Experiencing Europe

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Wow.

All right.

Hey. I am so excited to be here because I'm going to share the lessons I've learned from a lifetime of traveling in Europe.

I just love doing this. I love going to Europe. I go to Europe every year for 100 days.

I make all the mistakes. I take careful notes.

Now, I get ripped off.

And when I get ripped off, I celebrate. Because they don't know who they just ripped off. I'm going to learn that scam and come home and share it with all of you. Okay?

So how many of you have been to Europe before?

Can I see a show of hands?

 

Well-traveled crowd. No surprise.

Anybody here because they have a trip actually coming up in the next ten, 15 years?

Good.

Well, I've been to Europe several times this year, and I've got a tradition of getting a selfie on the deck, packing light. There.

You see, I'm packing light.

We're going to talk about packing later and heading off to Europe.

I've been doing this 100 days a year ever since I was a kid, and that was me as a kid doing the same thing.

And it never gets old. That's what's really exciting to me. It never gets old.

And the cool thing is, the more you are prepared, the better experience you're going to have, right.

Now, way back when I was a teenager, I had no idea I would be a travel writer or a guidebook writer or a tour guide.

I just, I was a piano teacher, and I would travel in the summers because kids wouldn't practice, and I'll see you in the fall.

But I was fiendishly writing my journal and keeping notes.

This is when I was 18 years old, 1973.

And if you can look at this, this was the last pages of my journal.

And there's, right here, it says 70 nights in Europe, average $0.84 a night for my accommodations.

Now, half of those accommodations were free, as you can see.

So, it's about a dollar and a half a night.

But it was really cheap back then.

Of course, it's much more expensive now, but the value of having good information and the value of taking advantage of somebody else's experience is really important.

And what I've found, even now, you know, so many decades later, I just love helping people plan their trips.

Just a couple months ago, my neighbors were heading off to Europe. They were taking one of our tours, and they're going over early and they're going to stay later.

And I said, "Come on by. I'd love to make sure that you know what you're going to do before your trip and after your trip."

And it occurred to me, this is really important stuff. Your trip is important.

We Americans have the shortest vacations in the rich world, so we got to use our time carefully.

We always want to stretch our travel dollar more and if you do it right, you'll enjoy maximum travel thrills for every mile, minute, and dollar.

Enjoy the planning stage of your trip. Okay?

Clearly, the more you bring with you an understanding, the more you'll get out of it.

So that's what I want to talk about right now.

Bottom line in your itinerary planning is you've got to do your homework, so you know how to get the most out of every day.

Are you just going to go to all the famous places with some sort of a typical bucket list?

Or are you going to make it more tailored to your dreams and your interests?

I like to get off the beaten path.

I want to see the famous sights, but I also want to see what I call "back doors."

This place is called Civita di Bagnoregio.

It's two hours north of Rome, near the town of Orvieto.

Now, it doesn't really matter, because tonight we're not talking about a specific place.

I'm talking fundamentals.

You've got this kind of magic all over Europe. If you do your homework. Okay?

Find this place somehow keeping its head above the flood of the 21st century. It's very rewarding.

We want to find places that somehow missed the modern boat.

Here's my favorite chunk of the Italian Riviera.

The Cinque Terre.

Now, the nice thing about these kind of places is they're not geared up. They don't have the infrastructure for lots of mass tourism.

Look at this little village here.

There's no modern buildings.

Now you're going to see the famous places.

You're going to see Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I mean, if you go to Germany, you got to see Rothenburg.

If you go to France, you got to see Mont Saint-Michel.

If you go to Italy, you got to see San Gimignano.

You know, these are very touristy places, but they're touristy for good reason.

What we want to do is think of a way to enjoy these places without the tour crowds. It's really important.

Venice is a very good example. Venice is mobbed with tourists. I think one reason Venice is sinking is it just wasn't designed to support all that weight of humanity. During the middle of the day, it's mobbed. All the cruise groups are there.

All the mass tourism staying on hotels in the mainland comes in for the day trip.

At night it becomes a small town of 60,000 people.

So what we want to do is spend the night.

We are tourists.

We need to get a picture of us in this big shoe. Let's be honest, there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun.

But I want to remind you that it is big business.

You know, the tourism is a major source of employment, a major source of foreign revenue. It's a big deal in these countries.

And there's a lot of promotional budgets trying to shape your travel dreams.

As consumers, and we are consumers, you've got to assess why is this information coming at me? And should I let it shape my trip? Okay.

You need to be a smart consumer.

Most travelers, or many travelers, let's put it that way, are not very clever when it comes to figuring out what's worth their precious vacation time.

As I mentioned, we Americans have the shortest vacations in the rich world. We need to use our time smartly.

Now, the typical American traveler that doesn't do any homework before their trip, they arrive in Amsterdam. They walk down the main drag, Damrak. You've all been there, if you've been to Amsterdam, and you just are attracted to it as a tourist because it's got all the little come-ons, and the advertisements.

And right there between Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe, you've got what looks like a friendly tourist information office, and they're selling tickets to the most important sites in town, and they're all on sale.

Look at this.

You're in Amsterdam for two days in your life, and you could spend all that time seeing Madame Tussauds. The Body Works, the Ice Bar, the Torture Dungeon, and the Heineken Beer Experience.

No, these are commercial gimmicks. Suckering people in that don't have a guidebook.

Where's Anne Frank?

 

Where's Van Gogh?

 

Where's Rembrandt? Where is the Dutch Resistance Museum?

I mean, there's so much real culture, real art, real history that's not a commercial venture.

These are privately owned, little business-making gimmicks. They're fun. If you want to do it, fine. But don't think this is the entire menu.

Because this is what pays to get to your awareness.

This is what pays to be in the little racks in the hotel lobby, you know, not Anne Frank's. All right.

