plenty of business for all the travel guidebook publishers. The challenge for all of us guidebook writers and publishers is to impress upon the traveling American public that guidebooks are $20 tools for $3,000 experiences and to travel without one is classically pennywise and pound foolish.

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Very, Very Small Fish

Today, after 12 days of research in Portugal and 10 days of filming in Greece (we’re nearly finished with two Greek TV shows), my battery ran out.

I told the crew I’d take the afternoon off while they covered more of the script in Athens and sent home a pile of precious tapes via DHL. Lounging on the 10th-floor roof terrace by the pool at 5 p.m., the sun was strong enough to burn.

I went to dinner with a print-out of my son Andy’s travel journal (experiences enjoyed as weekend side-trips from his semester-abroad base in Rome).

The hotel (the epitome of a “front-door” place the tourist board kindly set us up in for our filming) lances my spirit — noisy tour groups, smoking business men, and menus with international food for triple the price you’ll find for the equivalent just down the street.

I walked around the corner to a great little dinner spot. Ordering dinner alone without the TV crew (Simon and Karel), I couldn’t share dishes and therefore had less variety. It made me realize how much fun I’ve had with Greek food. The mixed appetizer (meze) approach is great — the three of us order one fish plate and four or five (meze)plates.

We joke how each night the bill comes to almost exactly €45 (about $23 each). The selection, while predictable and routine after 10 dinners, never got old. Tzatzikidip, garlic dip, fava bean dip, or a mix of all three on single serving plate (€4 with fresh bread — often toasted). Fried aubergine (eggplant) or zucchini. Four big grilled peppers on a plate — red or green — stuffed with feta cheese. Always a big Greek salad (€7, one salad feeds three people and the waiters are honest about not up-selling…each night saying, “One is enough”).

While the salad Nicoise so popular in France comes with a variety of recipes and lots of controversy on exactly what makes a proper salad Nicoise, the Greek salads we ate were always the same simple, wonderful, locally grown, fresh ingredients (tomato, green pepper, cucumber, onion, olives, feta cheese) with the perfect olive oil.

And then something from the sea — grilled calamari or sardines or a plate of fried small fish (three inch), very small fish (two inch), or very, very small fish (one inch). One night we took it to an extreme and had taramosalata(fish roe spread) — underwhelming.

The Greek beer, Mythos, comes in a big half liter bottle is good and feels right here. Big lemons beg to be squeezed and just about everything is cooked in or drizzled with olive oil.

Proud Greeks told us that their new prime minister is stopping the practice of Italians buying Greek olive oil to sell as Italian. Until now, the Italians (with their extra virgins) have the marketing edge…but the Greeks are determined to show the world that (regardless of virgins) their olive oil is at least as good.

It seems when our bill hits a certain threshold (or we come back for a second meal) we are given a free little dessert (halvah with shredded coconut tonight).

For price of club sandwich in our boxy skyscraper hotel (€17), I get a plate of very small (two-inch) fish, a huge salad, and a big cold Mythos. It was a delightful evening as I was alone with my son’s journal (24 crisp pages printed in the hotel business center). Andy’s writing shows me that a critical part of the mix is generating experiences. He does Europe without business concerns — filling each day with new European friends and college kid adventures and artfully describing it all. I hope to serialize his journal this June on this blog (when I’m back home for a month). Stay tuned.

With three-inch fish, I leave the head and tail (and try not to wonder about the once inky, now dry-black guts). With two-inchers as finger food, and working my way through my son’s journal, there’s nothing left but a line of greasy fingerprints on the fringe of my paper tablecloth.

I walk home a traveler, an eater, and a dad well-satisfied.

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Salutation to Hydra

I’m back on the idyllic, traffic-free Greek Isle of Hydra. Today is our first light day after a week of TV production. We’re meeting at 10 am. Wishing I could sleep longer, I’m wide awake at 6:45. I picked up some ugly oranges on the way to my hotel last night. The oranges were so unsightly I almost didn’t buy them. On my dresser, they look like Van Gogh’s last meal. Enjoying one, I’m reminded that in Europe, ugly means tasty.

