European Travel Skills with Rick Steves

I'm Rick Steves, thank you so much for joining us today, and I have thirty years of travel experience I want to pack into a quick series of lectures. Right now I want to talk about travel skills, alright, travel skills and when you think about planning your trip it's clear to me the more that you see the planning part of your trip as part of the joy and the value of your trip, the better. The more you plan ahead, the smoother trip you're gonna have and trip planning involves information, deciding what style of travel you want to have, and then also how to make a good itinerary. Information is fundamental, information empowers you. More and more people are recognizing that they can be their own guides. Simply yourself with good information, expect yourself to travel smart, and you can. Now of course, that's what we do for a living, I write guidebooks. I've got a hundred people that work with me and we've got guide books that give you the skills, we've got guidebooks that give you the phrases, we've got guide books that give you all of the sites, and we've got guidebooks that talk about the art. When you travel, you want up-to-date information. One thing I do is spend four months a year in Europe, I've done that for the last thirty years making sure my information is up-to-date. Things are changing constantly over there, you need up-to-date information. Now the textbook for this talk really is Europe Through the Back Door. I update that every year with four months of travel. One of my great joys is splicing in what I learned in the last year into the newest edition of this book. Just between you and me, this is the "Karma Sutra" of European travel fun, and I hope that with this book you can learn from my mistakes rather than your own, and have a better trip. Your trip is really important. We got to make sure we get the most use out of our money, and out of our time. We always wish our dollar would stretch further, and we always grumble about short vacations. We Americans have the shortest vacations in the rich world, and it's important not to just be swimming through all the superlatives, but to cut through those superlatives and know exactly how should I use my precious vacation time over there. Once I get to Europe, the first stop I make in a town, no matter how well I know it, is the Tourist Information Office. This is where you find out "where can I rent a bike," "can I have a map of town," "when are the fountains on tomorrow," "what's happening tonight?" Now in the old days, the Tourist Information Office was genuinely a tourist information service. In the last generation, they've been privatized and now they have to make a profit. They have to pay their rent, they have to pay their people, and they have to actually turn a profit. What they are is advertising agencies in disguise. That doesn't mean they're not still information services, but as savvy consumers, you need to know that their information is colored by who is paying the price to get their information up top and center. They've still got the information down here but anything up here is being paid for, and any little funky idealistic tour guide gets the last of the priority, compared to the big companies that are paying the commissions and so on. Understand that, but still use those Tourist Information Offices. Now if you're good traveler, you know when you drop by the Tourist Information Office, you can pick up the rudiments of a smart visit to that particular city. You'll find for instance, what's on in Oslo. I don't care how good your guide book is, it can't tell you what's happening Friday night in Oslo, you get that on the internet, or you get that from the periodical entertainment guide published by The Tourist Board, and available for free right there. By the way, you don't need the address of the Tourist Information Office, you always find it. It's very important because tourism is the number one source of foreign revenue for a lot of these places and, they would do a lot to help you, not to help you, period, to help you have fun spending money in their town. That's their mission, you see. So, what's on in Oslo or what's on wherever, you've got a card that gives you free run of all the public transit. Very handy to know about. You've also got a card that gives you free entrance to all the sites. This is a big deal in Europe these days, these museum passes. And, when you get a museum pass, different countries formulate a different economic kind of equation. Some of them are good, some of them are really cheesy and not good, and actually confusing you intentionally to make you think it's a good value. Guidebooks will do that arithmetic for you, but one way or another, assess the museum pass. When you do assess the museum pass remember, like the Paris Pass, you know I forget the exact price but it'll pay for itself in four admissions and it's good for two days. There's different durations, but let's say you get the two day one, you got to go to four sites to pay for itself. Well, you do the arithmetic there, but also you gotta remember, when you have that pass, everything is free so you pop into Victor Hugo's house, just because it's right there. You know you you just zip into this or that, hey, underneath the Notre Dame, I can go into the crypt, it's free because you don't have to think 10 or 15 bucks extra. That makes it more fun. you just paid up front. Also, and most important, with the museum pass you skip the lines. We'll talk about this later, but skipping lines is a big deal, and with this pass, you walk right up to the turnstile. Sometimes you have to be a little bit aggressive to do that because you feel like you're cheating, but that line is not a line to get into the site, that line is a line to buy a ticket to get into the site, you've already got your ticket. So use that pass and go to the front. If your times worth anything, this Paris Museum Pass for instance is about my most popular tip. When you're traveling you've got to remember there's a lot of information out there. You guys are overwhelmed by data these days. When I started traveling, the problem was there wasn't enough information. Now there's too much information and it's uncurated. That's a key thing. A lot of Americans love this crowd sourcing stuff, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, Yelp, all that. You know it has its place, it is information, but nobody's curating it, and when you think of TripAdvisor, there's a lot of people that are just enamored with this whole concept, and they proudly do their whole trip according to TripAdvisor. Who's their guide? Their guide are people who've only been there once that are writing feedback, their guide is companies in India that make a lot of money saying good things or bad things about businesses in Europe for hire, their guide is people who go to a little B&B in Edinburgh and get a free breakfast in order if they promise to send a review to TripAdvisor, their guide are enemy businesses that want to torpedo another business by saying bad things about it, their guide is people who go to Paris and eat Tex-Mex. So remember, TripAdvisor is a service, but it is uncurated, and as a guide book writer, I see there's quite a big difference. I go back every year, my staff goes back every year, we know our travelers, we know the culture, we try to sort through the information to give you a balanced look at it. Frankly, the most valuable thing in TripAdvisor for me is not hotels and restaurants as much as what to see and do in the town. I find it very helpful because if I'm coming into Amsterdam, I wanna know what's new, and everything that's in business is listed on Tripadvisor. Every food tour. every bike tour, every Segway tour, every zip line, every goofy, you know, goblin tour, it's right there on Tripadvisor, and then you can sort through that and decide what you want to do on your time if you'd rather be your own guide book writer, but guidebook writers do that for you, and I think that's a good thing to keep in mind. When you are planning your trip, you remember you're coming into these big cities, you've got a day or two days in the town, how do you get your bearings? Much as I'm a fan of independent travel, I'm also a fan of spending 40 bucks and sitting on a bus for two hours and just having an expert show it to me all. It's relaxing, it helps me get my bearings, it's efficient. So you have these half day orientation tours that are good. Also, remember, a lot of times, and this is a strange company called Blands, but it's actually quite interesting it's in Gibraltar, the guy who owns it's ego is a little bit bigger than his marketing sense, but I like Bland's tour when I'm in Gibraltar because things are spread out all over the place, and with Bland's Tour, you go here and you have half an hour to look around, then you go up here and you have half an hour to look around, then you go over here and you have an hour to do the thing, and you come back there. So there's a lot of tours that lace together things you and I couldn't do without our own car, and we certainly don't want a car in that city. When I'm in Bergen, I love the half-day tour that goes out to the Stave Church outside of town, hard to get to on your own, and Edvard Grieg's home on Troldhaugen, also outside of town, hard to get to. with the tour bus, it's super efficient, and your time is really valuable in Europe. A lot of people underestimate how important their time is. One very popular concept is hop-on hop-off bus tours. All over Europe these days you've got these tours, you pay, I forget, 30 bucks and get 24 hours access, and it goes around the town in a big three hour swing with 20 stops. And every 20 minutes, in-season, there's another bus coming by. The idea is you get on that and you hop on and hop off as you like as you lace together all the sites in town. Cruise travelers find they're very handy because they include the cruise part in their loop, so you can just step on that hop-on hop-off to all the big sites, and you can do it on a hop on hop off bus, or some of them have very good private, I mean local guides. Living guides, you have tape recorded guides or living guides. If you get on a hop-on hop-off tour and you really like your live guide, stay on the bus, don't hop off for the whole loop just 'cause that's really an entertaining tour, and then you could do it again just for the transportation, to mention of it. But hop-on hop-off bus tours are worth knowing about in these towns. One of my great splurges, personally, is hiring a local guide, a private guide. It's a little expensive, but if you have a picnic for dinner and if there's four people to share the cost of the guide, you'll find it's money very well spent. All over Europe, there are licensed private guides working really hard, who would love to be hired by you, to meet you at your hotel, and give you a three or four hour half-day trip around their town. Many of them have cars. All of them, who you would be approaching, speak very good English. When you look at my TV show, it seems like I have friends everywhere doesn't it. I'm just hiring them to be my friends. They are private guides, and every one of them is scrambling to fill their schedule and they'd love to be your friend also, for a price. The good news is that guides get to be less expensive where they're more important. In the easiest countries like in London, in England, they're very expensive. and you don't need them. In the more difficult countries, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Morocco, they're very cheap, they're half the price, and you need them double. This is a friend of mine in Poland who is a university student, speaks great English, and she's got a car. Hundred dollars for half a day, that's a very good deal. So remember the private guide. How do you find private guides? You can Google it, you can see him on Tripadvisor, you can look at guidebooks, tourist information services always have a list of local guides. I'm in Europe for hundred and twenty days a year, eighty of those days I'm alone researching, forty of those days I'm producing my TV show. Of the eighty days that I'm researching, most of those days I've hired a local guide to be with me. I get triple the value in a researching point of view to have my own guide. Last summer I probably had sixty different guides. Of those guides, I think all of them are worth the time and money, half of them were worth recommending and they're in my guidebook. If I work with a guide and I like them, they're in my guidebook, and you can contact them directly, and it can be a very good deal. You go to Morocco, you're gonna be drinking tea with Aziz, and that's a lovely afternoon. Walking around Tangier with Aziz is a highlight. Now if you don't have money for a private guide, remember in a lot of cities they will organize public tours with a great local guide. Sometimes it's free. In Bath, this man's in Bath, there's a club of retired teachers and so on, and they all have a rotation, and every afternoon somebody's going to meet you at the tourist office and take a free two-hour walk through the town. These people are great at making a short story long, and I find that charming when I'm in England. So take advantage of these local tours, sometimes you'll pay $15 for them sometimes they're free, but I find they're a very good value. Also remember in Europe, a new trend is bike tours. A lot of bike tours. Now these are exercise, you get the wind in your face, you get the novelty of biking through a big city in Europe, and they have hard-working guides. So this would be in Paris, and this is the Sound of Music bike tour in Salzburg. Lots of good bike tours that you can choose from. A phenomenon in Europe these days, free tours. Now we know there's no such thing as a free tour. There is a free class, but there is no free tour. Actually, the free tours in Europe, they are tip based, that's what they call it, and they're advertised to the youth hostel crowd, to the backpackers, they are not local licensed Guides. These are expats, these are mostly Australians, Canadians, Americans, and Brits, who memorizes the script and will meet tourists at the main square and take him on a free walk for an hour and a half or two hours. They'll worked their heart out teaching, hoping to get tips at the end. At the beginning you will assemble for a nice photograph that you can get online, that's just a good way for them to get your email address, and for the bus to charge the guide for generating all these people. The bus charges the guide three euros per person and, you can count the people that photo, and now the guy owes the bus 150 euros if you