With Rick Steves, Naples and the Amalfi Coast are yours to discover! This slim guide excerpted from Rick Steves Italy
With selective coverage and Rick's trusted insight into the best things to do and see, Rick Steves Snapshot Naples & the Amalfi Coast is truly a tour guide in your pocket.
Exploring beyond the Amalfi Coast? Pick up Rick Steves Italy for comprehensive coverage, detailed itineraries, and essential information for planning a countrywide trip.
Rick Steves is an American travel writer, television personality, and activist known for encouraging meaningful travel that emphasizes cultural immersion and thoughtful global citizenship. Born in California and raised in Edmonds, Washington, he began traveling in his teens, inspired by a family trip to Europe. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in European history and business, Steves started teaching travel classes, which led to his first guidebook, Europe Through the Back Door, self-published in 1980. Steves built his Edmonds-based travel company on the idea that travelers should explore less-touristy areas and engage with local cultures. He gained national prominence as host and producer of Rick Steves' Europe, which has aired on public television since 2000. He also hosts a weekly public radio show, Travel with Rick Steves, and has authored dozens of popular guidebooks, including bestselling titles on Italy and Europe at large. Beyond travel, Steves is an outspoken advocate for drug policy reform, environmental sustainability, and social justice. He supports marijuana legalization and chairs the board of NORML. He has funded housing for homeless families and donates to anti-hunger and arts organizations. In 2019, he pledged $1 million annually to offset the carbon emissions of his tour groups. Steves is a practicing Lutheran with Norwegian ancestry and continues to live in Edmonds. He has two adult children and is in a relationship with Reverend Shelley Bryan Wee. Despite health challenges, including a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2024, Steves remains committed to his mission of helping Americans travel with greater purpose, empathy, and understanding of the world. His work reflects a belief that travel, done right, can be both transformative and a force for peace.
The book is useful, but at this point can use updating, as Naples in particular has advanced a lot during the past decade in terms of overall street safety, for example.
Amalfi Coast is beautiful but absurdly overcrowded even off-season. Recommendations for types of restaurants and places to stay are currently not as helpful as they ought to be. Gives you pause, to consider that a book like this is outstripped by a travel website or even Google Maps with active ratings, links, descriptions and images.
Great guide, reliable, always relays important info
Guide is timely, up to date, hits the higights for sights with recommendations, objective, unbiased. I like that the guide offers those who want it, boutique hotel choices to take in more culture than international cookie cutter hotels. These have more of a place in maybe Egypt etc. But most of rs guides focus on Europe. Great utubes also.