So as smart consumers, you need to take the reins and know what's going to shape your travel dreams.

I think it's really important in our travels to see the touristy stuff.

But I also think it's really important to just feel the pulse of today's Europe.

Today's Europe. Every city's got a wonderful district that has no postcards, no tourists at all.

This is reality in Paris.

Not the Arc de Triomphe, the Arche de la Défense. It's a big business park. It's a shopping mall. It's where people go to work and eat and entertain and live outside of the center.

You know, in Paris, like so many cities, you've got a zoning situation. Within the circular ring road, everything has to be lower than the mansard roofs and lower than the church spires, and they protect it. It's great.

And that's where the tourists gather.

Outside of that ring road, you can have all sorts of skyscrapers and modern commerce.

I wouldn't focus on this, but to go to Paris and not see a little bit of this reality, you're missing a big part of it.

Okay, you got your dose of reality.

Now we can wallow in that medieval wonder. And I love it.

I just love going to the castles and the half-timbered villages and the vineyards and all that.

That's our dream. And that's good.

See, but we got to understand, that's the touristy end of it in a lot of cases, and we need that balance.

Now, when it comes to finding medieval Europe, I think we got to remember that our dreams sometimes are not what they think they are.

If I said medieval castles in Germany on a river, you would probably think what?

The Rhine, the Rhine.

That's where all the castles are, right?

But I will tell you, your image of the Rhine is probably the Mosel.

It's the little sister of the Rhine that comes into the Rhine at the town of Koblenz.

You go here, you got the meandering river. You got the beautiful vineyards blanketing the hills. You got half-timbered, charming towns and you got ruined castles you can hike up to see.

It's your Rhine dream come true. And it's not the Rhine. The Rhine is a muscular river with traffic on both sides and lots of trains and lots of noise. Lots of big hotels.

It's great.

I love the Rhine, but I bet you will love the Mosel more.

So it's in your court to do that studying and make your itinerary work for you.

The more you bring to your sightseeing, the more you'll get out of it.

You don't need to be a historian. You don't need to be a scholar. You just need to be curious enough to do your reading ahead of time.

And then when you go to a windmill, you can understand it.

If you go to a windmill and you don't know what an Archimedes' screw is, you don't understand a windmill. You know, I mean, think about it: when you go to a windmill — this was centuries ago the ingenious Dutch figured out this clever way to harness wind power and then through different gears, turn that power, and then it would turn this Archimedes' screw, and that would go down into the water.

And by turning it, it would pump the water from below, over the dike and out into the sea, and then bail out all that land reclaimed from the sea. And then they'd turn it into fertile farmland. And the Netherlands would become quite powerful and wealthy because of windmills.

So, I'll tell you, in the tourism industry, they make more money when they dumb you down, you know, and I'll just speak from a tourism point of view.

But in so many ways in our society, there are powerful forces that would find it more profitable and more convenient if we're all just dumbed down.

And tour guides have very little incentive to smarten you up.

But for your experience, if you can be a little smarter in your sightseeing, you'll have a better trip.

It's really great. It's really great when you can do that.

Now, art and museums can be quite a challenge, and I know a museum can ruin a good vacation.

Just because a big museum is famous doesn't mean all of its art is worth seeing. You know? It's exhausting.

The biggest building in a lot of ways, historically in Europe, was the Louvre and the biggest palace, and today the biggest museum.

It's packed with art, and this is the longest gallery in the Louvre. It's about a quarter mile long.

Well, boy, you do not need to see all of that. I can promise you that.

Our challenge is to be selecting the art and then to understand. So what? I mean, what is it about this art that makes it important?

And such, such an exciting thing?

Culturally, I have long, as a tour guide, wanted to put together our TV work and to make a series that is just the art of Europe.

And finally, we did it.

Just this last couple of years, we've been putting this together.

It's, the "Art of Europe." It's airing all over the country on public television.

It's a six-hour sweep through the story of Europe's art from the Paleolithic times to right up to today.

And it's, for me, so exciting to have this available. You can see it on the PBS app. You can see it on my website, but it brings the art to life.

And, as a tour guide, you just want to help people get excited about the art.

Another way to get more out of your sightseeing is to tap into the people dimension of Europe.

When I'm thinking of everybody's travels and who's having great trips and so on.

Common denominator good travel is how many people do you connect with?

If I'm writing a guidebook, leading a tour, or making a TV show, it's all about my desire to connect people with people.

So important.

A great way to do that is to be out strolling with the locals when they're doing their paseo or their passeggiata.

When I check into a hotel, I always ask, how do I get the Wi-Fi? And where do people stroll tonight?

It's really important, where do they stroll?

Circled on the map, because that's where I want to go before I turn in for the day.

Something else that really helps you in your travels is to be a cultural chameleon. I just am so interested in becoming a temporary local.

I mean, a lot of people say you go local, right?

Well, to be a temporary local, examples… chocolate.

A lot of people say chocolate's to die for.

Well, that's silliness, except for in Belgium.

So I get really into chocolate in Belgium, and I make a point to go to the best little chocolateria. And I meet the woman whose family has been making this for generations.

And I get to know her. I try all the goodies. I spend some money buying a sampling of it all, and I have the best.

And when I'm in Belgium, I'm a connoisseur of chocolate.

In this hemisphere, I don't get tea. I don't think I've ever brewed a proper pot of tea here. But when I'm in England, a spot of tea feels just right. You know?

It's just something I want to have after a long day of sightseeing. Yes.

When I'm in Scotland, then it's whisky. All right?

I don't drink whiskey here, but in Scotland, I have a little flask of whisky. And every night I have a wee dram.

It's just the natural thing. It's not, I'm not calculating it. It's just what I feel like doing.

