Rick Steves: Blog Gone Europe
I'm on the road in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Germany — weaving my travel experiences into my business, and sharing what's on my mind. If you think it's inappropriate for a travel writer to stir up discussion on his blog with political observations and insights gained from traveling abroad, you may not want to read any further. — Rick
- Check out Rick's new blog, Travel as a Political Act.
Wet Landings, Fruit Smoothies, and Patient Killers
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Jackie is clipped on and ready to fly 400 meters through the jungle, 50 meters above the ravine, and a leather cable grip to slow her landing at the next platform. |
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Keeping older kids happy on vacation is pretty easy in zippy Costa Rica. Here Andy enjoys a blitz tour of a plush jungle canopy. |
I couldn’t stop thinking of the whole thing powered by leafy solar panels as the tip-top of just about everything living jockeyed for a place in the sun. While the canopy is a commotion of God’s solar panels, the ground level is a greedy scramble for nutrients, with lots of clever ways for plants and trees to catch and funnel detritus into their roots.
The strangler fig — an impressively patient killer — winds like some Boy Scout decoration in a perfect spiral up a huge tree. Someday the host tree will be gone and the dainty, innocuous-looking fig vine will be a fat tree itself — with a hollow interior. Here in the jungle, eventually everything eats everything.
I asked my friend Kurt Kutay, who runs Wildland Adventures (www.wildland.com), to set up the best possible eight days in Costa Rica for a variety of experiences. This was a rare chance for our entire family to be together, and this jungle experience seemed the perfect way for all of us to recreate.
We split our time between two fine hotels: Arenas del Mar in Manuel Antonio had a great restaurant, golf carts to zip guests to and from the beach, and low-key elegance at the gateway to the Manuel Antonio National Park. La Paloma lodge on Drake Bay was extremely remote — a Robinson-Crusoe-wins-the-lottery kind of place — on the Osa Peninsula near the Corcovado National Park. We spent two days with nature guides in the two different parks (and liked Manual Antonio best — more first growth and animal variety). Between all the boogie-boarding in the surf and fruit smoothies, we had lots of exercise. In fact, the week reminded me how fun it is to be physical.
We got to our remote La Paloma lodge on a land rover — fording rivers and jolloping through miles of mammoth potholes past pigs striking piggy poses in mud puddles and humble tin-roof farms. At the end of the road, a boat was waiting to motor us to our lodge. For three days of coming and going, we had a new term: "wet landing" or "dry landing" (almost always wet — hop off the boat and walk through the surf to wherever we were bound).
Half of Costa Rica lives less muggy in its central plain. But we were where it’s maximum muggy. Here on the west coast, things don’t even dry when hung in the sun. The temperature is the same all year. Buildings are constructed with no windows. La Paloma lodge was off the grid, powered by its own generator — no air-con, just fans. Kayaking up the lazy lagoon that creeps mysterious inland from Drake Bay, daydreaming through a plush garden of sticky pistil flowers, learning the art of hammock, munching fresh-baked cookies, openly enjoying a little PDA with tiny lizards, and refining an appreciation of pico de gallo salsa, even a workaholic could be thoroughly on vacation here.
Our kids hiked, flashlights in hand, over the suspension bridge and into the village to celebrate New Year’s Eve with the local gang, while Anne and I hung out in the polished-wood-and-rattan public area of our lodge with the other parents. One by one, each couple turned in. Then, well before midnight, we too succumbed to jungle time as a roar of tiny creatures in the darkness all seemed to sing it’s time for bed. At 2:30, Jackie gently guided Andy home, encouraging him to follow the little circle the flashlight made and digging his shoe out of the mud when stuck.
The adrenaline experience of the trip was doing the Zip Line Canopy Tour — a Costa Rican tourism favorite. A family with a huge plot of jungle strung up platforms high in trees laced together by 13 cables, each 100 to 400 meters apart, as high as 60 meters above the ravines. They now earn a good living giving modern-day Tarzans the thrill of their dreams. With guides clipping us from one cable to the next, we couldn’t have fallen to our deaths if we tried. There were no lessons in nature here...just the smell of burning leather as we’d pull down on the cable with our hand guard to slow each landing. Coursing through the trees, this was thunderclaps of fun.