Standing in front of my window, pushing open the shutters, I’m greeted by a cool, almost mountain breeze pouring through my window on this May Day. I stretch while enjoying the view. My legs are strong but my back is stiff.

A clutter of red-tiled roofs has the texture of Triscuits. In fact, they look like a sloppy pile of Triscuits tumbling up the hill away from the harbor. High above, at the horizon, a sun ray slashes from behind a hill, across a ravine, strangely obliterating a hill-capping monastery in a good morning glare.

Seven o’clock brings a chorus of tinny church bells. The clang of bells, which sound like dinner triangles on a cowboy ranch, seems to call the barnyard awake: dogs, roosters, a million baby birds cry for breakfast, and old burros snort…clearing their sinuses. Pigeons coo, sounding like owls or perhaps vice versa. A black cat prances nimbly across a roof.

I trace the route Anne and I took just seven months ago. Intending to take a lazy stroll around the block from this same hotel, we ventured up and up…succumbing to a strangely powerful pull of intrigue. We were drawn higher and higher, up to the top of Hydra town. Descending over a saddle, we followed the concrete flash flood bed through more Triscuit-roofed houses to a pocket-sized harbor of a tiny neighboring village. From there we watched the sun set through cloudy ouzo in tall glasses as a rock at sea, capped by a white church, became silhouetted and busy boats laced together the Aegean world.

It was there, on that same sunset perch the next night, that I decided to come back in Spring of ‘08 to make an Athens TV show. A show focusing only on Athens wouldn’t quite do it for me. But Hydra, just two hours away by jet boat, rounds out Athens as both a great destination and a great TV script.

I lean slowly to the right, hold it…creak slowly to the left, hold it. Then I let my vertebrae tumble like an ancient column in an earthquake, until my head passes my knees. Standing tall as I can, I inhale that waking village ambience knowing that, in a few hours, the sounds of children playing will be added to the audio mix. After this salutation to Hydra, I’m ready for a Greek island day.

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My Big Fat Greek Easter

Proud Greek flags are flying at half mast. I wonder who died and then I remember…Jesus died, it’s Good Friday. We’re busy in Greece making TV shows and I’m tossed two big curves: Orthodox Easter and bad weather. It’s cold and wet. There’s snow on the mountain tops on the south coast of Greece…not the image I expected.

People can’t understand how we could be working this weekend. “It’s Easter; absolute family time.” I try to explain that I celebrated Easter a month ago. When we film a meal, the restaurant is dotted with dark red hard-boiled eggs. Suddenly everyone is cracking their egg on their neighbors — like splitting a wishbone, only one egg gets cracked and you hope it’s not yours.

Four out of every ten Greeks live in Athens and, heading south on the freeway, it felt like they were all heading out of town the same time we were. TV crews were at the freeway tollbooths catching the pandemonium. Saturday night at 11, everyone’s out for the big Mass and then it’s firecrackers and partying into the wee hours.

Sunday the churches are empty: people sleep till noon, then it’s goat-on-a-spit time for the big family lunch. Rather than a big fat Greek wedding, we get a big fat Greek Easter family party. In the villages, it seems no one’s on the streets. Everyone’s inside enjoying traditional folk music and dance — vicariously — by watching the same TV broadcast.

In an extremely remote village on the south coast of the Peloponnese, we find a priest who lets us film the Greek Orthodox worship service. (I wanted to show and explain the differences for people not accustomed to it.) When we asked if we could observe his Mass and film him, he was as giddy as the man at the gate in Oz who said, “That’s a horse of a different color…come on in.”

The priest pulled the rope to ring the bell to call villagers to worship. He kept pulling. No one came. I lit some candles and ran to the bar and coaxed three people into the church, so he wouldn’t be saying Mass in darkness to no one. The priest welcomed our cameraman behind the iconostasis (where the religious heavy lifting goes on). He sang, chanted, swung the incense, and shared with us the glory of his religious tradition…as my three forced worshippers stood by, respectfully crossing themselves vigorously at the right moments. It’ll make a great bit on our show.