In Tuscany, I have full-bodied red wine.

In Czech Republic, I have the best beer in Europe.

I never go home in Seattle after a long day of work and crave a nice cloudy glass of ouzo. But I don't let a sun go down on the Greek islands without a nice cloudy glass of ouzo. Ouzo doesn't even taste very good on this side of the Atlantic. But I love it when I'm in Greece. I honestly do. And there, you know. I mean, can you imagine here with a half an octopus on your table there and the sun going down, you are just surrounded by Greece.

And that is something we can all do. Find ways to become a temporary local in your travels.

Nature is a huge part of your sightseeing, a huge part of the experience and it's so accessible.

I mean, this is a great spot right here behind a waterfall. Your classic behind-the-waterfall opportunity and it's just a two-hour drive from Reykjavík. You don't need to be a mountain climber for it, you don't need to have a lot of money or gear, you just park your car and be willing to get your shoes wet and climb up behind that beautiful waterfall.

These women look pretty rugged here, don't they? But they're not. They rode the lift up. Okay.

In fact, this little picture is not very smart because it actually has evidence that they did not climb up.

They rode the lift.

All you need is 20 bucks and a sunny day, and you can get to the top of the Alps. That's great, I love that.

In fact, I love taking the lift up while the weather's still good and you just don't work up a huge sweat.

And then I like hiking on the ridge. I like frolicking in the Alps. You can hike from France to Slovenia, never come out of the mountains enjoying trails like this.

I mean, imagine walking on a ridge just, I mean, almost like tight-roping on a ridge high above the valley. On one side, you got lakes stretching all the way to Germany. On the other side, you got the most incredible alpine panorama anywhere, the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau.

And ahead of you, you hear the long, legato tones of an alp horn, announcing that the helicopter-stocked mountain hut is open. It's just around the corner and the coffee schnapps is on.

That's a beautiful experience. We can all have that. Everybody can have that. But you got to find that ridge and you got to get out there. And you can do that.

In fact, you could put a bunch of those days together, connected by beautiful mountain lodges high in the mountains.

I just did it for my vacation last year. Five days in a row, beautiful day-long hikes and every night a 19th-century lodge, a historic lodge, two hours' hike from the nearest paved road or lift. It was an amazing trip.

It reminds me of how many different dimensions there are of European travel.

As I mentioned, I've been going to Europe for 100 days ever since I was a kid. Every year, and I always am amazed at how much there is yet for me to experience.

Whatever you're interested in, you can delve into that in Europe, and it could be a big part of your holiday.

I want to talk for a minute about packing, and I'm glad I've got the help of some lessons and so on here, so that I can hopefully inspire you to be mobile.

It's so, so fundamental. I mean, you don't have a pack horse, okay? If you do, you're abusing your spouse.

Now, the fact is we need to be mobile to adequately enjoy our trip. If you can't carry your bag, you can still do it, but it's going to be more complicated and more expensive.

If you're able to get around with your luggage, it behooves you. I mean, I find there's two kinds of travelers: those who pack light and those who wished they packed light. Think about it. You'll never meet anybody who, after five trips, brags, "Every year I pack heavier."

With experience, you get serious about this because you know you're going to have to do a lot of walking with your bags, okay?

I mean, not necessarily up to a hill town like this, but just to get through the airports. And so on.

If you're a good walker, that's great. If you need to get into shape, get in better shape and let yourself be more mobile by packing light.

This photograph here really illustrates a new reality.

In the center of town, you cannot get your car or your bus.

Okay, this is one of our tour groups, and the bus couldn't get downtown in Florence because the mayor there wants pedestrians, bikes, and the sound of birds, not traffic congestion and pollution in the town center.

So, nobody can drive past the ring road. Our tour bus parked here, and we have to walk three blocks to our hotel, where a few years ago the bus could park at the hotel. That's great because we're mobile.

Carry on the airplane size bag, 9x22x14 inches. For a lot of people, that's a radical concept. What, 9x22x14in? That was my cosmetics kit.

Nope. That's everything all right. It's kind of tough love. I check in with them after bullying them into traveling light.

And, you know, they're always happy they did. They're always happy they did. It's not a hardship to pack light.

It's a sort of enlightenment. If I had Sherpas, I'd set them free. All right.

You need to be 9x22x14 inches.

This is my bag. I've got it right here. I'm going around the country right now.

Eight cities in eight days, airport every day. And this is my bag. I don't check a bag. This is my bag. I carry it on. There's no excuse. A lot of people have excuses. Man. Woman. Rich. Poor. North. South. Two weeks, two months. Summer, winter.

It's all the same. You got to be mobile. I like this bag, but you can also get a wheeled bag. Same thing.

But this is as big as you can carry onto the airplane. And you'll be glad if you can do it.

You have your big bag, which you leave on the cruise ship. You leave in your car. You leave at the hotel, you lock up at the train station, and you get your little bag for being out and about.

Now, I know I don't have a lot of credibility when it comes to packing light among women. Okay, I've got a one-hour talk about how to pack light, but also most of my staff is women.

All of them pack as light as I do. And Joan, who's one of our tour guides, has a wonderful one-hour talk for women packing light. On my website at ricksteves.com, there must be 50 hours of lectures.

Joan's talk on packing light, my talk on packing light, one-hour talk on tech for travelers, a two-hour talk on cruising. Two-hour talk on Portugal. I mean, there are language lessons. There's all sorts of stuff.

It's all totally free and we just love to share it. So if you need any of that sort of more information on any of these topics, it's all at ricksteves.com.

Transportation is a fun dimension of travel.

I just love and, you know, using and learning about Europe's amazing transit systems.

Cities have public transportation that are far beyond what we're used to here in the United States.