had 50 people there. At the end of the tour, the guide better get more than an average of three euros per person, or he's paying to work. Do you follow me? If the average is five euros tip, he makes a hundred euros. So that's the situation on free tours you'll see them all over Europe, they're not bad 'cause I mean they're free and you tip the guy five pounds. They say money is, or coins are bad luck, so you gotta do paper, and it's gonna be five or ten euros, so it's not free it's disingenuous I think from the start, but remember he can't really answer good questions. It's kind of a frat boy history, it's just always entertaining and trying to be clever, but you don't really have a licensed local guide, so the choice is yours. When you're traveling, you're gonna find a lot of overwhelming sights. You come to this palace, and this could be a palace almost anywhere in Europe, and you got the King's apartment, you got the main assembly hall, you got the chapel, you got their romantic little hunting lodge in the garden, you got the place for their carriages, it's really a lot, and you need to get your bearings when you get there. There's always information, there's guidebooks, there's tours, there's audio guides, there's posted English signs throughout.Find out in these sites how you're going to get your good information. One of my favorite things is the guides at the site, and in much of Europe, especially in the north, when you pay for a museum, also included in that is a free walk around. If you go to the big castle in Oslo it is stony, empty meaningless, and expensive, except that there's somebody right there at the table that would love to take you around for half an hour. Suddenly have your own private guide and it all comes to life. So be sure you know how to get the local information. This man is a former student at Oxford that now loves to take groups around through all the colleges in Oxford. I'll tell you, going with a former student through the colleges of Oxford makes that visit a lot more interesting. Find the audio tours. This is something that's trendy in Europe, it just makes a lot of sense. Just a silly little extra, it really is nice to have your own earbuds in your day bag that you really use a lot because audio tours, generally, you have to hold up, and for a couple of hours you might be holding your hand to here, and it's lousy quality, and with an earbud, assuming it has that international unit, that universal jack, you can put the thing in your pocket and have quality sound. You can even cut your audio rental costs in half by sharing one device with two people. Little "Europe Through the Gutter" days trick. Alright, but one way or another, use those audio guides, they come in English and they are either included or at a reasonable price and excellent. I work very hard in my teaching to produce an app that is full of free tours, and I really want to stress this, because this will save you 50 bucks a crack when you're in Europe. I've got audio tours, must have 40 of them, for all the great sites, museums, and walks, in Europe. I've worked on this really hard. Tens of thousands of people are going to the Pantheon, they're going to the Orsay Gallery, they're cruisin' the Grand Canal in Venice with me in their ears. And it's so nice, it's just the tours that's in the book already, but it's beautifully designed in a real-time way, so you just turn it on and you rarely have to pause, and then you can just relax, you need to read and look up, but I'm right in your ear the whole time, and we're walking together through St. Peter's Basilica. If you like my style of teaching it absolutely free, its simple, you don't need the book or anything, you just download Rick Steves Audio Europe, and it'll be, I hope, a real boon to your sightseeing. Again, there's forty or more of these tours covering all the major sites in Europe; London, Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, you've got the tours with that app. You need to decide early on, are you gonna take a tour, or are you gonna go on your own? the most common reason Americans have for taking tours is because they don't think they can do it on their own. Anybody smart enough to be streaming right now, or here in this theater, has what it takes intellectually to make it around Europe without being spoon fed by a guide. You're smart enough. Now there are reasons to take a tour, good reasons to take a tour. A tour is efficient, and a tour can be be economic. You're talking people into sharing a big vehicle. People ask me how do I make any money in my tour company, it's the biggest part of our business. We make a lot of money on our tours, we took twenty thousand people on 800 tours this last year and people ask me how do you make any money? When they try to add it up it seems like about the same cost as going on your own, and I remind them if I can talk 25 people into sharing one vehicle, right there, compared to the cost of renting vehicles and so on, or getting a train pass, is more than enough profit for me. If everything else is a wash, the tour is good business for me and a great value for our travelers, assuming we can accomplish more in one day, with the help of a guide in a bus, than you could do on your own. That's the rationale for taking the tour, you got a guide, you got a bus, all the ducks are in a row, you've got reservations to the complicated sites, and so on. If it's done well it can be a very good deal. The big money, if you're a tour operator, is in those last 25 people on the bus that we don't have. Fifty people on a 50 seat bus, wow. We have 25 people on a 50 seat bus. You see, the standard, impossibly cheap tours in Europe are fifty people on a 50 seat bus. Now that's economic, that can be efficient, but remember they don't make any money off of you on the beginning price, they're going to make their money by selling you stuff over the course of your tour, and you gotta be ready for that because as consumers you just got to be realistic, it's not that cheap. They're going to park you outside of town, why? Hotels are cheaper outside of town, they're all cookie-cutter, Days Inn, predictable, everything works, they got air con, and elevators, there's less complaints, and, you're stuck in the middle of nowhere so you have to pay 50 bucks to take the bus tour into town tonight. Fifty people times $50 is $2,500 of gravy for the guide and the tour company. That's good business, that's what makes their world go round. read the fine print on your standard budget tour bus brochure. It says you're gonna sleep in the Florence area. that could be halfway to Bologna. I like to stay right downtown. I'm not worried in my tour company that people are gonna, like, not take our tours because they already paid for the tours, its included you see, in the tour cost. So, understand when you're shopping around for a tour the built in financial concerns of the company, and do remember you cannot take fifty people into a cute pub and experience a cute pub. You're going through Europe with fifty people seeing cultural cliques on stage, with a company that didn't make a fair profit off you in the start, and they're gonna work very cleverly to sell you sightseeing, and take you shopping for kickbacks, and then angle for tips when it's all over. As a tour operator I know what it's like, I mean I know just where to park the bus in Lucerne for Swiss clock shopping. You get $50 and a bottle of champagne as soon as you park your bus there. 45 minutes later, after everybody's done their Swiss clock shopping, they're back on the bus, the tour guide goes back into the back room office and gets 15% of whatever went into the till during that period. That's enough to corrupt a normal tour company, and you've got to, as consumers, understand what you're getting into when you take a big bus tour. And you gotta remember, when you take a big bus tour, again, you're going to be doing things in a mass tourism kind of way. These people here are in Tangier. They went over with a big bus tour from Spain, they got one in their life in Africa, and they're all having lunch together. Here you are, your only meal in your life in Africa, and its lunch with a bunch of people from New Jersey and Florida. Now you do have your boy George belly dancer which is kind of fun, but its a crass example of the local culture, very very touristic, and then you got people that are just worried about not getting ripped off and not getting diarrhea and they want to buy their carpet, get back onto their boat safely. It's a whole different approach to travel, and you see them in Morocco, I see them and it's just, you just shake your head. They go through the town looking like you know a bunch of nervous kangaroos with their bags on their bellies like this, kind of like this, and all I can think is "self-imposed hostage crisis," alright. You really can do it on your own if you want to, but you do have that option taking a big bus tour. I will remind you, the good thing about a standard, big, impossibly cheap, bus tour, think of it as a bus pass that comes with hotels. Impossibly cheap, it's the cheapest way for an adult that doesn't want to do hitchhiking, and youth hostels, and picnics, to have a normal tour. Enjoy the bus, enjoy the forgettable, no-stress, standard American-style hotels, skip out of lunch even if its included, do your own thing, equip yourself with a guidebook, freeloading on the structure of a trip provided by a tour company that makes its money by selling you stuff once you're over there, just buy none of their stuff, and if everybody did that they'd have to charge upfront what the tours really worth. really worth, you follow me there? So that can be a good deal, that can be a very good deal but many people get onto a bus and it occurs to them on day two, "we could have done this on our own," and that's the big deal. You can travel on your own if you want to, and that's what I just love. Now, with my tour company, it seems contradictory 'cause okay I'm saying you can do tours without a tour. Yeah, you can do it on your own, but if you want somebody to do the driving, if you want somebody to organize the hotels, it can be very efficient. As I mentioned, I led these tours for 25 years, for the last ten years I've been taking them, I know my guides now do a better job than I ever could their local specialists, I'm the generalist and every time I take a tour, about day 3 it occurs to me, "yeah I see why people love these tours," I'm so relaxed they're doing the driving, I know there's going to be a great hotel tonight, I don't know exactly what it is but it's going to be fine, they've got lunch figured out, we've got some sort of activity in the afternoon, it's a vacation and I'm sharing the cost of the transportation with 25 people, and I got a great guide. One thing about our tours is, and I cant really advertise this but I find it's true, it's just the kind of people we attract through the way we advertise our tours really gathers a fun-loving group of people that you enjoy traveling with. And that's pretty important. Remember, the kind of tour you'd choose, the way they promote their tour shapes the kind of people that take that tour. This is one of my tours recently, and I just thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with the people on the tour. We've got thirty five different itineraries all over Europe, and you can learn a lot more about that by just checking on our website or picking up our tour brochure that explains the reality of our tours. But again, small groups, fun-loving people, and a guide who's fully paid up front, and this guide is on your side from beginning to end. I am so proud of the work our guides do, our customers have a very high level of expectation and these guides, year after year, exceed those expectations. So, if you're curious about a bus tour, check out a Rick Steves tour, if you like. A big possibility for you is cruising. Cruising is a booming part of the travel business in Europe these days it's efficient, it's economic it's just kind of exciting. Now it's not my style of travel, but I'll tell you I love cruising, I do a lot of it. I've written a guide book, it's the best selling guidebook for Mediterranean cruising and we've written a companion cruise book for Northern Europe port. And I'll just say a few minutes about cruising, the cool thing for a lot of people about cruising is you move into one hotel and every day you're in a different country, and you don't have to relocate every day, and you travel while you sleep and you toggle from a standard floating American resort with a bunch of Americans looking you know just have fun, and putt-putt golf, and drinks, and all that, nothing wrong with that, that's a holiday and then when you land, you become a traveler, and then you get back on the ship and you're back on your floating resort with a bunch of Americans again. So, given that that's what it is, they do it really, really well. Now when you think of a cruise ship, there's three thousand tourists on one of these cruise ships. That's a remarkable thing, and by my estimate, one thousand of them are not even travelers, they're just looking for a floating alternative to Las Vegas. 