Rick Steves's Blog, page 28

Gondolas: A Timeless Venetian Tradition

Buongiorno! I’m in the heart of Venice, at a beautiful viewing point on the Ponte dei Carmini. Join me now for a peek at the gondola action that keeps the canals busy.  

If you’re heading this way too, you can pick up the latest edition of my Rick Steves Venice guidebook here. Happy travels! 

The Baths of Caracalla: Ancient Rome Gets Naked 1600 at a Time

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....

Dinner with Empress Livia?

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.

Great Empires Respect Their Vanquished Foes

I’m in Rome, updating my Rick Steves Rome guidebook — and I’m lucky to have Roman guide Francesca Caruso at my side. Here, Francesca analyzes a favorite statue — the Dying Gaul — in the Capitoline Museums. In this touching work, we see how an empire at its peak respected its vanquished.

Looking into the Marble Face of Rome

I’m in Rome, updating my Rick Steves Rome guidebook — an intense process. Updating a guidebook to the “Eternal City” takes a while. A theme for this visit was finding peace and cultural tranquility in a city that, in many ways, feels overrun with tourists. And that’s easy to do. Like voters tend to vote for whoever’s up in the polls, many tourists visit the same famous sights. Fortunately, Rome has lots of extremely rewarding sights that are cool, quiet, and give an intimate peek at an amazin...

Pondering Hunger from the Terrace of the Sheraton Hotel

I just wrapped up a demanding, rewarding, and poignant 18 days of filming in Guatemala and Ethiopia. As the crew headed home with the footage for our upcoming hour-long documentary on fighting hunger with smart development aid, I found myself immersed in a microcosm of the gap between the rich and poor on our planet. I was sleeping in the same building as Ivanka Trump, in a $300-a-night hotel — having just learned about the reality of people struggling to live on $2 a day. When I paid my bill...

Ethiopia: An Inspiring Visit Comes to a Close

I just wrapped up 16 days of filming in Guatemala and Ethiopia for an upcoming special called “Ethiopia, Guatemala, Hunger, and Hope,” airing this November on public television across the US. We were mostly in poor communities in poor parts of these poor countries, and everywhere we went, we attracted a crowd. And throughout our trip, the crowds were friendly, curious, and filled with smiles. Even though the children we met were extremely poor, they had a sense of humor and a spirit of joy. I...

Health Post in the Middle of Nowhere?

I just wrapped up a shoot for an upcoming special called “Ethiopia, Guatemala, Hunger, and Hope,” airing this November on public television across the US. In the south of Ethiopia, my crew and I drove to a humble village with no electricity or running water, and a population that is unable to pay for any medical service. We were there to visit a health post run by the local government, in partnership with the United Nations World Food Program.

A child who does not get adequate nutrition in th...

Inside Ethiopia’s Growing Economy at the Hawassa Industrial Park

I just wrapped up a shoot in Ethiopia for an upcoming special called “Ethiopia, Guatemala, Hunger, and Hope,” airing on public television across the US this November. My goal is to show Americans the value of smart development and productive trade policies — and a big part of smart development is ensuring that Ethiopians have access to quality jobs, where they’ll make double the income that they would on a farm. To make the point that Ethiopia aspires to become a new source of cheap labor for...

May You Have Bumpy Travels: Combating Road Bias

Wherever you travel, it’s important to remember that sticking to the main road gives you road bias. Getting off the paved roads in Ethiopia, I was reminded that the majority of the world’s population are poor farmers. In fact, while I might feel like the norm on this planet, the off-the-grid farmer in Ethiopia, far from the nearest paved road, is much closer to the global norm.

I was in Ethiopia with my crew, filming an upcoming special called “Ethiopia, Guatemala, Hunger, and Hope.” It will...