My favorite day was the “Campesinos Reserve Day” — an all-day hike crossing a Man Who Would Be King-style fantasy suspension bridge (the longest in CR), swimming in pools at the base of tropical waterfalls, accompanied by a farmer on a horse who let me walk and whack with his machete. We dropped in on his extremely remote farmhouse, where his wife ground up sugarcane for a refreshing drink as our kids got to see a family living in perfect tropical mountain simplicity.
Hopping a fast boat, we sped with the flying fish (stopping only for a little whale watching) to the distant Cano Island — a bushy green button in the middle of the Pacific famous for its fine snorkeling. Poking into a swirling school of big-eye fish, analyzing the churning patterns of sunlit bubbles as the surf crashed over the rocks, and marveling at the ability of huge stingrays to disappear into a muddy bottom, we enjoyed another world. During lunch at the island’s ranger station, we spied a crocodile perched still as a rock on a rock, waiting to knock a pelican silly, while six or eight children frolicked nearby in the surf.
The last morning finally arrived. I spent the hour before our departure time mostly face-down on a La Paloma massage table. With the soothing roar of the distant surf rather than New Age music setting the mood, I reviewed a wonderful week in my mind.
Then, wistfully, I strapped my wristwatch back on, and we headed for the airstrip. I mentioned there was no rush, as this was the first time in our lives the plane would wait for us. Jackie said she wanted to take flying lessons. Andy marveled at how he hadn’t held a cell phone in his hand for a week. Anne tidied up her list of 30 or so different birds spotted. And all of us began the day-long return: Drake’s Bay to San José to Houston to Seattle, where I’ll redirect my mind to a land where the flora and fauna is more...European.
Coming up: Our evening with spacey Tracy the bug lady and my attempt at surfing.
Posted by Rick Steves on January 03, 2009
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Blue Angels in Costa Rica
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In Costa Rican rain forests, excellent guides pull out lizard necks to show off the incredible natural art of the jungle. |
Walking under a jungle canopy, I hear rustling and look up. A troop of white-faced Cappuccino monkeys swing by like a class of grade-school Tarzans out on a field trip, their tails gripping branches as dexterously as their arms. Suddenly, the “alpha male” breaks off a branch and throws it down as if to remind us, “No one has sex with any of these monkeys but me. Bop juh wah wah wah.”
Later, Pablo explains how termites contribute to the finely tuned ecosystem, eating only dead wood. (The bad news: houses are made out of dead wood — that’s a reason why you won’t find many old houses around here.) The termites’ smell keeps other insects away, so monkeys smear them on their fur — giving “bug juice” a whole new spin. Then, popping one into his mouth, Pablo reminds us that termites are also full of nutrition...if bitter.
Dark, furry balls hang like stuck basketballs high in the canopy. They are sloths, which literally sleep away most of their lives. They hang upside-down so well that they are even found dead just hanging from their favorite branch. Then Costa Rica’s second biggest rodent, the agouti, romps clumsily by. This is a "planter": it steals fruits and nuts, digs a hole, and buries them. As they generally forget to come back to eat their stash, they spend their lives unknowingly planting lots of trees. That makes them everyone’s favorite rodent.
Nature here is great at deception and camouflage. A butterfly wing attracts a mate with a stunning, iridescent blue on one side, and scares away predators by looking like a snake’s head on the other. A plant called a rattlesnake tail is tastier than it looks. And lizards sit still as a knothole, looking like the bark of trees they hang out on. Many plants are nicknamed for what they look like: machete flowers, the bullhorn plant, parrots’ beak flowers, and even fruit that comes in pairs called the horse’s balls.
Here, in this narrow isthmus, in what locals call the healthiest ecosystem in Central America, this hemisphere's vast variety of life is funneled and therefore condensed into a narrow stretch of land. The leading industry is tourists coming down here to enjoy the nature. Eco-friendly is wisely a big theme for tourism here. After jetting down with so many big-spending gringos, I think that eco-friendly is nice — but we’re not completely off the environmental hook.
After a great day out, we’re back at the lodge. I feel as if I’m living in a teak treehouse. Sitting on the deck, I enjoy the slightly burning reminder that I got a lot of sun today as I stretch tight muscles after lots of walking. The jungle tumbles to a green horizon — everything seems to reach for the sun. I think “plush” and feel thankful to be so alive. I look up and see a V-shaped line of birds. They're in formation with Blue Angels-like precision, as if to remind human visitors — especially urbanites like me — that there is a powerful, all-knowing, and respect-deserving order in nature.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 30, 2008
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Stripping the Meat out of My Lobster Tail, I Prepare to Surf
Christmas already seems long ago, as our entire family is enjoying this year’s Christmas gift — a week in Costa Rica. I’m just relieved to be here, with the surf crashing outside of our dreamy hotel in the remote Pacific Coast beach resort of Manuel Antonio.