1,000 of them are the worst kind of travelers, they don't even know where they are they just got a bucket list of things they want to see before they die, and they better hurry up. Okay, and 1,000 of them are actual travelers that like the idea of eight hours in the city, and tomorrow eight hours in the next country, and the next day 8 hours, and the next, they're well organized when that gang plank hits the shore they're on their way. Now I was skeptical, but you know, I just did it myself and they're very well organized, so my challenge is to take this the shell, this efficiency, recognize it's a huge market, and there's reasons people want to take a tour, it's safe, it's cheap, it's efficient, you're getting-- its ADD America. it's all about ADD these days, our way, and it's one day per country. Okay, don't complain about it, it's what they're asking for, make the most out of that. And I just find that you can be having breakfast here in Istanbul, like I was, in the top of the ship at eight o'clock, at nine o'clock the gangplanks down you're free to go ashore, and by 9:30 you're on top of this hill, you're on top of this hill, in this crowd, and there's not a hint of your cruise ship. Fundamentally that's the exciting thing about cruising in Europe, if you take the initiative, you can be completely apart of that garish, mass tourism, American cruise world. You can be in Naples, in Istanbul, in Barcelona, and the great thing about cruising is, in many cases, the ship parks right there downtown. So, if you take advantage of the guidebook and the information, that's what we've worked on very hard is making these cruise ship books. You get these books and my goal is to let the people that wanna take the cruise program, function as independent, smart travelers for the eight hours they have onshore. You can do it, and it can be very very efficient. Remember, when you when you leave the ship there's a dividing point. Bus tour is this way, suckers going on their own that way, alright. No, independent people and people who opt in for the bus tour. So you go to the left, you got your buses waiting for you. You go to the right, and you see a barrier where all the local guides who've been booked by more independent travelers are meeting them. For the cost of four bus tours, you can get your private guide waiting for you and your friends to take you on your own around the town. Much better, because those bus tours all have an agenda. They're gonna take you shopping, they're gonna do-- the buses in Turkey are provided by the carpet shops for free, you bet they're gonna go to the carpet shops, you see. So, understand that sort of nature and remember, at every port in Europe, I don't know why, but for some reason the tourist boards, like, stick up for independent travelers and they insist on having a kiosk right there in the dock to help people who are completely independent. Here's the bus to Pisa, the crew members are going to take that bus, and a few the travelers might take it also. Okay, I wanna talk about what most of you are gonna be doing on your trip, you're gonna be traveling by car or train with a guidebook, being your own guide. And that's so exciting. Again, I've done this for four months here ever since I was a kid, and the key is to equip yourself with good information, and expect yourself to travel smart. You need to plan an itinerary, a smart itinerary. You need guidebooks that are up-to-date. Now there's lots of guidebooks, and every guidebook has its own personality and style, and you know, for the right traveler, my guidebooks work really well, but I'm the first one to say that for some people, they want a different kind of guide book. I'm not into shopping, I'm not into gambling, I'm not into nightlife I'm not into pretentious dining, you know, there's a lot of people that want that kind of stuff, and there's great guidebooks for you. I'm just sort of an old hippie that’s running around with a backpack still enjoying hitting the culture, getting out of my comfort zone, making friends, eating well, and learning. Okay, and that’s sort of my passion, and it comes through in these guidebooks. These guidebooks are lavishly updated, they are more up-to-date than anything else in print, and they give you the nitty-gritty so you can put the trip together. Now there are the big, full guidebooks, about 1,000 pages each, and that can be expensive and it can be bulky. We've been able to produce what we call snapshots. We've covered every country in Europe, but if you don't wanna buy Scandinavia you can just buy Norway, and it's half the bulk, and half the price. Those are called snapshots. The same information, the same depth, the same up-to-date-ness, but just a part of the book. Again, a snapshot. Also, one thing that's been very fun for me, is to develop the big cities into guidebooks of their own. My frustration when I first started writing guidebooks was you'd have a great guidebook for a city, and you'd be in Paris, and you'd go out to Versailles, and then when you get to Versailles you realize "oh, my guidebook doesn't cover Versailles in a room-to-room kind of way, I need to now by a guidebook at Versailles," which costs as much as the France guidebook its as big as the France guidebook, way more information than I want, translated from a scholar thirty years ago, so dry if you read out loud your lips would chap. I don't want that kind of guide book, but that was the only option, so what I've done over 25 years is developed these tours that we give our groups, and I put the tour, in the books, so that you can do our tours without us. And these books, these city books, the goal of them is to give you everything you need to know eating, sleeping, nitty-gritty, site seeing, getting there, getting away, at night, shopping, all that kind of stuff, and, self-guided tours to the great sites, the must-see sites in that town. So, the philosophy is, you buy this book, you got everything you need for a week in that city, and they work really really well. I want to remember our guidebooks originated back in the early eighties as handbooks for my tours. I didn't write the guidebooks for the general public, I wrote them as handbooks for the people who took my bus tours around with me. Time after time people were stealing my manuals during the break. I thought they'd flip through the manual, like what they see, and take the tour, they'd flip through the manual, like what they saw, and took the book. I thought, these books are driving decent people to theft, they should be available for purchase. So I did the book, and I thought, I'm going to honestly put everything in that book that I know to do the tour, so people can do my tour without me. The first books were called France in 22 days, written in 22 days because it was a 22-day tour route, and on day three you did exactly this, and people were drafting behind our tours. And it's a great thing, I love it. Now that's evolved, now we took the 22 day program out of there, but it still has that passion, not for just taking care of your money, Europe on $5 a day style, but taking care of your time, France in 22 days style. So, your time is a limited resource just like your money, and these books today are the best selling guides in the United States for each country in Europe, because they take care of your time, they cut to the superlatives, and they take care of your money as well. Okay, so if you like my style, I think they can be helpful for you. Complete guidebook, Snapshot, or city book. Now, a lot of Americans like to read the New York Times, and a lot of Americans think that's just too much print, "I want to read USA Today." It's two different markets. What we produced is the USA Today version, and the New York Times version of each of our city guide books, and they're called Pocket Guides. The little, punchy, colorful Pocket Guide has everything most people need to know, but about half of the verbiage as the big full guide. But its punchier, it's more bullets, it's more charts, and maps, and colors, and they're very popular. We've got the option to get the full guide, or the Pocket Guide, and we just are working to handle your needs so you can put your travel dreams into a smooth, and affordable reality. I want to stress, we could never do these guides without our local guides in Europe. We're hiring guides all the time. I've got twenty people from my office that go over there, and we've got guides in every city in Europe that help us out. This is Peter Poltzman, and Peter took five days, and just went around the countryside last time I was in Hungary, and we checked out all these little towns outside of Budapest, and I really am thankful for the work and the help we get from our local guides, couldn't do it without them. Whether you're going to use a printed guide or a digital guide doesn't matter, it's purely a choice. All of our information is available digitally as well as in print, and how you like it really is up to you. Now, Europe 101 is the book I wrote after 25 years of leading tours around Europe, understanding what people need to know, and just as importantly, what they don't need to know. This is a very fun, and practical, swing through the story of Europe, from the pyramids to Picasso, designed with your sightseeing in mind. It's really important if you want to enjoy and appreciate the sites, and as you know, museums can ruin a good vacation, they really can. I know tourists are good for about two hours in the Louvre, and our job as tour guides and guidebook writers is to cut through the superlatives, and lay out what is the best of that museum, so you can enjoy it while you still fresh. In the third book, which is the sort of philosophy book, is the Travel as a Political Act book, which talks about how we can get out of our comfort zone and gain an empathy for the other 96% of humanity, and come home with a mindset where we're more inclined to build bridges, and less inclined to build walls. Now these are the three fundamental books. Europe Through the Back Door, that's the skills we're talking about today, Europe 101, the art, and then Travel as a Political Act, that's how to broaden your perspective through travel, and they all work together as a sort of Maslow's hierarchy of travel needs, to give you those skills, appreciate the culture, and then taking home the very best souvenir, that broader perspective. For more information, we've been filming TV shows like nobody's business, and we've got an archive of a hundred shows covering all of Europe, and you can go to our website anytime you like, and just click. There's four shows on Ireland, 16 shows on Italy, four shows on Turkey, two shows going across the Alps, lots of information. Of course I like to think of them as entertaining and broadcast television, but I also think of them as a resource. Go to ricksteves.com, go into to the TV section, if you're going to Denmark there's two shows for you. That's a one hour lesson on Denmark, and I tell you it really does help to let people know how they should spend their time. Also, at ricksteves.com, we've got this talk, and a whole slew of other talks I give talks on different countries. I've got wonderful guides giving talks just like this, talks on packing , talks on art, talks on Italy, talks on tech, a lot of very important information beyond the scope of this class, and they're all free. Go to the Travel Talk section at ricksteves.com and you can go to school before your trip, and the whole idea is to learn from our mistakes rather than your own, so you can travel smoother. Very near and dear to my heart is my three-part art lecture series that is available at our website, giving you a five-hour swing through the story of Europe from the Middle Ages until today. Now, when you have that background information, now you can get down and dirty with your itinerary planning. What you do, is lay down everything you could, sit down with a travel partner, and just brainstorm everything you want to do, and how many days you want to spend in each of those spots. Then, you add it up and you realize, "oh that's twice as many days as we have for a vacation," which is generally the case. Alright, that’s start, so you take your wish list, and then you go through it with a hard look at, "what do we really have time for," and the philosophy here needs to be, "yes, I know you can spend four days there, but two days will do it." Just as bad as going too fast, I think, is going to slow. In each day that you stay in a town, I think there's a diminishing curve of returns. Day number four in a great city is not as good as day number one in a secondary city. If I had three days in Edinburgh, I could make a strong case. Two days in Edinburgh, and take 45 minutes a trip to Glasgow, you see. So you've got those kind of decisions to wrestle with, but don't think that five days in one stop is as good as its trendy to say. All right, I keep it moving, and I'm the first one to say you can go too fast, but also you can go to slow. Also don't try to exhaust Europe of what it has to offer on one trip, you can't, you'll always be frustrated. Assume you will return. On this itinerary, you know, we had seven days in Greece. Its just not gonna happen. Let's do Greece on another trip, and focus right in on Greece and do it off season, much smarter, you see. Think about the weather, think about not spending a lot of travel time getting somewhere in back, think about taking a few night trains, thinking about paring it down, and now you got your trip into 21 days. You lay it out on a calendar, and then I like to build a chart like this, just on word, and it's a living document, everything I'm working on is in this chart. Guides I've made, checklist of things to do, reservations to make, hotels that I wanna get, hotels that I have booked, keep careful track of it because if you're sloppy, and you book a hotel and you forget about it, it's expensive, you know, they're gonna bill you. If you're sloppy and you didn't know that you gotta make a reservation for the Last Supper, you're gonna get there and be very frustrated. So here's where you put all your notes. It's a lot to keep track of, and you can do it with your growing file. And then you print that thing out, you make three copies of it, and one of them is in your pocket all the time so you can be referring to it. This is one of our-- that's one of our most popular itineraries, this is the best of Europe in 20 days. That's the tour I was doing in my minibus back when I got started, I absolutely love this tour, and I would take a hard look at that as the core of Europe. It's a little heavy on Italy, eight days in Italy, 'cause that's my favorite country. It's open jaws, starting in Amsterdam and finishing in Paris, because you should not fly in and out of the same city unless have a good reason to, it makes no sense at all. It takes extra time and money to get back your starting point. Go open jaws, and then fashion that into something that makes sense to you. And if you'll look at here, you'll notice there's only two one night stands. One night stands are inefficient, I would rather have a long day in order to have two nights in a row, and then a long day. Your second night in a town really is a joy, because you're already established, you know the ropes, and it's not so frantic about, "where I am." So, you minimize your one night stands. What's the trip gonna cost ya? Well, you've got to just kind of go through and figure your flight, you gotta figure your room and board, ground transportation, and sightseeing. Room and board varies if you're one, two, three, or four people, because the more people you put in the room, the cheaper it gets. One person in a hotel room, very expensive. This is based on two people in a hotel room, $150 a night for your hotel including breakfast would be 75 bucks per person, and $15 for lunch, if you get a lunch down here for $15 that's satisfying to you, you can get a lunch anywhere in Europe for $15, and then you're going to splash out for a nicer dinner, and when it comes to transportation it depends if you're gonna take a car or a train, but you need to kind of sort that out before your trip. Remember, there are