Driving out of the village the day after Easter, I thought there’ll be lots of leftover goat sandwiches today.

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Portugal: In Cod We Trust

My 12 days in Portugal are over. Except for the Douro Valley and the Algarve, I visited virtually everything in my Portugal guidebook and leave with my enthusiasm for this country rekindled.

I met few Americans (in one day in Athens, where I am today, I saw more of us than in 12 days in Portugal) and found great prices ($5 meals, $60 doubles, $6 tickets to major sights — even with the euro at $1.60).

Side-tripping 45 minutes from Lisbon, I went to plush and lush Sintra. Its Pena Palace, built by a romantic blue-blooded cousin of Mad King Ludwig, sits like a mountain-top Neuschwanstein with an Atlantic view. The elegantly cluttered rooms at the Pena Palace are still set up as they were in 1910 when the king fled — a great example of that Victorian “horror of empty spaces.”

My last day of research was complicated by a walking tour. I intended to check it out by just tagging along for half an hour. It was so good, I stayed the entire 3.5 hours. They called it an intro tour, but after 20 years of visits, I just couldn’t leave. Titled “Lisbon Revelation” and run by a company called Lisbon Walker, there were five in our group. We paid €13 each ($20) and the guide had us enthralled for every minute as we walked and took the trolley through the old town. (That evening I emailed my tour operations director and said, “Let’s get this experience for our Portugal groups!”)

George Bush got some ridicule when he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and, “saw his soul.” This is one rare case where I can relate to our president. I need to look into the eyes of the business people I meet and determine whether I can say, “I trust this person” to my traveling readers.

Perhaps I’m easily impressed (or conned), but I looked into many eyes on this trip and saw the souls of many good people: Sergio who rents ocean view “quartos” above his little bakery/café (simple doubles for $50) in Nazare; Carlos whose cataplana is famous in Porto and whom I’d like my readers to simply trust to feed well and charge honestly; and Gabriel who lovingly serves up traditional dishes in his restaurant while employing fado — Portuguese folk — guitarists who look like tired old turtles, and singers who are ringers for how Morticia (of the Addams family) must look today. (Gabriel’s business takes a big hit from cabbies who tell diners he’s out of business because he doesn’t pay commissions.)

In my hotel rounds, I noticed one of the personalized schedules our tour guides post on the wall for tour members. It laid out the plan for the last day of one of our two-week Spain and Portugal tours. The guide (Federico) had written, “Meet at 7:30 in the lobby to go out for dinner and a big surprise.”

I dropped back at 7:30 and doubled the surprise. I love seeing groups full of smiles after two weeks together. And for some reason Federico always leaves me with a huge smile. Their other surprise — heading out for Gabriel’s restaurant to enjoy the Turtles and Morticia.

I wonder if Lisbon and San Francisco are sister cities — they have twin bridges, famously foggy weather, have survived horrific earthquakes, keep trolleys shivering up and down their steep hills past characteristic buildings, and are situated in about the best natural harbors on the west coast of their respective continents.

Portugal has a poignant souvenir of its colonial days (which ended its nearly 50-year dictatorship — the longest in 20th century Europe — in 1974 with its Carnation Revolution). Over a million Portuguese “returnees” fled the colonies they no longer ruled. Life for them was “shrimp, day and night” and suddenly they were without a homeland — it was too dangerous to stay in the newly independent lands they once dominated…but they were too sour and conservative to feel comfortable back in Portugal. Most ended up emigrating to Brazil, England, the US, or France.

(I wonder if many became builders. A French man I befriended said it is the exception when a small construction or remodel job done in France is not done by a Portuguese contractor.)

I leave Portugal with a taste for Bacalhau — cod. My favorite bar munchie is a fried potato/cod croquet called a pastel de bacalhau. Imagine, the national dish of Portugal is cod and it’s never fresh — only salty and imported from Norway. This — a national dish that is imported from far away — must be unique in the world. Like Portugal itself.