You know, the United States is sort of wired for cars, and that's just the way we've been designed from the start. And it's just a reality in Europe, they didn't have that sort of commitment to cars from the start, and they're more into public transportation.

Here is a good example.

London, the Metro system or the Tube. Right. The subway system. It's sort of an attitude and I struggle with this myself. It takes a lot of brain power to figure out the public transit. And wouldn't it be easier just to take an Uber or something like that?

But those who commit themselves to using public transportation, they save a lot of time. They save a lot of sweat and frustration, and they save a lot of money and they're going local. It just is a smart way to travel.

Any city in Europe has this public transportation that we can commit ourselves to, and we can travel with that. All over Europe, they're very interested in making more green and more efficient transportation, becoming traffic free and pedestrian friendly.

This is Nice in the south of France.

Obviously, this street would have been full of cars a few years ago.

Today it's a green belt with a couple of steel rails. And you've got trams that glide by every three minutes. There's one that goes this way. And one that goes that way. If you see how it laces together, everything you need and you get your all-day pass, you got the city by the tail. It empowers you.

Commit yourself to public transportation. A lot of my friends in Europe, they never, they never learn how to drive. It's not a political statement or an environmental thing. It's just why would they drive?

You know, public transportation is subsidized, and it works for them so well.

As travelers, we have to decide what's better for us overall. Take the train or rent a car. And it depends on your style of travel and where you're going.

If you're going from big city to big city to big city, you don't want a car. A car is a worthless, expensive headache if you're going from city to city. You pay to rent it. You pay a lot to park it. You know, you spend a lot of time in traffic to get in and out of these cities. And the last thing I want to do is drive in a city.

When I rent a car, I do the city. Then I pick up the car on the way out of town and I drop it off later on in my itinerary before I hit another big city. You see, I try to do the cities together and the rural areas and the small towns that lend themselves to car travel all together.

So if you're going from city to city, you want a train ticket. If you're out in the countryside trying to find scenic spots like this, that's where you're glad to have your own wheels.

This is the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

You know, in Ireland you want your own car. I mean, there's lots of places where you're glad to have a car. If there's a group of you, like five people, it's much cheaper in a big car.

Eight people in a minibus. That's really taking advantage of the scale of your group. And it is economic for all involved, as opposed to 5 or 8 train tickets. You have nothing on economy of scale, if five people buy train tickets to the same place. If there's 1 or 2 of you, then it's expensive to have a rental car compared to taking the train.

Also, you can choose your mode of transportation to a certain degree by how heavy you pack. If you just don't buy this business of packing light, rent a car. You can even rent a trailer.

The transportation by train, it's mind blowing. I mean, there's a whole web of bullet trains all around Europe now. I was on a train in France recently. I was just coursing across the countryside, tinted windows, beautiful pastoral views, and it was silent and smooth and so comfortable and I noticed the speedometer in the passenger car only turned on when it exceeded 250km an hour or something like that. I mean, 150 miles, anything less than that, it was kind of embarrassed, they didn't tell you how fast it was going.

Okay. So the trains are really fast. I remember a time when everybody would fly from Madrid to Barcelona. People don't fly from Madrid to Barcelona because the train is so fast and inexpensive, and it goes from city center to city center. No airports to deal with.

It just makes sense to take the train instead of fly. So the trains are great and the trains are coordinated with other forms of transportation.

If you're on a remote Norwegian fjord and there's two trains coming in and there's two boats a day going out, they're going to be coordinated. The train will come in coordinated with the boat, which then after a few minutes will depart.

All over Europe except in Italy, where the train comes in just in time to see the boat pulling out.

You will find that there's this wonderful coordination. So celebrate that. And there's kind of an equation for the cost of first and second class. First class costs 50 percent more than second class. A $100 second-class ride costs $150 in first class.

Second class, more crowded, four seats across. Noisier, a little more chaotic.

First class, less crowded. Three seats across, a higher caliber of traveler. People willing to pay 50 percent more to buy themselves out of the rabble, frankly.

Now, if I'm working, I want to have peace and quiet. I'll pay extra to go first class. But the action's down in second class. It's fun down in second class. And I've noticed that almost every train has both first- and second-class cars on it, each of them going precisely the same speed. So from a transportation point of view, second class really is a better value.

I remember a time when nobody would fly who was spending their own money. It was just really expensive. But now the air industry… airline industry has been deregulated and it's quite inexpensive to fly in Europe. So I like to no longer just take a Eurail pass to cover everything. But my style is typically a few train rides point to point, a few flights to connect the big connections, and then rental car here and rental car there.

See I cobble it together.

Don't underestimate the economy and efficiency of flying point to point in Europe. Generally it's $100 a hop. If I'm in Bergen and I want to go to Helsinki, that's quite a complicated surface trip, but it's 100 bucks by air, so remember that it can really play a part in a smart itinerary.

On the other hand, remember it's becoming an ethical issue. It's much more green to take the train than to fly. And a lot of people are favoring the train when they can.

So factor that in. But remember that the airline option is a real one.

A big part of your travels is eating.

I just love eating in Europe. I didn't always love eating well, but I've evolved and appreciate good food on the road.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm researching is run around town with a food guide in the evening to check out all my hotels and all my restaurants.

I spend about 100 days in Europe, probably a third of that time, I'm working on our tour-bus program. A third of that time I'm making TV shows, and a third of that time I'm researching our guidebooks.

Every day with my guidebook work, on my schedule, it says, "G10" and "G6" — a guide at 10:00 for the daytime activities, and a guide at 6:00 for the evening activities. And that evening guide is a food guide going to all the restaurants. And I've learned a lot.

One thing which is kind of common sense: if you're a smart eater, you don't go to the most crowded, touristic, high-rent square and look for a restaurant that says in big English letters: "No frozen food" with a preprinted menu in three languages that has lots of courses and stays the same all year long.