a lot of tourists in Europe, everybody's trying to get you to go to different places, and you've got to be careful, as tourists, when you come into town, to recognize that all of the heavily promoted things are heavily promoted, not out of the love of travel and art, but out of the love of your money. Okay, in the hotel lobby you'll see little brochures. That's paid to be there. At the Tourist Information Office, even the Tourist Information Office, it's corrupted by, you know, paid display. So, you'll see these highly promoted things but generally they're gimmicks, and you need some reasonable source that lets you sort beyond that, and know what you want to do. And do remember any time you go around Europe you can choose to go to the tourist places, or you can choose to hangout where there are no tourists. Europe is very, very crowded in the very, very popular places, but I was just in South England for two weeks and I saw forty Americans the whole time. It was remarkable how lonely and desolate it was, it was beautiful. I was just in the south coast of Greece the Peloponnesian Peninsula, it was just me, and my beautiful oranges, and those lovely sunsets. You can leave the tourists quite easily, you can find yourself all alone at your own private little version of Stonehenge, and I like that. Even though it's not his grandiose as Stonehenge, there's more magic here I can promise you that. And there's a hundred of these for every touristy Stonehenge surrounded by tour buses, and port-a-loos, and barbed wire, and blow horns, okay. That's your challenge, off-season, or peak-season, or shoulder-season, there's pros and cons. Remember, in Europe, the most grueling thing about European travel is the heat and the crowds in the summer. if you're wondering, "can we do this," steer away from the summer. It's very hot and very crowded in the Mediterranean. My pattern, and I've done this for thirty years, April and May in the Mediterranean, I go home in June. July and August, north of the Alps, okay. Scandinavia and Britain, I want peak of peak. Long days, good weather, and I want some action. There's really not many crowds in Scandinavia or Britain, and I'd rather have the parks full of people and there to be lots of activities. If you go off-season in Scandinavia, it's gonna be dark, it's going to be gloomy, and the open-air sites are gonna be desolate, alright, July and August. When you think about peak-season, and shoulder-season, and off-season, there is a little golden, you know, Goldilocks time in the middle called shoulder-season, it's one big bell-shaped curve. I really like May and September/October, that's very nice. Here I am on the beach in the Riviera, it's too cold to swim but there's plenty of space, there's nice sunshine and it's before the summer break, July and August, and that makes a lot of sense. Again, you can go off-season, that's the easiest time, if you're wondering, "can we do this," just bundle up. I love the idea of a road trip off-season if you're wondering, "is this too grueling physically for me." Europe is crowded with people who live there, and it's crowded with all of us who hustle in every summer, and to be honest, most travelers have the same things in mind. You know if you're going to London, or you're going to Paris, you're gonna go out to Versailles and you're gonna make a beeline for that Hall of Mirrors, it's a mob scene all day long. If you go to Rome, you want to go to the Vatican Museum. Look at this crowd in the Vatican Museum. I want to remind you, there are emerging economies, India and China, and now there's a lot of poor people in those countries, but man there are a hundred million people that have money to go to Europe, and when they go to Europe, they got a handful of things in mind, They've got as sophisticated an approach to Europe as I would have goin' to China, or as I would have goin' to India. You know from a far distance with a very different culture you, just want to see the famous marquee sites. Consequently there's ten sites in Europe that are just overwhelmed by emerging economy travelers and you've got a choice, "am I gonna deal with that or am I gonna steer clear?" Probably you're gonna deal with it, but you want to be very careful about dealing with it smartly, you're gonna go through the Rafael rooms in the Vatican Museum with this kind of a crowd all day long. There's no way around it, so don't complain about it, just be thankful a lot of people are able to travel, be thankful that there's this stability so they can, and be thankful that you're able to shuffle through that, enjoy the Rafael, and then go do something without a lot of tourists, because there's a lot of alternatives. Remember, when you see a long line, those people are not waiting to get into that site, those people are waiting to buy a ticket to get into that site, and good travelers know there are alternatives to getting a ticket right there, you can get one of those museum passes, or in the case of the Colosseum, Italy is now selling combo tickets. If you go to the Coliseum, they've already charged as much as they can for the Coliseum but they've got this gimmick where they make you buy a ticket to the Palatine Hill nearby, in order to see the Coliseum, so it's a combo ticket, it costs a lot more. The good news is, there's never a line at the Palatine Hill. It's a hundred yards away, you walk right up to the tourist desk, you buy your ticket, and then you walk past all of these people straight to the turnstile and you go in, and you enjoy the Coliseum. When you go to the Eiffel Tower, you're gonna find long lines waiting to get up that elevator. Now I have a good guidebook, and I used it, and it said you'd better get a reservation or you're gonna spend a lot of time in line. So I went online, I got the reservation, I'm not good with this online stuff but it's just follow the prompts, and it works, and when I got there I had the inconvenience of going through that empty little entryway, and walking zig-zagging through all those empty stanchions. And I thought, "how silly, I'm walking half a mile just to get to the front of the line," and I got up to the front and they said, "oh you've got a reservation, please come this way," and they crowded me in front of everybody, and they put me directly onto the elevator. I went up, I had a great time, I came back down, and I walked that whole line looking at everybody in that line, and it occurred to me, not one of them had the Rick Steves Paris guidebook. There's two IQs of European travelers, those who wait in lines, and those who don't wait in line. If you're waiting in line, frankly, you're messing up, and you're doing your loved ones a disservice, if nothing else. Be aggressive about avoiding those lines. I never wait in lines, you can get around the lines, that's my passion in my research, is to help my travelers, with my books, not wait in line. A lot of people just think, "I'm going to Disneyland, I'll wait two hours for this site." No you don't need to do that. There are ways around those lines. In many cases, you can call or email and get an appointment. This is Mad Ludwig's castle in Bavaria, two hours south of Munich. Many people drive from Munich down to Mad Ludwig's castle, they go to the ticket office, and there's this little sign that says, "sorry all the tickets are alotted for today, come back tomorrow." That's catastrophic. You can drive down and go to will call and pick up your appointments. Here I've got tickets to both castles, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, and I get an English tour, and it's very, very efficient, it's just good travel. Remember, a lot of sites these days require reservations. If you want to go to the Alhambra, you gotta get a reservation. If you want to go to the Last Supper, you gotta get a reservation. If you want to go to the Borghese Gallery, you gotta get a reservation. So, guide books will tell you which sites require reservations, and which sites offer reservations, and it's crazy not to get reservations, In a lot of cases, I would say if reservations are available, it means 'cause there's a lot of crowds. Even if it's not required, you're wise to get a reservation. I came into Rome one time, just seeing what it was like without reservations. It was just horrible. I didn't get into anything that I wanted to get into, you know, the Colosseum-- it's just really frustrating, so get on the ball when it comes to these reservations. This is the Pantheon here. I stay about a week, about a block away from the Pantheon, and in the middle of the day I like to drop in, just 'cause it's it's a human traffic jam under that great dome. But I drop in early in the morning and late at night, and I am literally the only person in the Pantheon. A little kid comes chasin' his dog into the place, and you know, a couple of pensioners are dropping in to marvel at it early and late, but in the middle of the day, that's the packed scene. Remember, 10 til' 4, it's really crowded 'cause that's when the groups can come in from cruise ships and from outlying hotels. Cruise crowds are a big deal. This is the Acropolis, and when you think of a cruise ship, 3,000 people on the cruise ship, five cruise ships docking, everybody's making a beeline for the Acropolis. That's a mob scene, it's a rush hour. Why would you, if you're not on a cruise ship, put yourself in the middle of that cruise rush? Go there early, or go there late. Here, I'm going to the Acropolis at five o'clock in the afternoon. I still have a couple of hours, it's cooler, shadows are nice, the colors are warmer, and so on, and look at the situation. Everybody is rushing out, nobody is going in. I'll be the last guy on the Acropolis. I'll be the guy who their guard blows his whistle at when it's time to get down, and those are beautiful moments that no cruise traveler gets to enjoy. Stay right downtown, in Venice. The groups are coming in from their cruise ships, or from cheaper hotels in the mainland. Spend a few extra bucks, stay downtown, be out early, be out late. You need to take the initiative to get around those crowds these days, and it's more important than ever that you look at places that simply have no tourism. Ninety percent of Europe really has no tourism to speak of, and it is just as Europe as the rest of it, it's just not as famous and glitzy. Find yourself in a little town where there's no tourism, no Tourist Information Office, see four cute guys sitting on a bench and ask them to scoot over. Join them, join them. This is the magic of European travel, I've been saying this all my life, and it really is a delightful way to travel. You need to sit on that bench, and watch the world go by. We've got lots of practical skills to share, I've talked just about your planning, and remember, that's just the beginning. There's much more for you to grab that information, and turn your travel dreams into smooth and affordable reality. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, I want to talk about packing light. My name is Rick Steves and I have spent a third of my adult life living out of a 9 x 22 x 14 inch carry-on-the-airplane size suitcase, and I'll tell you, you're going to learn now, or you're going to learn later: It's important to pack light. I don't care if you're going for two weeks or two months, winter or summer. You need to pack light. You don't have a mule. If you do have a pack mule you are abusing your spouse, okay, every person should generally be able to carry their own stuff, and they should pack assuming they got to carry it. Now, when you travel around Europe, you see a lot of people with a lot of gear, and you wonder, "why do they need so much stuff?" I mean look at this. I hope she's going to use all that. Now, I live out of a bag that I can get up that donkey path and into Civita di Bagnoregio without a lot of effort and that's really, really important. Good travel means you're going to have to walk. If your trips any good, you're not gonna have a hotel right in front of your tour bus, or right in front of the train station, and a lot of Europe is inaccessible. You can't get buses into the center of town these days, so, you need to be mobile, and if you need to buy a porter everywhere you go, that's bad style, and it's going to put you in a real bind, so just get serious about packing light. here's the reality, you come in by train, and you've got to get that bag out at least to the taxi rank, probably to the subway, and then on to your hotel. this is a shot from one of our tours, I took this tour just as a participant with my family. Lisa's there in the front, one of our guides, and I like to show this shot because this is a shot travel or tour promoters generally don't show, the reality of tourism. You gotta unload your gear, load it up, walk out to the tour bus, and so on, and as I mentioned, if your tour is any good, the bus will not park directly in front of the hotel. You want to be buried in the old town with your hotel, and that means the reality of getting out to the bus, getting out to the train station, whatever, so you'll want to be mobile. when I'm traveling, you've got a big choice. Do you want a roller suitcase or do you want a suitcase that has a grip that has hidden padded shoulder straps that hangs on your back? I still use the backpack hanging on my back, which is a soft-sided suitcase, and I like it because it is a couple pounds less, it is a little less expensive to buy, and when I'm on an airplane, I can always jamming in the overhead locker because it's not a hard frame, and for me that's a real advantage. I'm the last person on the plane, I like to be the last person on the plane, and I'm never unable to jam my bag up above. If I had a roller bag, that's a little bit of a different story. If you need to have a roller bag, that's okay. Someday I'm going to need a roller bag. As long as I'm strong enough to carry it on my back, I will, okay. I find in my office, among the men it's kind of half and half, half of us carry it on our back, half use a roller bag. among the women, most women like that roller bag. So really either way, and just because you have a roller bag doesn't mean you can pack heavier, that's a key thing, right. Now this is my home for four months out of the year. The bag is something we've designed, it costs about a hundred dollars. If I could get a better bag for five hundred dollars, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, because this is my home. It's a lot of living, and I find that this bag has everything we need. It's a self-imposed limit, 9 x 22 x 14 inches, that's as big as I can carry out of the airplane, very important. It's got a very smart configuration of pockets, and I