I was a bit edgy getting out of Seattle. Snow was stranding people wearing Santa caps at the airport. I had logged on to the airport website to check on parking, which told me that all parking lots in and near the airport were full — even people with reservations were being turned away. So, since we couldn’t drive ourselves, I had to scramble at the last minute to find a loved one to brave the icy roads to drive us there.
And that followed a bigger fright. Two days before Christmas, my daughter Jackie realized she left her passport back at her dorm in Washington DC. We scramble to get it FedExed — but had no assurance that it was actually sent, as much of the country is snowed in. So the day before Christmas, not about to risk our long-awaited family vacation over a passport stuck in a snowstorm somewhere, we spent hours in downtown Seattle getting an emergency replacement passport.
There was a long line of people, the computers were down, and snow was threatening to close the office. We were nervous, telling the woman at the counter, “This is a real emergency — our entire family vacation depends on Jackie getting her passport today.” The woman curtly responded, “It’s the day before Christmas — it’s an emergency for everybody in this line.” We do the paperwork, they declare Jackie’s existing passport lost and cancel it, and send us away for two hours while they issue the new passport — but they say that with more snow threatening, they don’t know how long they’ll be able to stay open.
Trying to relax, we got word that Jackie’s original passport is actually on its way via FedEx and should be in Seattle shortly. Then the irony sets in. If the snow closes down the passport agency office, we could actually have gone to heroics to get her existing passport to Seattle while simultaneously cancelling it, and be unable to pick up the newly issued one before we were to fly out. Thankfully, the snow held off and Jackie got her passport (which was good, since the FedExed passport never made it in time). Flying out at midnight on Christmas night worked great. A quarter tab of Ambien gets me three hours of good sleep to Houston (dreaming of a four-legged tree and two happy monkeys). We then grabbed a burrito breakfast and good coffee before catching a flight to San Jose, Costa Rica, where another quarter tab of Ambien gave me the second half of my Christmas night’s sleep. (Ambien meets Starbucks...and Ambien wins.)
I feel clueless about Costa Rica. I simply signed up for the best eight days that my friend's Costa Rica tour company could offer. I can’t even find where we’re going on the map. It’s fun being clueless. I actually brought the last of our Christmas Satsuma oranges all the way to Costa Rica, where the customs official made me toss them out. Not knowing what plugs work here, I needlessly brought European adapters. I’m paranoid that our iPhone will be accidentally on, and we’ll be roaming 24/7, racking up a huge bill...we'd be sipping cheap drinks while going broke.
At the small San Jose airport, we climbed into a tiny six-seater plane for the herky-jerky ride over lush mountains to a jungle landing strip and a quick shuttle to the remote beach at Manuel Antonio. The flight seemed pretty dangerous, but I kept looking at the pilot and his young co-pilot, who were incredibly nonchalant as they motored their airborne jalopy into a dense cloud, managing to push the right little buttons and switches as the entire cockpit rattled away in a complete whiteout. Eventually, like a stray chunk of two-lane highway, our landing strip came into view.
The kids are into this vacation. Jackie spent much of the flight reading up on Costa Rica's civil war, local gender issues, and lively bars near our hotel. Andy’s all for getting up early tomorrow for our guided nature walk through the national park.
I’ve never been to Central America to simply relax. As golf carts are ready to shuttle us down to the beach at a moment’s notice, I’ll do my best not to think about economic realities over the border in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Costa Rica is the Switzerland/Disneyland of Central America, and for the next week, it’s our rum/sun/fun-soaked play zone. Tonight, stripping the meat out of my lobster tail, I told my family I need to get in shape in a hurry. The day after tomorrow, I learn to surf.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 26, 2008
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Jetsam for All this Yuletide
Here are a bunch of paragraphs too precious and sentimental or weak to make the cut in my upcoming “Travel as a Political Act” book. I thought you might enjoy giving them a read before they are entirely zapped:
Being a traveler is fun because you can be both small and big in your outlook. As travelers safely back in our home port, we enjoy the best of both worlds — both small and big. The waitresses, newspapers, and barbers here are talking about a “World Series” which the world beyond our culture knows almost nothing of. I’m fine with that because we know there’s a “World Cup” about which my world is just as oblivious.