Everything's wrong about that. And if you go in there, it's just going to be a crowd of tourists because no local would ever eat there. And that's bad, also.

I like to go three blocks away, find a little no-name place on a low-rent location, thriving with an enthusiastic local clientele. And I look for a small handwritten one-language menu. Okay, if it's a low-rent place filled with locals enjoying a great time and it's serving what you're looking for, and it has that simple, handwritten one-language menu, it's great. It's going to be a good meal. It's a small menu because they are interested in serving food profitably, but at a good price.

It is handwritten because it's shaped by what's fresh in the market this week. And it's one language because they're targeting locals rather than tourists.

I love it, okay.

You go that way, and then also, you remember in Europe it's really important to focus on good ingredients. Europeans love top quality ingredients, and as a budget traveler for years, I would not be aware of that.

If I'm going to Spain and I want a plate of ham, I'll pay $5 for jamón serrano. It's just a mediocre ham, whereas if you pay $12 you get a plate of jamón ibérico. Now that's a huge difference.

Life is too short to eat mediocre ham when you're in Spain.

I mean, serrano, ibérico.

Excuse me, I just want a quiet moment with my ham.

That is one of the best deals going, and it's not cheap. You know, spring for quality ingredients: foie gras, escargot, jamón, cheese, everything.

When you're out in the market, the Europeans know good quality, and they're willing to pay for it.

I think that's very important. Eat with the season.

Zucchini flowers. I didn't even know what that was until I was in Italy during zucchini flower time, and it's everywhere.

I remember thinking the daily menu, the daily special was the push list that they were just trying to move a lot of old produce, you know?

No, that's what's seasonal. That's what the chef is excited about you trying.

Go for the seasonal menu, go for the seasonal menu.

I love the idea that a smart eater can go to a good restaurant and look at the menu and know what month it is and where they are. You see, that's really cool because Europeans are into this idea of a zero-kilometer meal. It's just the enthusiasm for eating with the season and eating local.

A big deal in my guidebook research for restaurants is finding splurgeworthy restaurants. And I don't like to list a Michelin star restaurant.

I mean, it's great, but it costs 100 bucks. You got to dress up and you got to book it weeks in advance. And it's pretentious. But I like a Michelin-rated restaurant, a more casual gourmet restaurant.

There's even a word for it in some countries: Bib Gourmand.

And when I'm doing my research, I'll ask my staff to list me all the Michelin-rated restaurants, not the Michelin star restaurants, in the city, and then I'll look at it when I'm there and depending on what neighborhood I'm interested in adding restaurants to, I'll visit the Michelin-rated restaurants, and invariably I'll find a couple that are great for my listing.

This is a restaurant I went to in, Toledo in Spain this spring, and it was a wonderful restaurant, beautifully presented food, wonderful clientele. I love to eat with a sharp, smart, local clientele instead of a noisy bunch of tourists, when I'm having a nice romantic dinner in Europe.

Also remember, if you're on a budget, you're inclined to go to a mediocre restaurant because the prices are better and then you order recklessly.

I would rather spend the same money going to a nice restaurant and order sparingly. And a lot of tourists, they don't think you can do that. But there's nothing wrong with two people ordering two appetizers and splitting one entrée and splitting a dessert and having a glass of wine each.

That's going to cost you no more than ordering the full thing at a mediocre restaurant, and it's going to be an experience. They're glad you're there, and you're never going to forget that meal.

I mean, have a dessert, but ask for three spoons.

You know, ask the waiter for little plates. When I'm traveling with friends and my travel partner, we always ask for a small plate.

We have a deal where we never order the same entree, and we always try the different things.

Why not? There's nothing wrong with that. There's this notion that there is, and it's flat-out wrong.

I like family-style eating. Share it, have the maximum experience.

And I also like really enjoying that tapas kind of culture.

And, you know, in Spain you got tapas, in Greece, you got mezze, in Venice, you got the cicchetti.

These are all little, tiny, sharing plates. And it's just a food festival every night.

For lunch it's usually not a big deal for me. I usually just go for a salad or a sandwich or something like that.

And, salade nicoise is just great. The tasty fruits and vegetables when you eat seasonally in Europe are just amazing. I never knew what a tomato really tasted like until I went to Europe.

Americans don't realize, most of us anyways, what we're missing until we go to Europe and we see what tasty fruit eaten seasonally and eaten locally is. It's so important in our travels.

Now, having said all that about restaurants, I think a lot of times you just want a picnic. Nothing wrong with that.

You can go to a supermarket and you can eat in the park, or you can eat in your hotel room for $6 or $8.

I mean, it's expensive to go to a restaurant every night. I was just in Scandinavia and I found myself not going out to restaurants every night.

Here's a supermarket in Scandinavia. By the way, if you look at these numbers here, this is an example of being a traveler who's a little bit on the ball.

Can you imagine what those numbers are for?

The hours. That's right.

For me, I would say I've never seen that before, but it must mean something. So I look at that and I think, what could that be?

It's, it's a co-op. It's the supermarket. And it is open on weekdays from five until one in the morning, and it's open on Saturdays from seven until midnight, and it's closed on Sundays.

You see, you can figure that out.

I mean, a lot of people sort of insist on being confused when they're in a foreign country.

I mean, there's no nice way to say it. They just shut down, I'm not smarter than you. I just look at that and I say, there's got to be a reason for that, you see? And, you can do that.

You have to have that attitude in your travels, and it'll serve you very well.

The markets in Europe are wonderful. I just love the markets. And one thing great about the markets is they're becoming food courts as well.

A lot of these classic old Victorian, late 19th-century industrial age market halls cannot make it as vegetable and fruit merchants selling their goods. It's just people don't shop that way anymore.

