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
I’m in Venice, doing research for the next edition of my Rick Steves Venice guidebook — and I just spent a great evening updating restaurant listings with the help of two American expats, Maya and Adam Stonecastle of Venice Bites Food Tours. We all happen to share the same favorite cicchetti bar, Cantinone Già Schiavi. Join us now as Maya explains what I’m having with my wine.
Here’s how this delightful place is written up in my guidebook:
[$] Enoteca Cantine del Vino Già Schiavi, with a wonderfully characteristic cicchetti-bar ambience, is much loved for its €1.20 cicchetti, €4 sandwiches (order from list on board), and €2 glasses of wine. You’re welcome to enjoy your wine and finger food at the bar, in the back room surrounded by wine bottles, or out on the sidewalk. (Specify “fuori” to sit outside, and they’ll provide plastic cups; please don’t sit on the bridge.) This is primarily a wine shop with great prices for bottles to go (Mon-Sat 8:30-20:30, closed Sun, 100 yards from Accademia art museum on San Trovaso canal; facing the Accademia, take a right and then a forced left at the canal to the second bridge — it’s at Dorsoduro 992, tel. 041-523-0034, they have no WC).
Any visit to Venice is filled with ornately painted masks. These are more than just colorful souvenirs — they come with a story. Throughout the centuries, these masks have always been a big part of Carnevale celebrations, the weeks-long Mardi Gras festivities leading up to Lent — and high-class people have traditionally put them on to hide their faces while they are out and about, doing less-than-respectable things.
Join me now at a mask shop in the heart of Venice for a peek at the history of these masks — from the 17th century, when doctors used them to treat victims of the plague, all the way to the 1970s, when local hippies incorporated them into their wild outfits.
Buongiorno! I’m in the heart of Venice, at a beautiful viewing point on the Ponte deiCarmini. Join me now for a peek at the gondola action that keeps the canals busy.
Rome may have lots of crowds, but only three essential sights are difficult to see without advance reservations: the Colosseum, the Vatican Museums, and the Borghese Gallery. And each of these lets on-the-ball visitors make reservations in advance online. A 10-minute walk from the tourist-infested Colosseum is a free-standing ruin of nearly equal vastness — the impressive Baths of Caracalla. It’s unique in that for 1,500 years it has stood as a ruin, with nothing built around or on top of it. Today, with a good imagination, you can picture Rome at its zenith. Join tour guide Francesca Caruso and me for a stroll through the baths, 1,800 years ago.
In Rome, most tourists clamor to see the famed outdoor sights (the Colosseum, Forum, etc.) — often neglecting the indoor sights. The National Museum of Rome in Palazzo Massimo is a fine example. I’m here with Roman guide Francesca Caruso, who I’m lucky to have at my side as I update my Rick Steves Rome guidebook. Join us now for a dinner party in the villa of Empress Livia.