Rick Steves's Blog, page 58

Eating My Way Through Paris

I can return to Paris again and again for the rest of my life. Just being there–with no intention of seeing anything new–is a fine vacation opportunity. With our tour over, I enjoyed a personal day before heading for Amsterdam and the Netherlands to scout for my upcoming TV shoot. The plan: Take my own audio tours and eat very well.

We’ve produced about 45 self-guided audio tours (all free with my Rick Steves’ Audio Europe Travel App), and every chance I get, I try to actually take them. When I follow along, I can see if they work well. And (this may sound a bit weird) but I also take them because they cover my favorite places–and I simply enjoy hearing myself talking about them. It’s fun to be immersed in a tour of a place like Paris’ Gothic lantern of stained glass, Sainte-Chapelle–and drift by another traveler enjoying the same audio tour. So far, the only one that doesn’t work well is Florence’s Uffizi Gallery (because they rearranged much of the featured art).

 

As has been my theme in the last year or two of guidebook research, I am finding new experiences to complement the great sights. Food tours are trendy across Europe, and I’m taking lots of them. Food tours generally take three to four hours and cost around $100. Some are worthwhile, and many are not. In Paris, we joined a Paris by Mouth food tour: six stops in three hours for €95. Our guide was an expert, expat foodie, and I gained a fun new appreciation of baguettes, croissants, cheese, and the way French people make the most out of eating. (For much more on this food tour–if you don’t mind a little food porn–see Trish Feaster’s blog at The Travelphile.com.)

After 50 days of steady work (OK–steady fun, too), I treated myself to a Michelin-star restaurant. We don’t list many destination restaurants in our guidebooks, but people come to Paris to eat well, and you’ll certainly do that at Le Violon d’Ingres.

At Le Violon d’Ingres, the dishes are extremely creative and, while excellent, I’m glad I opted for a sampler menu which gave me twice as many plates (with half-sized portions) as a regular menu. The Degustation Menu cost €95 for eight small plates served delicately and beautifully presented. I added on the matching wine. If you’re planning on binging for an extravagant meal in France, you’ll get the best value in smaller towns in the countryside. But for me, my fine Parisian dinner at Le Violon d’Ingres was a splurge I’ll never forget.

As we list his restaurant in our book, renowned chef Christian Constant dropped by to see us. There’s a family tree-type photo wall of all the chefs who’ve trained with Monsieur Constant. After our meal, I was not surprised that his kitchen has spawned so many highly regarded and successful chefs.

My Best of Europe Tour is Finished

My Best of Europe tour is finished. (I feel like sending that Rick Steves fellow a letter to tell him what a great time I had.)  I hope you enjoyed following my adventures these last three weeks. Of course, we’re really proud of our tour program. This year, we’re having our best season ever. So far over 19,000 travelers have signed up on over 800 of our 2014 tours, and plans for our 2015 season are well under way. The Best of Europe tour you joined me on is just one of over 30 different itineraries.

If you’re curious about our tour program, go to my tours website and browse around. We understand trusting a tour company with your precious vacation time and money is a huge decision, so call 425-608-4217 if you have more questions after you’ve looked at our website.

Each year we throw a big party for our tour alums and our guides. This little video clip lets you join the party for a few minutes. Check it out and think about letting us turn your travel dreams into smooth and affordable reality. Thanks.

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Cathedrals, Palaces, Towers: A Full Day in Paris

Joe–as he’s done well over a hundred times before with our groups–drove masterfully from Amsterdam to Rome and up to Paris and was adored by all. After getting us to Paris, Joe had a five-hour drive back to his home in Belgium, where he enjoys a few days off before meeting his next Rick Steves tour group. I’m thankful that our bus drivers are a part of our traveling family. (Several times on this tour after a long drive, we’d walk across town for our group dinner. And, when we’d arrive at the restaurant, Joe would already be there…enjoying a nice glass of wine while awaiting our arrival. On other companies’ European tours, the last thing a driver would do is join his group for dinner during his time off. Not so with our drivers.) It’s always emotional for our groups when we unload for our last time and bid our driver farewell. Ciao, Joe!