So, there's a little bit of that, but they are viable now because they are hosting great little restaurants.

Oftentimes a branch of a very respected local restaurant in the town. No chains. I mean, in the United States, it's a free market, so the chains can rule. But in Europe they protect their local economy by keeping the chains out of there.

Another trend is food tours.

Twenty years ago, there were no food tours. Now they're everywhere.

I was just in Morocco a couple of weeks ago, the last night we spent on a food tour. The second food tour we took on that ten-day experience.

I love food tours! A food tour's kind of expensive, $80 or $100. It takes four hours.

You get together with eight other tourists and the local food expert, a food guide, and you visit 7 or 8 or 9 little gourmet artisan food shops.

And it's a meal. It's a mobile meal. You learn a lot with your guide. You make friends with the tourists.

You've had a $50 meal out of a $100 tour, and you've learned a lot about that culture.

If you're interested in that, it's a great option and you can find a food tour anywhere.

Now somebody might ask, "Well, how do you know where a food tour is?"

You Google it, for one thing. Guidebooks have it.

Of course, if I enjoy a food tour, it'll be in my guidebook.

Well, anybody who's in business in Europe, in a tourism kind of way, has to play the game to get in with a crowdsourcing site, right? You're invisible if you're not listed on these kinds of sites.

When I'm doing my work, I'll be honest. I check out these sites to see what's available. And if it looks like something that's interesting, I'll go check it out and see if it's worth putting in my book.

Schnapps tasting, food tours, Sound of Music tour, you know, all sorts of stuff.

But you've got all those options there and you can check that out. So!

And you'll certainly find the food tours.

This was a tour I took in Nice. Wonderful local food guide, made friends with the tourists. We had a great morning visiting all these places. It was just a great idea.

Sleeping on a budget.

Now, a long time ago, I used to think this was a good budget deal. $2. $2. Now, for $10, you get a bed and a kitten tossed in for no extra. But that's not a good value either, these days. What I'm talking about when it comes to budget accommodations is an alternative to this.

When I go all the way to Europe, I don't want to stay in American-style high-rise hotels. I go all the way to Europe to enjoy a European style hotel. These are not necessarily cheaper than the big hotels. They're just a better experience for me.

If this is roughing it, sign me up. I'm in a little village in Switzerland. I'm standing on my balcony looking at avalanches on the far side of the valley. I can hear the peasants downstairs in the bar after a long day of cutting hay. They're playing the spoons and yodeling and drinking their beer.

You're in a little town where everybody has the same last name. I mean, this is Switzerland. That's where I want to be, you know.

A two-star hotel in Paris? Great idea. I don't need a four-star hotel. It's just little extras that give them the excuse to charge more that I will not appreciate in my style of travel.

I like a little family-run place, a mom-and-pop place. This is run by Stephane and Francoise.

It's on a pedestrian-only street with a market outside every morning, seven blocks from the Eiffel Tower.

It's so French, when I step outside of the morning, I feel like I must have been a poodle in a previous life.

This is the kind of charming little hotel that I love to go to. The kind I love to list, and they're always centrally located. To me, that central location is critical. I don't want a view. The view comes with noise. Europe is very noisy late at night. I want to be on the back. It's less expensive and it's quiet, you know?

So think about quiet, think about safe neighborhood. You know, think about night noise. But do you need over-the-top facilities? I don't, you know, I just need a good, friendly, safe, comfortable place.

This is the level of hotel comfort that I like. This is what we have on our tours. This is good enough for me. For some people, they need more. And you can find a different style of travel. But that takes you away from what you traveled so far to see.

Bed and breakfasts are a big deal. They used to be very charming in the old days. I mean, it was a chance to get to know a family.

You know, I remember going to this Mrs. Farrell's place in the far west of Ireland and the west coast, where they stand on the bluff and gaze out at the Atlantic and say, "The next parish over is Boston," you know, and Mrs. Farrell was always just so excited that Ricky from Seattle was here, you know.

But, these days, bed and breakfast is really, you know, Airbnb-type sites, right? And the charming little ladies that are renting out a room really have been pushed aside, and they just farm it out to some company that rents them en masse, and they've got this…

It's like an atomized hotel taking over a neighborhood. It's still an efficiency. I think Airbnb offers a great… you know, it's an amazing system and its competitors.

So you got Airbnb, you got hotels. I would say wherever you're traveling, the more you put in a room, the cheaper it gets per person. And I do want to remind you, if you are on a tight budget, there's lots of accommodations that are renting by the bed rather than by the room: dormitories.

The Y, the mountain lodges… they're called Matratzen lager, you know, mattress lofts, and hostels, youth hostels. When I'm hiking around Mont Blanc, I'll stay in a mountain lodge or hostel every night.

And, you know, of course, inside is a very rustic, mountain lodge where people share a dorm. You could pay extra for two people. You could pay less for eight people in a room. And the focus is the conviviality. All the people coming together. My favorite moments were having a beer after a long day of hiking in the front yard, right there.

I got to remind you that there are big institutional hostels that serve, you know, industrial-strength rooms with the efficiency of a member's kitchen. And a lot of people think, "Well, hosteling, can I still do that?"

Well, they took the word "youth" out of the system. Now it's just called Hosteling International. So, you know, if you're alive, you are young enough to hostel.

And it's just an option. And there are people that are on a very tight budget. And the only way to travel in Europe on a tight budget is to take advantage of these kind of options.

All right.

Something you got to decide right off the bat is are you going to take a tour or are you going to go on your own?

There's good reasons to take tours, but the worst reason to take a tour is because you don't think you can do it on your own.

Anybody smart enough to be here this evening has what it takes up here to be your own tour guide. The reason to take a tour is because you want to pay somebody else to do the driving, to organize the hotels and all of that.

