Rick Steves's Blog, page 32

Tour Guides on Tour: Tasty Turkey

Let’s say you have a tour company with over a hundred amazing guides. What’s a fun way to make their off-season a bit more exciting? Offer to send them to Turkey on tour! They learn about an amazing country. They experience what it’s like to be tour members rather than tour guides. They bond and amp up their esprit de corps. And they have lots of fun. That’s why we organized and subsidized a Rick Steves Best of Turkey in 13 Days Tour for 25 of our guides.

Everyone who goes on our Best of Tur...

Tour Guides on Tour: Best of Turkey

 

I have long considered Turkey one of the most rewarding and exciting places I’ve ever been. I first visited in the 1970s, and I went back every year through my twenties. For me, Turkey was always the natural cherry on top of all my European adventures. But the predictable question I’d always get from loved ones was, “Why are you going to Turkey?” With each visit, my thoughts were: Why would anyone not travel here?

Good travelers strive to get out of their comfort zone. When we travel, li...

Video: Pope John Paul II Celebrates Christmas One Last Time

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

A highlight for our crew was filming the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve in 2004 — which happened to be Pope John Paul II’s last Christmas. The vast basilica was packed, the pope seemed radiant, and our cameraman put our viewers right in the front pew.

The Vatican is generally a very difficult place for visiting film crews to get permission to do anything. But fo...

Video: Christmas Eve in Europe

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

My favorite feature of the show’s structure is how in each culture, we stop just before Christmas arrives. With this clip, Christmas Eve is finally here — and all across Europe, people are celebrating in their own unique ways. In England, families await the arrival of Father Christmas; in Norway, friends join hands in song; in Burgundy, a toast starts the celebration feast; at...

Video: Peaceful European Winter Scenes

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

As you watch this clip of choirs performing in Oslo and in Nürnberg, enjoy scenes of winter in Europe. While fields and squares are filled with color and vibrancy in the summer, the naked branches, solitary candles flickering in windows, and lonely vistas of winter offer a peaceful charm with the promise of life and renewal just around the corner.

The timeless beauty of physic...

Behind the Scenes: Filming Christmas in Switzerland

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to the Swiss Alps, which seem to shout the glory of God. Up here, where villages huddle under towering peaks, Christmas fills a wintry wonderland with good cheer. Traditions are strong and celebration comes with families, friends, and fun. It may be cold outside, but as the sun sets, it’s impossible not to linger in this cozy setting.

Through the seven countri...

Video: Italian Manger Scenes

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

A wonderful tradition in Italy is churches and communities making creative manger scenes and putting them on display through the Christmas season. These presepi, as manger scenes are called in Italy, originated 800 years ago just north of Rome, in Assisi. St. Francis was a master at teaching Bible lessons with clever props, and he figured out that a manger scene helped people...

Behind the Scenes: Filming Christmas in Italy

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to Italy.

In Rome, from Piazza Navona’s Christmas market to the ultimate manger scene in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, the city was bursting with Christmas traditions. The highlight was filming the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve — which happened to be Pope John Paul II’s last Christmas.

One of my favorite guides in all of Europe is Roberto Bech...

Behind the Scenes: Filming Christmas in Austria

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to Austria, where the festive swirl of heartwarming sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas abound. This is where the season’s most-loved carol, “Silent Night,” was first performed over 200 years ago.

We knew that filming an intimate family Christmas feast would not necessarily come out natural and fun-loving on TV, so we filmed two and picked the best. The Ba...

Video: Celebrating Christmas with Bavaria’s Christkind

To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas.

Germany’s grandest Christmas market, in Nürnberg, comes complete with an angelic Christkind dressed in gold, played by a real-life teenage girl. After we filmed her show before an awestruck crowd of German kids, we were invited to a private audience with her. We felt like paparazzi trailing some teenage heartthrob.

In this clip of the interview, we learn how Martin Luther, the...