While I love the political fray in the USA, I lose more battles than I win. But, win or lose, I’m thankful. I know the winner will ascend smoothly to power and I’m respected (and safe) as part of the loyal opposition, while much of the world staggers politically from one bloody coup d’etat to the next.
Regardless of where I return from, my travels accentuate the many ways I’m thankful for the corner of the world I call home: from India — population sparsity; from Greece — trees; from El Salvador — affluence; from Iran — religious freedom; from Europe — a free-wheeling business environment; from China — civil liberties; from Bosnia — no heritage of ethnic strife and no risk of hosting a war; from Russia — respect for the law and those who enforce it; from Turkey — sidewalks without cars parked on them.
Across America, communities are struggling with immigrant labor issues. Because I sat with Beatrice in her hut in San Salvador, I know the importance of remittances to loved ones left behind by migrant workers. After seeing Beatrice’s love for her daughter, I know the consequences of a single mom losing her home because of medical expenses. With that empathy, supporting groups tackling structural poverty in my own community comes naturally.
Those who are well off have the most to conserve...and therefore, the most reason to be conservative. While I’m inclined to be conservative (and was before travels opened my perspective), my travels balance my political views. As our society struggles with conformity and freedom, I think of Denmark — that “most content” land with plenty of reason to be conservative. It’s a land of extremes — homogenous and so well-ordered, yet where people march with banners reading, “Live life artistically. Only dead fish follow the current.” In studying Denmark, I can see issues that challenge my society in high contrast and therefore more clearly.
I remember the first time I walked through Seattle’s Hemp Fest — a party of 80,000 far-out people filling a park, most of who, frankly, scared me. A man named Vivian in a utili-kilt and dreadlocks yelled “give it up” for a band whose music sounded only like noise to me, and people went wild. Then I got to know Vivian who explained to me that this is a subculture that once a year gets to come together here on Seattle’s waterfront. I walked through the crowd again, with a different attitude. I celebrated the freedom and tolerance that made that tribal gathering possible. Last year I noticed I got strangely emotional when talking with police who said they enjoy the Hemp Fest assignment as a two-way celebration of respect and tolerance.
Noisy citizens were expected of Greek democracy. Only today do we have professional politicians and professional talking heads hired to do our political thinking for us. Ancient Greeks considered the size of the early polis or city-states important. They were just big enough where you could walk across them in a day, populous enough so you’d have all the various talents to cover the needs of your society but not too big where everyone — as citizen politicians — couldn’t gather on the main square and vote by a show of hands (or swords) on the great issues of the day. Of course, with a political unit as large as today’s nations, that is not workable. But we can and should still be engaged.
We have extreme poverty. A billion people trying to exist on $1 a day is a humanitarian crisis and, one could argue, a threat to our national security — as miserable, uneducated worlds like these are fertile grounds for fanatics with nothing much to lose who blame the USA for their sorry lot in life. There’s the Iraq War and potentially failed states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamic fundamentalism — like fundamentalism of any kind — is a threat. There are other challenges and, of course, global warming may very well make all other problems seem insignificant. I hate the thought that New Orleans is the first of many major cities inundated by violent weather and a rising sea. Those images of highways clogged by Americans fleeing the latest hurricane will pale in comparison to a future with literally hundreds of millions of climate refugees (half of Bangladesh, with a population of 140 million, is less than 3 feet above sea level).
Wisely or unwisely, sooner or later, we will address each of these issues. How we address them is shaped by our world view, and our world view is shaped by an interesting grab bag of influences. We each have a different approach to these problems because we each have a distinct world view shaped by our unique life experience. My mom's world view is shaped by her husband. My sister's world view is shaped by Support Our Troops. My neighbor's world view is shaped by a potent cocktail of fear and patriotism. My uncle's world view, what's good for his investments. All of our world views to a great extent are shaped by commercial television. I'm thankful that my world is shaped to a large degree by my travels.
With globalization and our modern, efficient affluence, I see ideals, heritage, and cultural roots in danger of being paved over. As I strive to keep ritual and tradition in my life, I’m inspired by the strong cultural roots of places I visited like Turkey, where workers hold their chisels proudly in the sky and where shepherds still play the eagle bone flute.