And there's lots of specialty kind of tours that I think make a lot of sense. But the masses of people that take tours, they just take a cheap big bus, 50 people on a 50-seat bus tour.

And that's what I want to talk about for a minute. When you look at a cheap bus tour, it can be a good value, but you got to understand that they haven't worked in their profit yet, you see.

They get you on the bus and then they park you outside of town where the hotels are cheaper, and then they make their living selling you optional sightseeing, take you shopping, for kickbacks, and they make their living with tips, okay.

That's where the profit is.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. But as a consumer, you should understand when you get that super cheap bus, they're going to have an interest in making more money off of you once you're on the bus.

And that's what you got to be aware of.

So, in my book, Europe Through the Back Door, there's a chapter called "Bus Tour Self-Defense" that talks about how to take advantage of a cheap bus tour without it taking advantage of you.

It's great economy to have 50 people sharing a 50-seat bus, and you can tap into that, if you think of the bus tour as a bus pass that comes with hotels. That's all. Skip out of everything else, you see, and then they're not going to make any money off you. If everybody did that, they'd have to charge for their service differently, you see.

Seriously, if you took a cheap bus tour, you'd be paying more for hotels alone than the hotel you're going to get, plus the bus transportation for that itinerary. Find an itinerary you like.

Now that's the mass-produced tour. There's also very good tour companies, small buses, any kind of different mode of transportation that you can imagine, hiking tours, you name it.

I've had so much fun, taking different kinds of tours, and we do our own tours. But what I talk about mostly in my teaching is going on your own, being your own tour guide, equipping yourself with information, and expecting it to work, and expecting yourself to travel smart. You can, and you don't need to tab your guidebook this aggressively.

This is a bit much, but I'm glad she's doing that because I'm sure she's getting the most out of that. And that's what I'm quite excited about actually, is people having a guidebook and traveling on their own.

If you're going to travel on your own, you got to be good at finding information because you don't have a guide.

You're your own guide. And there's all sorts of tours. I mean, when you go to almost any city, there's going to be public tours where you share the cost of the guide. In some tours, in some cities, it's even free — put on by the local tourist board. That can be a very good value.

Also, you can hire your own private guide. Have you noticed in my TV show it seems like I've got friends all over Europe? I introduce my, you know, "This is my friend and fellow tour guide, Cristina" in Lisbon, or Alfio or Francesca or whoever. I'm just paying them to be my friends.

Okay, you can do that too. They're wonderful people. They're great guides, and you just need their email. Send them an email saying, "I'm going to be in your town. I'd love to hire you for half a day. Are you available on this day?"

It's not cheap. It varies from city to city and country to country according to the cost of living there. But I love it. It took me a long time to figure this out, and I have guides everywhere I go now to do my work.

Communication is a challenge for us because most of us speak only English. I speak only English. Nothing to brag about, but we speak the world's linguistic common denominator. Okay, if a Greek meets a Norwegian hiking up in the Alps, how do they communicate?

English! What Greek speaks Norwegian? I don't think it happens.

Now, don't just assume that people speak English. I think it's polite to ask, "Parlez-vous anglais?" and if they say no, I do my best in their language. Generally, after a couple of sentences, they'll say, "Actually, I do speak a little English."

But you know, if they're going to speak your language, do them a favor and speak clearly. Speak what Voice of America calls "simple English." No contractions, no slang. Internationally understood words. If my car is broken in Portugal, I point to the vehicle and say "auto kaput." That would be understood, you know. I speak this way almost robotically for 100 days out of every year. When I return home, my friends say, "Rick, you can relax now. We speak English fluently." Okay?

But listen to your friends and imagine trying to understand that. Assume the Europeans that you're talking to are reading your lips, wishing it was written down, hoping to see every letter as it tumbles out of your mouth.

You can communicate speaking English. I've been saying this for a generation, and since then a whole generation has grown up speaking better English than ever.

If you find young people, well-educated people in tourism, they're going to speak English, okay.

There's a whole chapter in my book called "Hurdling the Language Barrier" that'll give you some tips on it. One thing: make educated guesses.

If you're not feeling well in Denmark, and you see a sign with a red cross on it pointing to the central sick house? Go get fixed up.

It's impressive to me how many Americans would bleed to death in the street corner looking for the word "hospital." They've got different words for those things.

I want to talk a bit about safety, because Europe is a very safe place from a violent-crime point of view, and it's a very dangerous place, from a petty purse-snatching and pickpocketing point of view.

Thieves in Europe target Americans not because they're mean, but because they're smart. We're the fools with all the good stuff in our purses and wallets. We're easy.

Solve that by not being vulnerable, right? You are vulnerable with your valuables on the streets.

Now remember, this woman is not a beggar. She's a compelling person. She's got a beautiful baby and a sad story. And she's…

You think she just wants a Euro? She wants your wallet. It's a harsh thing to say, but you're on the street and you're being targeted by the thieves. Thieves don't dress like thieves. They do their best to dress like tourists.

And they're riding the trolley. They're riding the tram. They're riding the bus that all the tourists ride.

I don't want to make you paranoid. I don't want to. It's just sport, really. You're not going to get knifed or mugged. There's just poor people that want your valuables, and you're rich and you're traveling around the world.

Bam! You lost your camera. Bam! You lost your phone. Bam! You lost your purse. It's kind of exciting. And if you're sloppy, it's expensive. So just don't be sloppy.

Don't leave your bag sitting there. Somebody comes by on a bicycle and it's gone. Be on guard.

I was in Stockholm a couple months ago watching the changing of the guard, and I just said, I'm not going to watch the, the band and the soldiers. I'm going to step back and get the pickpocket's view.