hang it on my back with those padded shoulder straps. I just love it. These people are very mobile and when you're traveling by train, you need to be mobile. I will remind you if you're traveling by car, you can be packing a little heavier, because you can use the car to get where you want to go, in most cases. But if you're traveling by train, you got to get serious about packing light. On our tours, and we take a lot of people on our tours, this group here looks like a reunion for one of our tours, people just like you guys, we do not allow anybody to check any bags. 9 x 22 x 14 inches, that is the max. Last year we took twenty thousand people on 800 different tours. For some of those people, that was a radical concept, "what, 9 x 22 x 14 inches for my whole trip? That was my cosmetics kit." Nope, that's everything because-- and it's kind of tough love, and for years I've been forcing people into this beauty of packing light, and I think, "am I comin' down too hard on him?" I drop in and visit them a week into their trip and I asked them how's it going, and they're always thankful. I've never met anybody who was mad at me for making them pack light. You're going to learn now or you're going to learn later the importance of packing light. So you can see these people here, these are people who take-- this is one of our tours, a small group from one of our tours, and we got six people here, they've all got their roller bags, and they've all got day bags. The roller bag day bag thing, that's really your world, whether you're taking a cruise or a bus tour, or going on your own, you got your big bag, you leave it on the ship, you leave it under the bus, you leave it in the hotel room, and you got your day bag for out and about. Here's me coming back from a two month trip. That's my world. When I leave home, I always think, "this bag is so light, I must be forgetting something," and I go to my Europe Through the Back Door Book, and I look through the packing list, and it's all there. You don't need to pack heavy, as I was talking about. Whether you're going for two weeks or two months, whether you're going winter or summer, whether you're a man or a woman, rich or poor, old or young, it's all the same. You will do yourself a huge favor if you pack light. You got your big bag, you got your little bag. Now I do like to accommodate the reality that you're going to get things as you go. All right, I come, I leave home really bare bones, I'm beyond getting tourist souvenirs, but a lot of people understand what they're going to buy, they're gonna buy their beer stein, and they're gonna buy their whatever all around Europe, and I like to have what's called a hideaway tote. I leave that in the car, I leave that deep stored on the bus, and that's where I put my stuff I don't want to carry into the hotel every night, all right. Very nice, it lets you still be packing light even though you're cheating and you're gathering stuff as you go, and then when you fly home you can fly home heavy, and you've got this big bag that you can check on to the airplane. If you can enjoy the luxury, however, of not checking things onto the airplane, you're doing yourself a huge favor. With climate change, more flights are canceled in Europe these days, you need to be more flexible, and you need to be able to go to the airport, and be able to roll with the punches. And if I've got my bag with me, I can hop on an earlier flight, or I can take a canceled flight, and jump over here, without wondering, "where the heck's my bag?" Just last year, I missed two planes in Frankfort. Not my fault, there was a thunderstorm, it closed down the airport, it happens a lot. So, if you have your bags with you, if you can handle that, you become a more resilient traveler. if you're packing heavy, you should go by car. One thing I've learned, if you're traveling with little kids, you should be packing heavy. There's a lot of stuff to keep the kids happy in Europe, alright. I got over my fanatic "pack light" stuff a long time ago with little kids, and I learned anything mom thinks is worth bringing is probably worth bringing, I mean just between you and me, so rent a car, you know, have a car from airport to airport, and take a few extra bags, and the family will be much happier. Remember, when you have a car, you can be a lot more flexible. You can you drive from one spot to the next, and it just makes a lot of sense. I mentioned climate change, with or without climate change, you've got to be prepared for the weather, and I would just anticipate some violent weather over there, and the key is you don't let the weather dictate your sightseeing. You got to get out and do it. You want solid shoes, you want Gore-Tex jacket, you want an umbrella, you got to have the right gear. In Europe they say there's no bad weather, just inappropriate clothing, and that's very wise, that's very wise. So, you want to be able to get out, and even more of concern than the the rain to me is the heat, it is really hot over there. I don't know my Celsius is very well, but I do know that 28 equals 82, Celsius to Fahrenheit. That's all I need to know, if it's over 28 it's hot, it's over 82. And it's not unusual to find a climate like this, where in France everything is over 30. That means this is a very hot day, an uncomfortably hot day. I do my Mediterranean traveling in the spring or the fall, and I go north of the Alps in the middle of the summer, and I highly recommend that. You can go to the Mediterranean in the summer, but it's really really hot. You'll have air conditioning but it's still like a blow furnace when you go outside. I was in Germany last year for three weeks, and every day was close to a hundred degrees in July. That's unprecedented in Germany. Every day it was that hot, it was muggy, and there was a monsoon thunderstorm in the afternoon. This is just a new pattern. So you will find in your travels, violent weather, lots of rain, and lots of heat. Many times I've got this, just because many times you're in an outdoor restaurant all of a sudden the clouds came, it got dark and you got a monsoon, and everybody scampers for the tent. Get out and have a good time regardless of the weather, bottom line. If you wait in your bed and breakfast for the weather to get good, you're never going to wake up that little hill. Just get out there and the weather will change three times during the hike. The main item of bulk in your luggage is clothing, and the biggest thing in your clothing is your shoes. I mean, look at the size of my shoes there to my little bag, that's a big deal. I think it's really important to have practical shoes. My guides in Europe often have very impractical shoes, and they're out every day on the cobbles, and climbing the ruined castles, and so on, and and I'll never forget this guide here, I just wanted to make a photograph to compare. I think it's really important to sacrifice a little bit of style and just have good solid shoes. I love my echoes, I love a good solid sole, I don't need high tops, but I do want a solid good sole. I want shoes that I can go through puddles in and not get all wet, it's pretty important. Now the question, "do you bring more than one pair of shoes?" I would think long and hard about bringing a second pair of shoes. If you need a second pair of shoes bring it, but it should be a light one. A lot of times I bring a second pair of shoes just because I think it's expected but I don't use it. Generally I use the same pair of shoes, I have one pair of shoes. Some people go, "oh man that is barbaric." I take them off at night, they breathe. Shoes are big. Get a well-worn-in, well-tested, favorite pair of shoes and use it. The main item of bulk again, shoes and clothing, when you take less clothing it doesn't mean you wash more, you just wash a little as you go. And you've got a limited wardrobe, and you're traveling so fast nobody's going to notice that except for your travel partner, and he or she has the same problem. So just make an agreement where you don't complain about each other's limited wardrobe, and you're packing light. It's quite easy to pack light, this is what you need, right here, laid out on a bed. For a lot of people, they like to compartmentalize. I think this makes a lot of sense. I don't have time to get into all the details on packing, but I would remind you, philosophically, don't have this mindset where you're prepared for every scenario. This is an American thing, we like to be prepared, we bring an extra one just in case two people want to use it, or you lose it, or ones broken, or maybe you want to loan one out while you're still using yours, no, just bring one. If you need another one you can buy it. Assume they have it over there. Pack for the best scenario, not the worst scenario, that's fundamental. If you lay at home thinking, "what all this stuff might I need," you're going to pack way too much stuff. Look at the packing charts, we've got em' in our program, and just pack the bare essentials. In fact, it's fun to have to go buy something in Europe, it's really fun to have to branch out and pick something up. People like to compartmentalize, these packing cubes are one of the most popular items in our travel store. Again, they know where their sweaters, are where their keys are, where their electronic gear is, and so on. Compartmentalize in your bag. I don't have a lot of credibility among women when it comes to packing light, so it's just smart for us to have a woman who's a great traveler and a great guide give a talk about packing light for women, and we've got a wonderful talk on our website in the travel talk section by Sarah Murdoch about packing light. I hope that you can enjoy that talk, whether you're a man or a woman it has a lot more information than what I'm going to share right now about packing. When it comes to electronic gear, I used to say, "minimize the electronics, no electronics." That was a long time ago, now I love electronics, there's, nothing wrong with electronics, electronics empower you in Europe. You want to know how to get the gear going in Europe. There's two issues, converting the power and plugging it into the wall. I have never had a piece of electronic gear, that I can remember, that didn't have a built-in converter. It's not an issue these days, you'll hear about converters, 110-220 volts, and so on. I don't even bother with that, I mean, if you looked at the fine print you'd see 110-220. The issue is, can you plug it into the wall? That's what you need, and this is a very simple thing. In Britain and Ireland, you got the big three rectangular prongs, boom. Everywhere else, you've got the two little round prongs, boom. Technically, there's a little part on the switch of one that has an odd device, but I don't-- I just ignore that, just keep it real simple. It's good advice just in general on your travels, two plugs, and that will cover you everywhere. My electronic gear; I love my laptop, I love my phone, I love my camera. That's basically it. When you're traveling, you want to get online. There's all sorts of great ways to get online, there's all sorts of media, you can enjoy those movies you can download, you got your music, you got your Skype. There's all sorts of reasons to have a good computer, or a tablet, or a smart phone where you can get online, depending on your style, but it's important to be online in Europe to travel well. There are little guilty pleasures that all of us should feel free to bring, okay, I want you to be hardcore about packing, but if you have some little treat you want to bring along, bring it. My guilty pleasure is my noise reduction headphones. I love these things. I would rather go economy class on a plane with noise-reduction headphones, than business class without. There's a lot of rumble on the plane, I've got lots of good things I want to listen to, when I'm wearing my noise-reduction headphones nobody talks to me. There's just some beautiful reasons to have your headphones on, and when you're in your hotel room, or you're in the back of a tour bus, or whatever, you can enjoy beautiful quality sound with your noise-- with your quality speakers. So, everybody should be able to bring their fun little extra. as far as toiletries go, there's not a lot of reason to bring a lot of toiletries. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised people need so much stuff in their travels. I like to have a toiletry bag like this, we sell these like hot cakes. They hang in the bathroom, because a lot of times you don't have a lot of hard surfaces. When I lay out my toiletries, it's pretty skimpy. It's pretty basic, and I'm pretty fanatic about that, and I think that's all you need, so, without getting into all the details, I'll just remind you, you can travel very light when it comes to toiletries. Don't bring everything you need with you from home, look forward to running out of toothpaste, yeah now you got an opportunity to go into Bulgarian department store, shop around, pick up something you think might be toothpaste. That's part of the cultural experience, isn't it, that's part of the cultural experience. When it comes to washing your clothes, it's a reality we all gotta deal with, and you've got options. You know, you can pay the ransom and have the hotel do it, you can wash it in your sink, or you can go down the street to the laundromat. When you go to the laundromat, you can pay extra for them to put it in, and fold it for you, and come back later, and pick it up. Sometimes, they even have a service where they pick it up at the hotel and drop it back to the hotel, which is quite nice, or you can sit there like a local person who doesn't own a washer dryer, and you can just do your little work and, write your postcards, or whatever, while your launder is going. Hotels will tell you if there's a laundromat nearby, it's not the first time they've had that question. If there's not a laundromat nearby, it's fine, do it at the next stop. Sometimes there's no laundromats in town, but it's not really an insurmountable problem, you'll get your laundry done. It's cheap when you go down the street to the laundromat, it's free when you do it in the sink. I just roll up my sleeves and think of it as exercise. I wash whatever's dirty in the sink. Usually there's a sign right next to the sink that says, "don't wash your laundry in the room." That needs to be interpreted as, "we're classy joint, we've got expensive furniture and floors, we don't want you hanging stuff out the window, and we don't want you dripping on our wood." Alright, but you're paying a hundred and fifty bucks, you can wash your stuff in the sink, I give you permission. Again, just do it thoughtfully, wring