By saying things that upset people so they can declare they’d fight and die for my right to be so stupid, I feel I’m contributing to the fabric of our democracy.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 21, 2008
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New Bridges and Fresh Fish...Change in 2009
One of my favorite moments of 2008 was in Istanbul. The prayer service had just let out, and a sea of locals surged for the door. Being caught up in a crush of locals where the only way to get any personal space is to look up is, for me, a ritual connecting with humanity. I seek these opportunities out. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing the joy of body surfing above a mosh pit.
Going with the worshipping flow, I scanned the dark sky. That scene — one I had forgotten was so breathtaking — played for me again: hard-pumping seagulls powering through the humid air in a black sky, surging into the light as they cross in front of floodlit minarets.
Our society’s theme for 2009: change. I’ve been thinking about change and reflecting on the last year's travels. Sometimes change is forced on you, as if caught in a teeming mob scene. Other times you plan for and dictate change — which seems like change, but is actually more of the same...just better designed.
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Then I realized that, while the old bridge was gone, the new one’s been engulfed with the same vibrant street life — boys casting their lines, old men sucking on water pipes, sesame-seed bread rings filling cloudy glass-windowed carts.
Walking the new Galata Bridge and still finding the old reminded me how stubborn cultural inertia can be. If you give a camel-riding Bedouin a new Mercedes, he still decorates it like a camel. I remember looking at tribal leaders in Afghanistan — shaved, cleaned up, and given a bureaucrat’s uniform. But looking more closely, I see the bushy grey bearded men in dusty old robes still living behind those modern uniforms. I remember seeing a Californian who dropped out of the “modern rat race” in Katmandu — calloused almost-animal feet, matted dreadlocks, draped in sackcloth as he stood cane in hand before the living virgin goddess. Somehow I could still see Los Angeles in his eyes. The resilience of a culture can’t be overcome with a haircut and a shave — or lack of one — or a new bridge.
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A few years ago, the fish and bread boats were shut down — they had no license. Now, after a popular uproar, they’re back. A bit more hygienic and no longer wrapping in newspaper — but they’re still rocking in the waves and slamming out fresh fish.
Regardless of where 2009 leads us (our retail sales, retirement accounts, stock market, the dollar versus the euro), we’ll still be rocking in the waves and slamming out fresh whatever-we-produce.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 19, 2008
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Hot Greece in the Winter...
I've been concerned about the riots in Greece (as are some of the people signed up on our Greece tours). We just got this report from Athens by David Willett, who leads our Athens & the Heart of Greece tours. I think David is brilliant on anything relating to Greece, and his report sums things up nicely. I thought I'd share his take on the problem with all of you. Here's David's analysis:
The police shooting of the boy was the catalyst for the rioting, but not the underlying cause.
The underlying causes are economic — static wages and spiraling prices, particularly for food and fuel.
The government is very unpopular and seen as insensitive. It's also a lame duck, holding a single-seat majority in parliament. Its problems began with its pathetically disorganized response to last year's wildfires, which occurred just before parliamentary elections that the government had been expected to win easily. Since then, it has been involved in a continuing major corruption scandal involving a land swap with one of Greece's biggest monasteries.
Elsewhere, this mix might also lead to demonstrations, but in Greece things invariably turn violent. This is a legacy of the street protests and university sit-ins that undid the Greek colonels' military junta in 1973, which had the effect of legitimizing violent street protest in the eyes of many Greeks. A general dislike of the police that borders on hatred at times is another legacy of the junta years, when the police were one of the tools of repression.
Greece has a lot of anarchists and fringe leftists, who have been out in force agitating as usual, but the intensity of what's been happening shows how desperate the economic picture is for Greece's many, many highly educated young people who graduate from university expecting something better than a €700-a-month job in a service industry. They are referred to as the "700-euro brigade," and they are the ones who are angry.
I'm sure this will lead to an early election, but not to an early solution. I think Papandreou has infuriated many Greeks by sitting back and gloating during the riots instead of calling for calm. He has also fiercely opposed much-needed reform of the pension system, and reform of the bloated public service, so I don't know what he has to offer.
Whoever holds the reins will be answerable to Brussels on economic policy — or rather to the European Central Bank, which lays down very strict guidelines to the Eurozone countries.
It will be very interesting to see whether the ECB takes this as a warning, and acts to head off similar problems elsewhere.
