Hi from Rick: Our 60 Minutes Moment
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| Rick joins traveling readers for a picnic in Assisi: May, 2005. |
Dear Traveler,
When 60 Minutes aired their feature on me last month, I was happy to see that they made it more than a personality profile piece. Their point was this: travelers value good information so much that they treat the author like a celebrity. Our mission at Europe Through the Back Door — and our success — is based on real substance: providing travelers with the best, most up-to-date information anywhere. It's not flashy, trendy, or focus-group-tested for marketing sizzle. We work hard to earn travelers' trust. And 60 Minutes "got it" (tick tick tick tick...).
I've just returned from 50 days in Europe, where I added lots of substance to our guidebooks' coverage of Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Comparing frayed walking sticks with pilgrims in Santiago, exploring Rome's Jewish Ghetto with a guide whose family's lived there for 2,000 years, and rummaging through Salvador Dali's surreal bedroom in Catalunya, it was a wonderful and productive trip. You'll see the results in the 2006 editions of my guidebooks, previewed in articles we'll be running in our online Travel News this summer.
On the way home, I stopped in New York for the massive "Book Expo America" booksellers' convention. Sitting in on a huddle of travel publishers, I was delighted to hear they're taking our books home with them at night, admitting (in their words), "We're going to school on Rick Steves."
This month's Travel News gives you a behind-the-scenes peek at our 60 Minutes experience; brings you a new, hot-out-of-the-rucksack chapter on Montserrat (the monastery high in the hills above Barcelona); reveals a Q&A from the Frommer folks; explains why I use a travel agent rather than the web to book my transatlantic flights; and lots more.
If you haven't bought your Eurailpass yet, we can help you with great service (online and in-person) and speedy delivery. And, this month, if you spend $100 on books, bags and accessories in our Travel Store, we'll toss in your choice of an information-packed "Rick Steves' Europe" DVD…for free!
In everything we do, it's all about substance.
Happy travels,
Rick Steves