it really tight, snap it a few times, and hang it over the tub, and you're doing fine. By the way, I don't bring shampoo I just use the-- I don't bring a laundry detergent, I just use the shampoo from the "itsy-bitsy " in the hotel, and it works just great. That's the one "itsy-bitsy" I use, otherwise, I bring my shampoo and soap from home. Hang it up and in the morning it should be alright. By the way, before your trip wash everything out ahead of time, and straighten it out as best you can, and see what it looks like when it's dry. A lot of shirts just don't work, and you have to iron them, and a lot of shirts work great, and you should favor, obviously, those shirts that wash and wear well with the sink. You want to have a money belt. A money belt is important, whether you wear it everyday or not, you should have that ability to tie your valuables under your clothing in a money belt, because theft is a big problem for travelers. And of course, when you're packing, a big an element of that is having your information. This family is having a great trip, because mom has the right guidebook, and she's using it. She did not skimp on guidebooks. Guidebooks are a 20 dollar tool for a 3,000 dollar experience. They're worth buying, and they're worth carrying, and if they're any good, they'll pay for themselves on the shuttle in from the airport. Now, you don't want to just carry a lot of paper, that can be a real problem, and you see a lot of people have a library in there, and it's a third of their bulk. Get serious about ripping those books up. It's a ritual for me, I get out of box cutter, and I tear those books up, and I staple them, and I put a big plastic or a tape binding on them, and I've got my little versions of the big books that cover just the places I'm going to. So rip the heck out of those guidebooks. A lot of people think, "oh that's sacrilegious." These are tools. Your guidebook should be a mess after the trips over, and of course you can always buy another one, right. Okay, so you got your Moleskine, you got your personal office, you got your ripped up guidebooks, you got your tourist information, with rubber bands, it's all right there. Have the information, but keep it light. It is so important to pack light, it really is. Think about it, you'll never meet anybody who brags that, "every year I pack heavier." With experience, you get serious about the beauty of packing light. Money and safety. You're going to spend your money in Europe, and you're gonna have a lot of people wanting your money. They're gonna want it in a legal way, and there's people that want it in an illegal way. I want to talk for just a few minutes about money and money issues. Remember, in Europe these days nearly everybody has the same coins jingling in their pockets, euros. 300 million people have the same euro coins jangling in their pockets. In the old days, we had to change money with every border crossing. Now, the luxury is, you cross the border, you got the same coins. You change too much money and you fly home with it, you go back next year, you got the same coins, it's still good. So, that's a beautiful thing. When it comes to changing money, the days of travelers checks are so long gone, the beautiful ATM is there and it is my-- I just have nothing wrong to say, nothing bad to say about ATMs. You get the utopian bank -to-bank rate, 24/7, instead of the miserable tourist-to-teller rate. You'd be hard-pressed to find any bank that would change cash right now. You gotta find an ATM machine, and you slip your traveler-- you slip your debit card into that machine, you got your four digit numeric pin numbers, and you get hard cash. Don't change a bunch of small exchanges, because every exchange, you lose a little bit with the conversion rate, but you also lose with a fee, so you want to minimize-- you can't avoid the excursion-- the conversion rate problem, but you can minimize the fees. So instead $100 a day, change for $400 every four days, and you'll cut your fees by 75%. You'll find ATM machines everywhere you go. In the old days, we used to bring some cash with us from home to get started, no more. You can get your cash while you're waiting for your baggage at the airport. it's very, very cool, 24/7, in front of the casino, at the airport, at the train station, you don't need to worry that there's a holiday or a strike tomorrow. Remember, it's expensive to employ people in Europe these days. Europeans are very well paid, and there's a huge incentive for companies to automate. If you're like me, you're uncomfortable giving your credit card to machine in a foreign country, you'd rather talk with a person. If you insist on that, you're gonna pay a premium, you're going to get lousy service, and you're gonna wait in a long line. You are the last priority, you're bucking the system. It's really important to recognize that next to every long line at a ticket office, there will be a machine that says self-service tickets. This is for you. Now, you go there and stick your credit card in or your debit card in, and you punch English, and then you do your thing , or you put in the cash. This is really a blessing and we have to get used to it, and frankly I think we need to trust it. When I'm hanging-- I'm disinclined to do this, but I'm getting better and better at it-- when I'm hanging out with my European guides, they just swing from one machine to the next and they go very fast. I've missed a lot of trains because I didn't know how to use the machine, or wasn't comfortable with the machine. Try to figure out the machines, and when you do, you feel good about it. The credit card is something that is causing a lot of American stress these days, because Europeans have a more advanced credit card than we do. They have a card called a chip-and-pin card, and we have a traditional magnetic strip, or we have a chip in our card that is not a chip-and-pin, but it's just a pin where you still have to sign. So, you could even have an up-to-date card here, and you're gonna still have the frustrations that Americans have in Europe, because Europeans have more high-tech cards than we do. Now, you'll hear scare stories about this, but I've got the lousy American-style debit card and credit card, and I use it all the time, and it rarely a big deal. It's just a little bump in the road. Automated gas stations, after midnight, you can't buy gas with an American credit card, right. Getting a Coca-Cola from the machine down the hall in your hotel, you can't use your credit card. Automated parking booth, you can't use your credit card, you gotta go to the ticket guy and pay for it in cash. So, just remember with our American cards, you got a little bit of a glitch, but it's not a big deal, you can certainly get your cash advances from ATMs, you can certainly pay for your hotel, rent your car, buy things on the Internet, and so on. Europe is a very safe place from a violent crime point-of-view, and it's a very dangerous place, especially if you're a tourist, from a petty purse snatching and pick-pocketing point-of-view, and from a con artist point-of-view. Con artists are fascinating in Europe, and you'll see them all over the place. You've got the classic shell game going on, any of that, also too friendly people that wanna buy you a drink, and these kind of things that you got to be pretty naive to sucker for it, on the other hand a lot of us are just in a good mood over there, we want to trust people, and we find ourselves in trouble. I hesitate to say be paranoid about it, because you lose opportunities to meet people. But I would say, it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to connecting with people that can get you in a jam that are gonna cost you a lot of money to get out of. So, be on the ball when it comes to meeting strangers on the streets, certainly steer away from any kind of a scam. In Germany I recently-- I was in Berlin, and the police were actually demonstrating how the shell game works, because it was so prevalent, and so many people were falling for it. So it's fun to be on the street, I love to be on the street with all the commotion, but remember, when you see these games going on, not only are people getting ripped off playing the scam, but they're getting ripped off watching the scam, because wherever there's a commotion, there's pickpockets at work, they're working together. If there's a commotion, it's a fake commotion. If there's a pushing match on Plaza Mayor in Madrid, people gather around, people jostle people are getting their pockets picked. If there's a commotion getting onto a train car, people's pockets are being picked. If an old lady falls down the escalator in the Underground in Munich, step back, pockets are being picked. I know that sounds kind of harsh, but then you can move in and help out. But remember, when there is a jostle, when there is a crowd, when you're on the most popular tourist bus going from the train station to the Vatican in Rome, that's where the thieves are you gonna be. A lot of people with beautiful eyes, beautiful children, and sad stories. They step right up, "euro please, give me a euro." They don't want a euro, they want your wallet. Beggars are pickpockets, you should just understand that. European thieves target Americans, not because they're mean, but because they're smart. We're the people with all the good stuff in our purses and wallets, and they know how to get it. I like to watch it, for me it's kind of sport to see this in action, but I know that when somebody comes up to me and asks for a euro, they really want my wallet, and they target tourists and they target tour guides, they're very, very good. It seems like she's holding her baby, but she's got a long arm. It's her scarf that may be holding her baby, and she's got a long arm that knows how to do the work. Again, if you have a commotion, if you're jostling to get onto that subway car, that's the perfect time for a pickpocket to grab your wallet. And this is remarkably easy to get, isn't it. I mean it's right, there it's amazing to me how easy that is to get, and it's amazing to me, it's invasive to me, when I'm targeted that way. So, use a wallet, use a purse, but expect to lose it, okay, expect to lose it. Everything that matters should be in your money belt. It's a nylon pouch that you wear around your waist ticket, tuck it in like your shirt tail. You don't get at this for every nickel, dime, and quarter, this is your deep storage for select deposits and withdrawals. When you're wearing a money belt, its luxurious peace of mind. Think about it, when you're wearing a money belt, all of your essential documents are on you as thoughtlessly and securely as your underpants. Ever think about your underpants? You put em' on in the morning, you don't even think about them all day long, and every night they're exactly where you put them. And now when I'm traveling, my Eurail pass, my passport, my credit card, are just as securely out of sight, out of mind. That money belt is so important. If you're wearing a money belt and if you know the pickpockets-- the beggars are actually thieves, it just it takes all the stress out of it. in fact when you're wearing a money belt and you know that the beggars are pickpockets, having a gypsy's hand slip slowly in your pocket just becomes one more interesting cultural experience. It happens to me a couple times every year, a stranger's hand gently slips into my pocket, I just leave him there. I just leave him there. Now, you don't need to be paranoid, they're not gonna strip and mug you, that's what they have to do to get your money belt Zip up your pocket, you know, button it away, if it's zipped up or buttoned away, it's good. If it's in the hotel, it's good, if it's in your day bag, it's bad, if it's in your pocket, it's bad. Okay, so you just gotta know that the most dangerous place is in your day bag. The second most dangerous is in your pocket, unzipped. The safest place is in your hotel room. I've never used a hotel safe, I just don't bother. Hotels-- now remember, your door's open for hours at a stretch, you don't want your computer and your money sitting on the bed, tuck it away. But I've never-- I just pride myself-- it's just sort of my quality of life in Europe, I'm not paranoid about my valuables in my hotel room. And I've spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, and I just take things away, out of sight, but I don't worry about locking it. It's much safer there than on the streets. Now, when it comes to your money belt, there's three different kinds of money belts that we sell, and I think it's just a matter of personal choice. I like the standard nylon pouch tucked around your waist under your pants. You can wear it around the back, women like to wear it around the back sometime, but that's the standard thing. Some people like to hang it around their neck under their shirt, other people like this sort of side deal where you hang it on your belt, and you tuck it in. Either way, as long as it's not in your pocket and is under your clothing, that's what it's all about. Exactly what you put in your money belt, its kind of common sense just the essential stuff. You want to wear it comfortably, it's got to be very light, so you just put your your irreplaceables in it. And then, as I mentioned, I function with a wallet. I expect to lose this wallet. In it, it's got a day spending money, odds and ends, and a funny little note to the thief. It comes with a piece of paper that says, in five different languages, "Dear thief, sorry this contained so little money. Consider changing your profession." The point is, you can lose your purse or you can lose your wallet, if it doesn't have your passport and your driver's license it's really not a big deal. When it comes to security, here's sort of your options. As I mentioned, you've got your day bag, that's the most dangerous. You've got your wallet, and if you're in a comfortable situation you can rely on that. You've got your money belt, which I wear when I'm feeling like it's a risky sort of venture, and also in our bags we design a security pouch that's like a money belt, but it clips into the inside of the big bag. And security pouch is the same fabric as the liner of the bag, so it's invisible and it's not locked in or anything but it's just clipped there, and that's a place where, you know you got your money, you know you got your valuables. And a thief doesn't want to grab your big bag, a thief walking out of a hotel with a big bag is just not something they do. They just want to rifle the bag and grab your valuables, so I find that to be quite, quite a good place to put my valuables. The security pouch that we clip into the bag, of