The good new is that no-one has tried to blame America for what's happening. There hasn't been a single march on the US Embassy, which lets us know that Greeks see this as a domestic/European problem.
I don't foresee any problems for our tour schedule or for Americans in Greece as a result of what's going on.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 16, 2008
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With Visions of Sugarplums and TV Scripts Dancing in My Head...
With the winter holidays, many look ahead to vacation travels in the next year. I look ahead wondering where I’ll take my TV production crew. Each winter now for twenty years, I’ve enjoyed sorting through my filming options and dealing with the nagging responsibility to commit to and write scripts so we can book our crew and set about getting permissions for our shoot. (The permission process is much tougher now than in past years, when we could “guerilla” just about anything.)
To choose new destinations for upcoming TV shows, I need to consider gaps in our library of episodes and places where I have new experience. Each year I shoot (on average) three shows in the spring (in Mediterranean Europe) and three shows in the summer (north of the Alps).
I have three major regrets in my last decade of TV production: Not making the jump to widescreen and high-definition until just after September, 2001, when I had a glorious 30 days of producing five of my favorite shows ever on Italy — which are now forever standard definition and clunky 4-by-3 format; not retiring my goofy-looking big “aviator” glasses sooner in favor of the smaller, more up-to-date ones I wear now (for many viewers, my shows come in two eras — with goofy glasses and after goofy glasses); and shooting a show combing the highlights of Croatia and Slovenia before I knew enough about either country to really do them justice.
This spring I’m thinking of replacing that old combo Croatia/Slovenia episode with three new ones covering Croatia and Slovenia, but also neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Considering the big changes in the former Yugoslav states, and how much I’ve learned there (traveling with Cameron Hewitt, the co-author for our Slovenia & Croatia guidebook), I’m bursting with ideas for this new trio.
I hope to spend three weeks this May shooting three new programs: One on Dubrovnik with side-trips into Montenegro and Bosnia (Mostar, Sarajevo, and exploring the rougher “Serbian Republic” that makes up the non-Muslim part of Bosnia). One on Croatia (with a focus on the Istrian peninsula, including my new favorite Rovinj, and the underrated capital of Zagreb, along with the dramatic Plitvice Lakes National Park). And a third show entirely on Slovenia (with its cute little Adriatic coastline, bloody, high-altitude WWI battlefront, mountain resorts, charming capital of Ljubljana, and dramatic caves).
I just got a report from a friend after his third visit to Albania, and I’m tempted to travel there to scout for script purposes. Albania requires no visas of Americans and is wide open to travelers. Remember, it’s the place that gave President Bush such an enthusiastic welcome a couple years ago. Albanians absolutely love Americans for how we supported their ethnic brothers and sisters in Kosovo with their recent fight to separate from Serbia.
In order not to make the same mistake I made earlier about Slovenia and Croatia, I’ll be patient with Albania, travel plenty there first, and then — with a top-notch script — return with our public television crew and make that show.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 13, 2008
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Top Travel Memories of 2008
Just for fun, I thought I’d gather my favorite little travel moments of the last year (in no particular order):
Eating cod cakes at the bar with locals in Lisbon.
Being set up in Amsterdam for five days with a classy canalside hotel and my own bike.
Falling in love with Bruges again (and gaining an appreciation for Belgian beer).
Being stuck in a Tehran traffic jam and hearing my driver suddenly shout, “Death to traffic!”
Hopping on a water taxi to slam like a hydroplane around the Greek island of Hydra before getting off in the middle of nowhere to hike through fields of flowers for a grand Greek isle view.
In the Cinque Terre, meeting with “the Pharaoh” (megalomaniacal director of that national park) and debating and brainstorming ways to make that stretch of Italian Riviera better for American travelers.
Touring the Greek ruins of Paestum (south of Naples) with a guide who made it come to life for me after many visits when it left me cold (and distilling that wonderful tour into my new Italy guidebook for my readers).
Being with mourners at a martyrs’ cemetery in Esfahan, Iran (as they remembered their lost loved ones among the 250,000 Iranians who died fighting a US-supported Saddam Hussein and Iraq), and realizing it would be dangerously naive for America to think we could “shock & awe” those people.
Splashing with happy children in the warm water out at the spit on Denmark’s Ærø Island as the late summer sun set before sitting cross legged in the sand to enjoy a picnic dinner with the Ærøskobing mayor. Then he brought out his guitar and we sang Danish shanties.