All of that commotion… Whenever there's a commotion, there's pickpockets hovering around. There's not that many of them, but they are where you are, targeting us.

Now, a money belt's a great idea. On our tour, we include a money belt. If you really want to be safe, you tie your valuables around your waist and tuck it in like your shirttail. You don't get at it for every nickel, dime, and quarter. This is your deep storage for select deposits and withdrawals. Okay? And you operate with the day's spending money out of your pocket.

I want to talk about avoiding crowds because, you know, crowds are a huge concern these days. Europe is crowded. When you go to Europe, you're going to find the most famous sights during the most crowded times are almost unworkable. So we have to decide how are we going to minimize those crowds?

Remember, there's two IQs of European travelers, those who wait in lines and those who don't wait in lines.

This is the Pantheon, in the middle of the day. I stay about a block away in my favorite hotel in Rome for the Pantheon and man oh man, it's mobbed in the middle of the day. But I go in the morning when I'm all alone there. And I go in the evening and I'm all alone there.

So we need to not go to the famous places when they're so crowded. It's kind of elementary. When I look at this slide here, it almost has a soundtrack to it. I can hear the guard blowing his whistle at me, saying, "Mister, it's time to go." That's because I'm there during the last two hours of the day on the Acropolis in Athens.

If you're in Athens and there's three ships in port, there's 3,000 tourists on each ship. Every one of them, it seems like, wants to go to the Acropolis. That's crowded. Why would you go in the middle of the day?

I like to go when everybody else is leaving. We can do that. If we're not on that cruise ship, we can do that. So find a way to enjoy the sights during a time when they're not overwhelmed with tourists.

These people are waiting in line not to get into the Colosseum, but to buy a ticket to get into the Colosseum. You see?

And there are ways to get tickets that don't involve waiting in that line. That's a good tip right there.

Think of the Eiffel Tower. Everybody wants to go to the Eiffel Tower. Last time I went, I used my guidebook. I made a reservation. When I got there, there's a long line, but I had a reservation. So, you know, I went through this long. I was kind of in a bad mood. I had to walk through all these empty stanchions.

And I got to here and they said, "Oh, you have a reservation. Come on to the front."

They put me on the elevator. I went up, had a great time, came down before that last person in line got to the front. Before I left, I went through this whole line. I looked at each person in this line one at a time, and by the time I got to the end of this line, it occurred to me not one of them had the Rick Steves' Paris guidebook.

It's amazing. It's amazing how many people just, they don't really care about the lines. There are a lot of lines. Make reservations. It's not something I enjoy doing. But, you know, the more I do my research, the more I realize you've got to be in… You've got to be aware of what is requiring a reservation in each city.

When I update a chapter for my guidebooks, it's almost like we need a sidebar on the first page of every city that says what you need to have a reservation for.

Going to Amsterdam, if you're a typical tourist, you need a reservation for Van Gogh, for Anne Frank, for the Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, and for a fancy, trendy restaurant. Okay, there's four things you need a reservation for, for Amsterdam. That means everything else, you're wide open, you see.

But just don't stumble into Rome hoping to see the Vatican Museum and the Colosseum without a reservation in advance, or you're going to be very frustrated. Get online, make that reservation and you read your guidebook and find out what needs a reservation in the city you're going to.

This is a serious issue these days, and the information is there.

Remember, one way to get around the lines is to buy a city sightseeing pass, because there you already have your ticket. And with this you can walk right up to the turnstile, and you'll be in. So that can be a really good advantage. A pass like this pays for itself in a few admissions, but the added advantage is you're saving a lot of time by not waiting in lines.

With my guide mentoring tour, we always go in the winter, and when I'm with that group in the winter, it occurs to me, why aren't more people traveling in the winter? It's a beautiful time to go. You just got to dress for the cold weather.

In Europe, they say there's no bad weather, just inappropriate clothing. The small towns and the countryside closes down in the winter. But if you're going to do mostly big cities and city sightseeing, winter is a great time to go. It really is better and better.

And remember, most of Europe never has any tourist crowds at all anyways. So, why not spend some time where there are no tourists and then be an extrovert?

It's people that carbonates the travel experience. It's the extroverts that meet more people. That's what we need to aspire to. If you see four cute guys sitting on a bench, ask them to scoot over. Nothing else is going on. I was doing this ever since I was a kid and still doing it now. And it works. It really does work.

And I want to remind you, the most grueling thing about European travel, especially if you're an older traveler, is the heat and the crowds of summer. Okay? We really need to respect the heat and the crowds of summer.

Go shoulder season, do what you can to avoid those crowds. But I'm so inspired by the people I meet in Europe traveling this way. Many people whose grandchildren said you shouldn't be doing this. They were going over there without a lot of reservations, without a lot of experience, without a lot of language skills, without a lot of money, and having a great time.

If you equip yourself with information and expect yourself to travel smart, you can. It's great news. It's just great news.

And my enthusiasm for this is really stoked by all the people I see over there who are doing just that. And having the time of their lives. Or you can take a tour as well.

There's a lot of different ways you can enjoy Europe and that's what we're all about, where I work at Rick Steves' Europe. I've got 100 wonderful colleagues up in Seattle, and we're working really hard to organize all the lessons we've learned from our travel experience and help other people learn from our lessons, rather than their own, and enjoy maximum travel thrills on their trip.

Europe is ready for us. It's so much fun to not act your age and you can do that on the road. The art and the culture is on display better than ever.

The artisans are proud of what they're doing, and they'd love to show it to you.

And the culture is alive and well if you know where to find it. And a big part of that is finding those offbeat nooks and those back-door crannies, all right?

Well, I hope that gives you some good tips. And I hope that you have some very nice travels. And thank you very much for being here tonight.

Ciao.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.