course you can unclip it and put it in the hotel safe, or take it with you, or clip it to your day bag, and so on, but you need to think about your personal arrangement for your valuables. Remember in Europe there are lots of soft targets, and there's a lot of concern about terrorism. Europe is a very safe place from a terrorism point of view, every year twelve million Americans go to Europe, and twelve million come back. If there's a terrorist event tomorrow, it doesn't change the reality that it is safer in Europe than it is here in the United States. Without belaboring that, please understand that every month in the United States, a thousand beautiful people are killed on our streets. That's real. Tomorrow, if an American is killed by a terrorist in Europe, that's a tragedy, but it doesn't change the fact that it's safer in Europe than it is in the United States. Europeans laugh out loud when they hear that Americans are staying home for safety reasons. You are statistically 10 times safer on the streets in Europe than you are here in the United States. In other words, if you care about your loved ones, you'll take them to Europe tomorrow. That's how we sell tours. Now, Europe is gonna have its glitches, its gonna its terrorists event, and if you hate terrorism as much as I do, please understand the most powerful thing you can do to fight terrorism, is not to over react to it, not to freak out just because it's a media fest and they're going to bump up their viewership with hysterical coverage, and remember that the most powerful things we can do, as Americans, to fight terrorism, is to get out there and better understand the rest of the world. When we travel, it makes it tougher for their propaganda to dehumanize us, and it makes it tougher for our propaganda to dehumanize them. It helps us all connect, and gain empathy for each other, and celebrate the diversity of this planet and find ourselves more inclined to build bridges, and less inclined to build walls. This is a powerful force for peace, and a powerful way to fight terrorism, I think, is to travel a lot. Please don't let terrorism mess up your trip. Now, you're going to find that security over there, and you're gonna have to be patient with it. In a lot of cases, to get onto a train you have to go through security, and a lot of cases to get into a great museum you got to go through security. In a lot of cases, you won't be able to check your bag anywhere 'cause they don't have baggage checks because of the concern about bombs. Europe is just on guard, they've got a lot of challenges, and they've got a lot of soft targets. If you do check your bag in a place that has a security machine, it's going to cost you seven or eight dollars because you're having to pay for that machine. When you're traveling you need to take care of your money, and you need to recognize that you are targeted by people who want your money. When you master those two areas, you'll travel better. Thank you so much for being here, I want to talk about communication, I want to talk about technology, and phones. All of these are very important for us to travel. When we're exploring Europe, it's just obviously really important to connect with people, and it's important to take advantage of all the wonderful technical innovations that make travel more efficient, and easier now than ever before. A big issue when we're traveling is simply your phone, and we've decided, just recently, that any good traveler in Europe now it needs to have a phone. Find out if your phone works in Europe. You might want to buy a phone in Europe. that's certainly doable. And if you have a smart phone that's ideal. Whatever kind of smart phone you have let your company here, your provider here, know you're going to be in Europe, and explore your international options. The key thing is, your phone can work in Europe and roam, but it's going to cost you a lot more money than if you would let them know you're going to Europe, and buy the right plan for your trip. When it comes to using your smart phone in Europe, there are three dimensions to it, you've got to simply making calls and making texts, and that's pretty straightforward, you've got data roaming, and you've got using it and thinking it of it as a little computer, and getting online with WiFi in Europe, and functioning that way. It's pretty straightforward getting online, that's either free, or at a straightforward, nominal cost. And then you can use this just like you use it here when you're getting online. Making the the phone calls, I've got a policy where it's twenty cents a minute to call, and it's just pennies for a text. That's pretty straight forward too. The big issue is data roaming. Data roaming is where you can run up a huge bill. Data roaming is when you can bail yourself out by not being able to get WiFi, and still being able to get online, but you just gotta know how to control that data roaming, buy that data policy from your provider, and then know how to turn it on and off, and use it sparingly. You can use WiFi till' the cows come home and it's just fine, but you don't want to use the data roaming recklessly. you need to know how it's working, and how much it's going to cost you. Bottom line is, on your settings, you can turn data roaming on and off. If you're nervous, simply turn the data roaming off, and you can make phone calls, and you can get online with your smart phone, and then you can data roam sparingly. As far as FaceTime and Skype, and different ways that we can talk to people with our phones, or with our tablets, or with our laptops, think of it as no different than right here, because you can't do Skype and those things without being online and having a good connection. If you have a good connection in Europe, and if your friend who you're talking to has a good connection here, it's just like Skyping within the United States when you're in Europe. So, if you can do it here, you can do it there, and I'll tell you it's a wonderful service. It's so great to be able to FaceTime people and Skype people, I use Skype, as a matter-of-fact, as a phoning tool as well, and I can call people just on their phones through Skype when I have a good connection, and it costs pennies a minute. Learn how to use that, and once again if it works here for you, it'll work for you over there, because it just requires being online and having a good strong connection. Getting a good strong connection used to be a challenge. Nowadays, you'll find it everywhere in Europe it is just getting better and better. The first thing people ask at the hotel is, "how do I get online?" And hotels know it, it's almost a joke these days. In the old days, they used to charge you to get online, now any good hotel or B&B will provide that as part of their-- they'll include it in their services, and when you're traveling in Europe you'll find a lot of people enjoying getting online in their hotel rooms. Traditionally, travelers use their guidebooks in the print format. I still do. ninety percent of my sales are still print. On the other hand, if you want to go digital, all the books essentially are available digitally. Same information, some people prefer it, some people don't, it's a personal choice, but you could have my entire librarian, and lots lots more on your tablet, and do just great in Europe with that. I find my guides are very enthusiastic about tablets in Europe. A mini iPad is ideal, or a full iPad, and with this you can download movies, you can collect your photographs, there's just so many tools and it's such a portable device. The iPad is, or the similar device, is just a real boon, especially if you're going to be teaching in the context of a tour guide. Photography used to be a big deal, I think twenty percent of my luggage in the old days was gonna be film, and lenses, and all that. I love photography, but I'm impressed by how good the small cameras are these days. If you're a serious photography and you want a big SLR and changeable lenses you can do that, but I hope you're really committed your photography, 'cause that a lot of gear, a lot of stress, a lot of headaches from a theft point-of-view, and so on, and I find that, rather than buying the little $100 Coolpix point and shoot, I wanna buy about the most expensive pocket sized camera I can. I spent 600 bucks for my Sony rx100, and it fits in my pocket, and I swear it takes pictures as beautifully as my old SLR. So, it depends on how much how technical you can be, and what tools you want, but you'll be amazed at the quality photography you can do with a pocket sized camera. For a lot of people, a simple iPhone is all they need, and if it's good enough for you, great, 'cause that is really convenient. And I would say invest a little time in knowing how to use that smartly, 'cause there's a lot of tools that can help you do really well, even with the smart phone. As far as communication goes, Europe is multilingual, and I speak only English. Nothing to brag about, this substantiates what I'm about to say, you can speak English and do just fine around Europe if you are on the ball. Now remember, it's really important to remember that Europe is multilingual. If you go to Slovenia and you wanna get sugar, you'll see it there in five different languages, right. They've got the language there, but it's good to function as well as you can in the local languages. When I say I speak only English, I'm not bragging about it, it's a shame I don't speak the local languages. But we speak the world's linguistic common denominator. If a Greek meets a Norwegian hiking in the Alps, how do they communicate? Broken English, what Greek speaks Norwegian? Now, learn the polite phrases, even if you're going to function with English, it is really-- it behooves you to know the top ten polite words in every language, I would say the top ten words are more important than the next two hundred words combined, and you should use them all the time. It's inexcusable for you to be in a country, and not know the nice words. It's rude, it's bad style. That excuses the fact that Americans are so lazy when it comes to languages. Now, for me, I just think it's polite to start the conversation by asking, "parlez-vous anglais?" "Sprichst Du Englisch?" 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, and I would be thankful if you spoke clearly, enunciate every letter, assume I'm reading your lips, wishing it was written down, hoping to see every letter as it tumbles out of your mouth." I speak this way almost robotically for four months out of every year. When I return home, my friends say, "Rick, you can relax now, we speak English fluently." But if you wanna be understood in Europe, listen to yourself, listen your friends, they sound like, you know, Gaddafi in a shredder. You need to make it simple, easy words, 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. Honestly, I marvel at how easy it is to communicate with that simple awareness, and conversely, how hopelessly messed up Americans are everywhere in Europe, when they don't get that. You don't say, "excuse me sir, can I take a picture of you," you point your camera and you ask, "photo?" and that would work, that would work just beautifully. A phrasebook is a beautiful thing. We design phrasebooks, they're the bestselling books in the United States, and we just love them. Not necessarily for practical things, you can you know, to be honest, you can handle the practical things probably without a phrasebook, but it just gives you that little extra edge. You can communicate. You got all the menu items right there, you can order breakfast with with finesse, you know what your options are, you know all the different kinds of coffee at a bar in Italy. You can be in the back seat of a taxi in Rome, and be able to stay if he's going too fast in perfect Italian, you can say, "if you don't slow down, I will vomit." I love to be able to floor people by being able to see a goofy phrases, and one thing fun about our phrasebooks is, it's full of goofy off-the-wall things, as well as practical things. You know, you're going to be dealing with gestures, they're going to be doing this to you, they're gonna be doing that, they're going to be doing this, that, and a few other things, and you want to know what it means, and with a good phrase book, it'll help you recognize how to connect with the locals, Anyplace that wants your money will explain how to spend it in whatever languages are necessary. Okay, here's a little boat station in Bruges. They're selling you a tour, and if you look at that, you can read the Dutch can't you? Or the Flemish, it says, "boat excursions 30 minutes long," and if you look further it says 7.64, four different ways to say adults, and 3.40 for four different ways to say children. How old are children? It says right there, four to eleven "jaar." And then down below, four different ways to say the entrance to the boats. That's your standard experience, right there, when it comes to the language barrier. You'll notice two new languages on the list, Chinese and Russian. Didn't see that before. Another thing you'll notice, is in restaurants now, instead of four different languages, two languages. The local language for the local people, English for everybody else. English has risen to become the "lingua franca." I've been saying this for 30 years, and since then, a whole generation has grown up speaking better English than ever before. This is the hip and pop language on this planet. Young people, educated people, people in tourism, will speak English generally when you're going around Europe. As a matter-of-fact, counter-intuitively, the little language groups, Estonia, Bulgaria, Norway, they would be more likely to speak English than you would think, even more than the people from the big language groups like Spain, France, and Germany. You can be German, and have a big world speaking just German. You can't be Estonian and have a big world speaking just Estonian, only a million people speak Estonian, so anywhere you go, you can do fine speaking the language. I've noticed at airports nowadays, there are some airports that have dispensed with the local language altogether. This is a country that speaks Dutch, it's Holland, and the airport you just see English language signs. We're lucky. Now, make educated guesses, and proceed confidently as if you figure it out correctly. If you're not feeling well in Denmark, and you see a sign with a red cross on it pointing to the "Sentralsykehuset," go down there and 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 have these things, they just have different names. Make an educated guess. Here's a sign on a shop in Germany. Now I have never looked