Near ecstasy in my car, surrounded by cork trees and the vast beauty of Portugal’s Alentejo, as I headed for Évora and a fado concert.
Watching an imam call much of the old center of Istanbul to prayer at the base of a Blue Mosque minaret. In a dirty T-shirt, he held two circa 1970 mics to his face, closed his eyes, and warbled like an angel.
Having an excellent private guide for the day to better understand the prehistoric sights in and around Avebury, England.
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Ordering 12 different pizzas, each cut into 12 slices, for my family and Andy’s schoolmates as we enjoyed a 12-course pizza meal and lots of great red wine one night in Rome.
Being lectured by Eddie the Verger for telling tourists how to sneak into Westminster Abbey without paying (and then befriending him and enjoying a private tour of the generally-closed-to-the-public room where the scholars translated the Bible into the King James edition).
My son Andy trying to teach me to appreciate a fine cigar (on our deck, looking out at the Olympic Mountains).
Being shown special rooms (not open to the public) by the curator at Anne Franks House in Amsterdam that were still furnished as they were during WWII.
Interviewing a coffeeshop owner about intricacies of making your living selling marijuana in Amsterdam.
Discovering London’s new "Manhattan" at Canary Wharf, and having a drink surrounded by what seemed like a million English yuppies.
In Reutte, getting a private tour of the Ehrenburg castle complex by the archeologist in charge before being knighted by the town’s humble glitterati for sending Americans to their otherwise unknown corner of Tirol.
Wandering home late at night in Monterosso (in the Cinque Terre) after the restaurants were closed. I was exhausted after a great day of research and noticed all the best chefs in town, each in a solitary space, looking out as the Mediterranean, just as exhausted as I was. Each was enjoying a drink and a cigarette after wowing their customers with an evening of great dinners and I realized that we were all in the same game...working hard and happily for the travelers — thankful for gratifying work that we enjoyed.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 06, 2008
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Tweaking Iran
I’m midway through an eight-cities-in-eight-days pledge drive tour (Seattle-SFO-LA-SD-Chicago-St.Louis-Boston-Cincy-Portland). I just got to talk to an enthusiastic crowd of travelers here in St. Louis, and then we did a little four-episode travel marathon on TV.
Watching the shows, I was so thankful to have the chance to actually finish the programs. In our early days of production, there was never the time or money to really lovingly polish the shows. That was back in the analog days, when it was closer to literally snipping and taping bits of footage (back when "footage" was actually measurable that way), rather than the economic and efficient editing of our digital age.
Each TV program we make has a rewarding final process. I get to take home a “fine cut” and suggest tiny fixes before we “lock it in.” My routine is to relax and watch the show with Anne. Then I stay up late and watch the show again with my finger on the pause button and a pencil in hand. Before going to bed, I transcribe my scribbles into an email to my editor (Steve) and director/producer (Simon). The next day they do the best they can with what we shot to get the show as I envisioned it. We review it in the editing room, and I am generally thrilled with the final version. Those teeny tiny tweaks make the show so much more satisfying for me.
Just last week, we finished our upcoming Iran special. I ran across my comments to Steve and Simon that might give you an insight into this part of the production process. These are my little gripes and wishes (keyed into script sequence numbers) as sent to the crew:
Did we use man and child on cart at Shiraz citadel? — great faces
.3 Should we lose the first sentence (Like most Americans, I know almost nothing about Iran.)?
.4 Are there any loose concepts we should write into the opening montage? (perhaps it’s an opportunity to make complex issues more clear)
.4 Let’s use the goofy pink girls and me at end of montage (with sound up)
.7 Is there a better clip of crew working at the start?
.10 Better example of “traffic direction ignored”...footage of someone actually driving upstream?
.10 Better shot of me on motorbike in traffic?
.14 Consider saving the shot of the beautiful women (first clip) to use later. We don’t need to spend that one here.
.17a Confirm that Farsi is actually a different script than Arabic.
.17 What about the clips of the girls outside the Shah’s palace?
.20 The music here is distracting to me.
.24 At “emboldened,” I don’t like the tight on the European vase — show something in the Shah’s palace that is Persian?
.28 Tighter on "Death to USA" mural with script more explicit and thorough...see new script.
.36 Stay on my snap shot a moment longer?
.39 Was there an interaction with women in bookstore that we could use? I remember her demonstrating how the book reads backward.
