Visit Our Travel Center

Visit our Travel Center in Edmonds, Washington! Our spacious Travel Center at 130 Fourth Ave North in Edmonds (30 minutes north of Seattle) helps us share a wealth of information with Europe-bound travelers. You'll find all this and more:

• Our Rick Steves Travel Store, stocked with all the travel bags, books, maps, DVDs and accessories
• Free travel classes every week (easy-to-reserve seats online)
• European railpasses available on-the-spot
• Personalized travel consulting services. (Fees apply, appointments required. See below)
• Information on our free-spirited European tours
• Our helpful, well-traveled staff
• A comfy, 1000-volume travelers' library and DVD viewing area
• NEW! Open till 8 p.m. on Thursday Nights with free classes and special deals

Our IQ Boosting Travel Center

Our user-friendly Travel Center in Edmonds helps us share the wealth of travel information that flows into Europe Through the Back Door. Our globetrotting staff is on hand to review your travel questions, familiarize you with our resources, and help you determine which guidebooks, railpasses, and travel gear are best for you.

• Meet our Team of Travel Advisors

Stay a while in our cozy library

Our bookshelves are bursting with hundreds of books and maps about Europe — all packed into our cozy library with a stay-a-while fireplace. We've got big tables for you to spread out your notes on, a photocopy machine, free Internet access, public computer and DVD stations where you can watch Rick's TV shows. You can also rent all of Rick's shows on DVD and watch them at home.

Free Travel Classes and Events

Every Thursday night and Saturday, we offer free travel classes on different European travel topics, including languages. In addition, three times a year we pull out all the stops and have an all-day European Travel Festival — a travel teach-a-thon with lots of free classes and special Travel Store deals. We get involved in other local events as well.

Our Rail Department will help you get on the right track

Choosing the right railpass can seem daunting. There are hundreds of options that can save you money, but sometimes, it's hard to decide which pass is best for you.

That's where our rail department can help. Everyone in the department is a European rail specialist. They can sift quickly through the array of railpasses to find the most economical, most flexible one to fit your plans.

There are lots of places where you can buy a railpass, but if you buy from us, we'll sweeten your purchase with all of these free extras to help you travel smarter and happier:

• Rick Steves' 90-minute "European Travel Skills" DVD.
• Rick Steves' European planning map.
• Eurail timetable and map.
• 20% off shopping spree in our Travel Store — good for all our books, maps, DVDs, and travel accessoriesl!

Best of all, we can issue your pass on the spot, while you wait!

For more info, check out our online Guide to European Railpasses.

Plan Your Trip with Our Expert Consultants

If you need expert help planning your trip, we offer travel consulting in person at our Travel Center in Edmonds, WA, or by phone. The cost is $50 per half hour, which is enough time for most in-person consultations. Because of extra pre-session work, we charge $75 for phone consultations since they usually take 45 minutes of staff time. To set up an appointment, phone us at 425/771-8303, ext. 298.

For more information, visit our Consulting page.

You've gotta have the right stuff!

Once your plans are in order, you'll want the right gear for a safe and successful journey. Our travel advisors are experts at packing light. We travel in Europe every year and field-test the gear we sell. We offer three styles of travel bag, moneybelts to keep your money and documents safe, daybags, books and maps, and DVDs, and a selection of other goodies to help you travel safer and smarter without weighing you down. Our Travel Center will wrap your new items using environmentally friendly recyclable/degradable shopping bags.

To check out all of our groovy travel gear online, visit our Travel Store. In our Travel Center, you can test-drive a fully-packed bag and see everything we have for sale.

Join our Tour Family!

Not into do-it-yourself travel? We've got great tours! Independent travel is full of thrills, but some people prefer to let us do the work for them. We offer 500 European tours each year for lively people with upbeat attitudes. All of our guides are Rick-Steves-certified European experts with a knowledge and passion that brings Europe's history and culture to life.

Stop by our tour desk for a chat with one of our Tour Divas — they are all tour guides so you can get a first-hand account of what it is like to travel on a Rick Steves tour. You can read uncensored feedback from our tour members on our web site. And we'll be happy to help with pre- and post-tour travel plans.

We offer some of the most enthusiastic guides in Europe, small groups, big buses, no smoking, and no grumps. For more information, visit our Tour Menu, or call our Tour Department at 425/608-4217.

How to find us

Edmonds is a fun town to visit. Take I-5 or Hwy. 99 to the Edmonds exit (Exit 177 from I-5) and proceed west on Hwy. 104. Follow the signs for the Kingston ferry. In about ten minutes, you'll find yourself going down a big hill, with Puget Sound in front of you. Continue straight on the main road to "City Center"; do not take the exit for the ferry or waterfront. Hwy. 104/Edmonds Way will become 5th Avenue S. Continue through town until you come to Main Street, marked by a traffic circle with a gazebo and fountain. Turn left by making a three-quarter turn around the circle. Take the next right onto 4th Avenue N. We're on the right-hand side of the street, in the big brick building, next to the European Union flag. Use our handy map.

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