In Europe, most commercial tour guides are called “tour managers.” They don’t really teach–they run the tour. They hire local guides that come and go in various cities to do the teaching. On a Rick Steves tour, the guide is more than a tour manager. He or she is also a teacher, and we do what we can to lace together and curate all the information we pick up from our many local contacts. We work to give the lessons context and more meaning…to make the art and history graspable. One of my great tour-guiding joys is introducing a group to its first Gothic cathedral by “building” one out of our tour members before entering. At Paris’ Notre-Dame, our guide Reid–knowing how much I always enjoyed this teaching stunt–asked me if I wanted to build a Gothic cathedral with our group. I jumped at the opportunity. Here you see me lining up our columns and making sure the buttresses are flying in with their support before erecting the spire.

Standing in the shadow of Paris’ Notre-Dame, our group built a Gothic cathedral with 13 tourists. With buttresses in place, columns strong, and ribs coming together at pointed arches in good Gothic style, we had created the skeletal structure of a Gothic cathedral. Little Brogan then hoisted himself high above it all, crowning our structure with a spire.

Europe’s biggest palace, the Louvre, contains its greatest collection of paintings. It just makes sense: You have a revolution, cut off the king’s head, take his amazing collection of art, hang it in his palace, and open it to the people. That’s exactly what happened and, since the 1790s, the unwashed masses have enjoyed a royal collection of paintings.

In its day the Louvre was the biggest building in the world. The Grand Gallery is about a quarter mile long…lined with amazing art.

Even with warning signs flanking the Mona Lisa, pickpockets earn a fine living jostling with the masses as everyone ogles in front of Leonardo’s smirking masterpiece.

On our tours, each guide works hard to create a beautiful-and-memorable last evening together. Here in Paris, we stroll from our dinner restaurant to the Champ de Mars for a memorable send-off in front of the icon of European travel, the Eiffel Tower.

Sometimes, when you’ve shared a great European tour, you’ve just got to cap it with a joyful “jumpie.” Happy travels!

Métro Lesson

Paris is the finale of our Best of Europe in 21 Days tour. And our first order of business (after checking in at the hotel) is getting our group comfortable with perhaps the world’s greatest subway system, Le Métro. This little video clip, taken as we were passing a group of Russian troubadours, captures the energy of being underground with the Parisians.

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A Tour of a Bus on a Bus Tour

Guides and drivers inhabit their buses in ways tour members can hardly appreciate. And during rest stops, I enjoy being locked in to do a little writing. This little clip is, literally, a “bus tour.”

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Documentary on Washington’s Road to Legalization

Sorry to interrupt my reports from Europe, but there’s big cinema news coming out of the USA that I just have to share. I’ve been in lots of TV shows but, until now, never in a movie. In a few days, that’s about to change.

In 2012 I had the opportunity to help lead the historic campaign in Washington State to legalize, tax, and regulate recreational marijuana.  Along with Colorado, legalizing marijuana got more votes than President Obama (56 percent). The citizens of two states stood up and voted overwhelmingly to end the failed War on Drugs and stop the mass incarceration of our most disadvantaged citizens for petty marijuana arrests.  We made history together…and it was an exciting story I’m very proud of.

Thankfully, a group of talented Seattle filmmakers was there from the start to capture the story.  The award-winning and critically acclaimed documentary “Evergreen: The Road to Legalization” shows the candid, behind-the-scenes drama of this historic change in American drug policy through the eyes of those who lived it (including yours truly!). And it gives a glimpse at just how–I believe–state by state, the Prohibition of our age will be ended.