.46 Must we have a drive-by revealing the road sign that means nothing in our script?
.47 Do we have a shot of reflective roofs for that line (when I talk of how they insulate in the heat of summer)? I wouldn’t want to lose the clip we have here...it just would be nice to see reflective tops from above rather than looking up at eves.
.55 Can you finish the diplomacy painting with a tight on the watermelon, please? Also, for the last line (invaded India), I had hoped we actually shot a battle scene to cover that, not more banqueting.
.73 Where we say “blessings,” do we have another clip of teens on a date in the paddleboats? Also, I think we should not use the quick clip to paddleboats later, but move that later one to the first.
.75a Can you cut out my voice to hear “we love them” better from girl in the back? (Sorry I kept stepping on people’s lines.)
.76 I’d love a couple more Esfahan-at-twilight shots. This is so different and magically beautiful.
.80 Add just a beat to the end of the on-camera.
.81 Finish bakery sequence with the guy pulling away with fresh bread on motorcycle?
.89 Man on cell phone is a great shot, but not ideal when we say “meditative.”
.90 Can we show a bit of fish in the pond, then dissolve into bird tile after showing woman kneeling with lover at pond?
.91 First shot of two women at table is mediocre. They look in pain. Any happier alternative?
.93 Rick taking photo is a good shot but here it seems unmotivated and fakey. This could be used to introduce a series of snapshots at the end if we need a way to get into photos.
.96 Flip the tilt down of cuneiform in three languages with the close-up of the cuneiform to better fit the text.
.104 Do we have a good take with “May” proceeding the last line in the on camera? May peace be upon us. That’s what I intended to say.
My wishes were generally doable, and Steve and Simon have made the show just gorgeous. It’ll air through the USA in mid-January. I hope you can see it. For more on our Iran project (including a four-minute video clip), see our Rick Steves' Iran website.
Posted by Rick Steves on December 03, 2008
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A Thankful Thanksgiving
This Thanksgiving I'm considering our work, the world, our health and our blessings. While times are tough economically, and our future comes with impressive challenges, we have lots to be thankful for. This morning my neighbor told me that, having saved diligently for years, her retirement account took a big hit this month. Yet she doesn't regret having spent money on leading a full life, saying that every memory she's built through travel and embracing a life with experiences still enriches her life.
I know fewer people will travel in 2009. We've been at this since the late 1970s, and there have been plenty of ups and downs. One thing I've learned is that while some people are hell-bent on travel and will take a trip regardless of an economic downturn, for many, travel will have to wait. And for those who wait, they spring back and we see travel booms following every downturn.
My philosophy as president of our tour company is to offer the very best tour value possible every year. We make the most out of every dollar invested, take good care of every minute spent and take full advantage of each opportunity to learn and experience our world.
Our staff of expert guides is thankful to have work in 2009, and we are thankful to have lots of great tours filled to capacity, and to be able to promise piles of travel fun. (I expect we'll be about 25 percent down from the 400 tours we led in 2008.)
My business team just asked me if it wouldn't be prudent to scale back our Christmas party for this year. (We're renting the local senior center and employing a local caterer.) I said no. We will be lean and mean...but we won't pull the rug out from those businesses. We'll enjoy the holidays, work harder than ever, and share in the discovery and learning of a great year of touring in 2009.
While our tour department is excited about new itineraries, I am feeling the breeze of a torrent of new productions: Our country guidebooks now have great built-in maps; I've made exciting improvements to the tenth-anniversary edition of my Postcards from Europe book (due out this spring); we're putting out new books on Athens, Vienna and Budapest; my new Travel as a Political Act book is nearing completion; our new TV series hits the airwaves this month and our Iran special will come out — with great national prime-time carriage — in January; our radio program now airs on about 110 public radio stations for an hour each week; and an exciting new leader on our staff (who came to us from Nike and Amazon) is about to take our website to new levels. And I'm still speaking out: Two days ago I was in Spokane's Bing Crosby Theater working for the ACLU and talking about ending the prohibition of marijuana to 600 caring people (law professors, bar association people, doctors and ACLU types from eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana).
Tomorrow I hit the road, visiting eight cities in as many days (San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Boston, Portland). My personal approach to our economic challenges: Work hard, produce and be thankful for what we have. And, as I say to end each of my shows..."Keep on travelin'." Have a thankful holiday.
Posted by Rick Steves on November 27, 2008
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