I am thrilled to announce that “Evergreen” is beginning its theatrical run starting this Friday, June 13th, in New York City and continuing in select cities throughout the country this summer.  Here is the run-down of screenings and dates:

New York, NY

Opens June 13, 2014

Cinema Village  

Denver, CO

Opens June 20, 2014

SIE Film Center

Dormont, PA

June 26 – 29, 2014

Hollywood Theater

Seattle, WA

Opens June 27, 2014

SIFF Cinema

Webster Groves, MO

July 25 – 27, 2014

Webster University Film Series 

Read a review here.

The theatrical run will be followed by an online release in the fall, just as a handful of additional states will be preparing to vote on their own legalization measures.  Please support independent film-making and the movement to end the War on Drugs.  Go see this movie!

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Rick Toasts Kid Travelers

We took our kids out of school every May for many years, and I always considered it good parenting, great education, and a bonus for the adult tour members to have kids as part of the group. Having Annaleise and Brogan on this tour was, for me, particularly fun. It reminded me of the joy of a parent who is introducing a child to the broader world (and the wide-eyed wonder I traveled with on my first schoolboy trip in 1969). Annaleise and Brogan were great travelers, and it just seemed right to raise a glass to our youngest travel partners (FYI–this video starts in the middle of my toast).

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Welcome to France

Our Best of Europe in 21 Days tour is a carefully balanced design of intense big cities and relaxed small towns. It starts easy in Holland and finishes with a cultural bang in France. As a tour guide, a favorite challenge is to prep our travelers so they enjoy and appreciate French culture rather than find it threatening. A nice intro to France is the charming, wine-soaked town of Beaune in profoundly French Burgundy.

After the Alps, we need to raise the cultural bar a bit. All dressed up (pardon my wardrobe malfunction), we embrace the French joie de vivre. Pas de problème!

A fun way to take our travelers to new gastronomic heights is to order escargots. At first the reaction was, as you can see here, “Snails!? No way!” But with a gentle but firm hand, all but one in our group ate their escargot. And they liked it.

As a guide, it’s fun to introduce people to something they’ve never experienced before…especially if they’re afraid for no good reason. There must have been six or eight people in our group who had never eaten a snail before. I managed to get all but one in our group to try one…and all responded with a yummy thumbs up. After a little coaching on fork technique, our two youngest travelers enjoyed their first (of several) escargots as well.

Fondue Fun

In Switzerland, it seems the traditional lifestyles have retreated to the high country, where they survive with an impressive vigor. That was clear when Otto, whose family runs the Hotel Stechelberg (which our groups love), gave us a lesson in why his fondue is so darn good.



After seeing how fondue’s made, it’s only right to dip in. Trish has the technique down just right. (Many of these photos are shot by Trish Feaster, check out her blog at The Travelphile.com.)



Stark concrete structures in Switzerland, which seem like random bus stops, are actually avalanche shelters. While these are no-nonsense bunkers designed to save lives, there’s no rule against cheering them up. How about a few butterflies?



As a tour guide, I enjoy how different travelers bring their hobbies on vacation with them. Tour members Dave and Terri enjoy geocaching. It’s an impressively extensive network of people playing high-tech hide-and-seek at remote places all around the globe. At each stop, Dave and Terri get out their GPS gadget and search for a capsule hidden by a fellow geocacher. With success, they return to the bus all smiles. Here, at a Stechelberg campsite, they’re about to hit the geocache jackpot. How’s your experience with geocaching?



Our tour guide, Reid, granted us this photo op. And it’s dying for a clever caption. Any ideas?



This tree tried and failed to block our way. Instead, it gave us a photo op begging for a caption. How would you title this shot?

Trail Signs

By the end of the day, Trish and I just couldn’t stop hiking. So, rather than taking the standard gondola ride down to our hotel, we continued on foot…steeply and through the trees, hearing the rush of waterfalls one after the other all the way. Thankful for the great trail signage, I took a moment to share how the trails are organized for visitors. (Sorry–I misstated the hiking time in the clip. I won’t even blame the altitude.) Between the 25- and 40-minute options, we took the 25-minute trail. Remembering to put weight on the balls of our feet rather than our heels when descending for sure-footedness, we got back to the hotel just in time for fondue.

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