up any of these words, I don't need to, I can just fake it. You look at this sign and you realize these are hours, and you don't say, "what on earth is that top long word," you think, "what can this sign be telling me?" It's either open times or closed times. So you talk it over with your partner, and you think, "hey, they're telling us when it's open." Open times. Open times 'vom,' from, 'vom,' if it rhymes, go for it. The fourth of July. Okay, these are the open times from the fourth of July. On the left, you see six words, most of which end in "tag." "Gutentag," soup-of-the-tag, Montag, Monday, it's the day of the moon, isn't it? Monday, moon-day. What is Monday in French? "Lundi." Lunar day, it's a riddle, the more you play, the easier it is to step over that language barrier. Two days later, we have something called "Mittwoch." Mittwoch. Now you know two more German words, midweek. That's what Wednesday is, right? Now on Monday, it's open 9 to 11, "und" from 4 to 6. Anything over twelve, subtract 12 and add p.m. 16-12, 4 p.m. No, 16-12, what am I a... 16-12, 4 p.m. Somebody said two, confused me, So, yeah and you gotta get good with the 24 hour clock. At the risk of insulting my students, I really hammer this home, because I know Americans are over there for three weeks, and they still go giddy every time it goes over twelve. They have the 24 hour clock. if you refuse to learn the 24 hour clock. you'll miss your train in Paris, and be mad at the French for refusing to speak English. Get with it on that 24 hour clock. Now, on Wednesday afternoon, something different happens. You see how we're thinking here, there's two options, everything else is open, this is different. You don't need a phrase book here, with all the confidence in the world you can tell your travel partner, "hey, on 'Mittwoch,' after 'nochmittag,' it's 'geschlossen.'" Very nice. There's a lot of signs. There are a lot of signs. But you know, they're pretty self explanatory, if you look at these signs, you can see where you're gonna eat ice cream and where you're not going to eat ice cream, and where you can honk your horn, or where you can't honk the horn. A counter-intuitive thing, of course a "slash," you kind of think no, but counter-intuitively, a red circle also means no, so it would be reasonable to think this is where you can take your horse, but no. That says, "horses not allowed" this says, "no motorbikes and no cars," except what? Except for access. That means if you live in there, or you have a hotel, you can go downtown. So remember, read the sign, understand the context. All over the place you've got lots of signs, they're pretty self explanatory. And I want to stress, you got multilingual signs for your tours. Here's a boat cruise, and what do you got, 16 different languages. that would be a tape recorded tour, you just dial whatever language you want to hear the tour in. The audio guides In Europe, they'll program them for your language. So, communicating is critical, and if you have good skills, you'll find the most important language that you can have overseas is English. Thank you. Transportation. Man, oh, man. Transportation is so important for your trip, and transportation is part of the joy of the trip. For me, just to be enjoying the beautiful engineering of the roads, or going on the bullet trains in Europe, I love it. And every year, transportation investments are making the trip faster. It screws up my guidebook, I have to go back there all the time and update my guidebook because there's new tunnels, new bridges, new super freeways, new bullet trains, and the journey is faster this year than it was last year. When you're thinking about traveling around in Europe, because things are getting so fast, I think it's more important than ever that you make a point to get off the beaten path, and smell the roses. Car or train, you gotta make a point not to just zip from big city to big city to big city, 'cause you're missing a lot of the charm of Europe. A big question for us when we're planning a trip is, "do we take the car or do we take the train?" And you can analyze it, there's not one right answer, it depends on your style of travel. If you're going all over creation, that's too much driving, you really want a train pass or train tickets. if you're going from big city to big city to big city, you really don't want a car. A car is a worthless, expensive, headache in a big city. You want the convenience of a train that takes you from downtown to downtown fast, safe, and, effortless. If you're scouring the countryside, that's where public transportation schedules will be frustrating, and you want your own wheels. It's liberating. If you got a two-week trip around Scotland, I'm telling you, you're gonna be glad you got a car. If you're packing heavy, a lot of people just don't buy this business of packing light, rent a car. You can even rent a trailer, okay. But if you're going by train, that's where it's really important that your mobile, 'cause whether you like it or not, by train you're gonna do a lot of walking with your gear. Another dimension of this choice, car or train, is how many people are you traveling with? If you're traveling alone, a car is ridiculously expensive, much cheaper by train. If there's three or four or five of you, it's cheaper by car than by train because one car costs the same for one or five people. Five train tickets costs five times as much as one train ticket, so you can see the economy of scale there, and you want to factor that in to your travel planning. Now for me, over the years I find my travel style has evolved. In the old days, it was Eurail everywhere. I was just doing these once-over lightly trips, and in the old days, rail passes were a better value. Now, train passes come with all sorts of caveats, and you gotta pay extra supplements, reservations, and car rental has become relatively, cheap, and you've got the advent of cheap discounted airline tickets. So what I find myself doing these days, is cobbling together a whole mix. I'll buy point-to-point train tickets, I'll buy the big leaps by air because you can fly cheaper than you can take the train these days, and I will drill into certain areas with car rental, all mixing together quite nice. Let's talk about those different modes of transportation. By train, its a futuristic world, and I'm telling you, just to be on the trains in Europe is a thrill. I just feel like a first class human being when I'm traveling around Europe, even on second class trains. This is the new train station in Berlin, the Hauptbahnhof. A thousand trains coming and going a day, different levels coming in at right angles, it's just remarkable. Bullet trains, very beautiful schedules, strict adherence to the schedules. You will be on the train because it closes in 25 seconds, and it closes, and it's gone, so you really want to take advantage of that efficiency when you're traveling. I'll tell you, the trains are going faster and faster and faster. I was recently in Munich, taking pictures of trains coming into the station, specifically taking pictures of cute little, what were cute little birds squished onto the windshield. I know it's tragic, and when I saw that little bird I thought two things.First of all, I thought, "it's a dangerous continent if you're slow bird," and then I thought, "this is a surreal image." I don't know about where you live, but here in Seattle you just cannot imagine a bird squished under the windshield of a train. That's just not gonna happen. I could imagine a bird sitting on a folding chair with a cigar and a drink on the rooftop, but not flattened to the window, and that's a routine problem right now in Europe because those trains are so darn fast. I was recently on a train going across the French countryside, it was silent, it was smooth, beautiful pastoral scenery out the window, and then I noticed the speedometer in the passenger car only turned on when the train was exceeding 300 kilometers an hour. They were shy-- they were bashful, they were sort of shy about the fact that it would be going less than 300 kilometers. 300 kilometers an hour, what's that? Well, this is going, what 313 kilometers stick. To figure kilometers to miles is a very simple formula, you cut it in half and add back ten percent. So round it up, say it's 300, cut that in half, what do you have, 150, add back ten percent of the original, what would that be, 30, 150 plus 30 is 180 miles an hour. So, play that little game with yourself, because you should just look at signs in Europe and, if you think in terms of miles, be able to cut the kilometers in half, and back ten percent of the original. 100 miles an hour, 50 plus 10-100 kilometers an hour 50 miles, 60 miles an hour. 75 kilometers, cut it in half, that would be about 40, add back 7, 47 miles. You can do that quite easily, in this case we're zipping at a hundred and eighty miles an hour into Paris. Now, when you get on the train tracks, now you got to play the game, and this is confusing even for locals over there and those of us who take advantage of the system, and understand how it works, and read the signs have a huge advantage. Look at this track here. We are on track six. Specifically, we're on segment A of track six. A lot of people don't realize that tracks have segments. I've been diligently standing on track six, not realizing there's a difference between A and C, and I'm wondering where's my train, and then I see a little train down there, a hundred yards down the way, pull off without me, because I didn't read on the schedule it's leaving from track 6 C, not 6 A. I'm traveling here, I'm sitting, I'm standing at segment A of track six, and when I look at that train schedule readout, I see on the lower left, "A, B, C, D, E, F," do you see that? That coincides to the segment of the platform, and I will see the first class car is at A, the dining car is B, C, D, and, E are second class cars. Now that'll save you a lot of walking, and on a big train you've got 20 cars, and two cars will be first class, one is the dining car, and the rest is second class. If you've got a reservation, you know your train car number, it says there, and then rather than this nervous commotion with all the people, and thinking the door's gonna close and the train'll leave without, me you can stand in front of the exact car that will be stopped when your train comes in and you've got two minutes to get on board. People who don't know that simple trick get all frazzled, they have to jump on the train, and then they have to walk with their luggage 10 cars down. It's a horrible thing, and anybody can get around that by simply knowing how the system works. The clock up on top is critical. I don't care what your clock says, that's the time that matters, and it is now 12:16. In two minutes, at 12:18, this train is going to Luxembourg. It's exciting to use the trains. Here's another chart. The time right now, 5:12. At 5:33, remember the 24 hour clock, 17 minus 12, 5:33 p.m., you've got a train going from track 5b, segment B, to Vienna, specifically the West train station. Now look at the lower left on that reader, and you see, "B, C, D." This is a three-car train, first class at B, coffee car at C, and second class at D I'm standing at B, so what comes right here is the first class car, got it? And when you see where that train's going' it's going to Vienna. Remember Europeans call their cities sometimes different names than what we call them. Vienna is not Vienna any more than United States is Estados Unidos, right, that's what we call it. The people who live there call it "Wien." And big cities routinely have more than one train station, and you, as a smart traveler, need to know not just what city you are going to, but what station in that city, and this is the West station. If you come into Vienna and the first stop is "Ost," or "Sud," or "Nord'" you're gonna get off the train and have to wait for the next train, because your hotels at "West." So, know your options that way. Also, on the very top of that readout, it says, "Verspatung 10 minutes." I don't know what "verspatung" means, but I know that means the train is 10 minutes late, because they're not gonna say, "10 minutes early," and they're not gonna say, "in 10 minutes, there's a nice view out to the left of the car." The only thing they're going to say is, "this train is 10 minutes late." So if you're on ball on the ball, you realize now the train is gonna leave at 17:43, that means I got half an hour. I could actually run down the street and take some more photographs, or have a coffee, or get my sandwich for a picnic on the train. So use that train readout out to your advantage. Here we have a reminder that half of all the schedules you see are not for you, they're arrivals. You need to know that you're looking at the departure schedule. You don't speak the language, they're not telling you the language here, but you speak enough Italian, don't you, to figure out which is departures and which are arrivals? Are there any questions, which one is departure, the bottom one because it says "partenza" rather than "arrivo." The time right now is 12:06, and the train's departing at 12:14. There's a train going to Sestri Levante from track number one, and it happens to be 10 minutes late. You don't need another word for track, You don't need to know the word for "destinazione," and you don't need to know the word for "retardo." You just need to make your educated guess. This train is 10 minutes retardo, okay. Now what I like is to be able to look at the time right now, and look at that chart, and to know exactly what trains are still on the track.This is very, very important, because in Italy especially, a lot of trains are very late, and you can think, "oh man, I missed the train, there was traffic, I'm coming in 15 minutes late." You look on the board and you realize your train is still there. A lot of times, the train is still there. So play that board. Your printed schedule doesn't matter, this is the board, this is exactly what's going on, and you need to play it to your advantage. A big challenge for a lot of travelers is not to realize that you've got to date your tickets. Whether using the subway or the train, you got it put it in the box and get the date printed on it. It's not every country, but in a lot of countries, so when you're traveling know, in this country if we have to date our tickets, because if you just innocently didn't know you have to pay your ticket, you're sitting there in the train, the conductor comes, and you don't have a dated ticket. He thinks you're stealing, he's got every right to think you're stealing, and he's going to levy a $100 fine on you. There's no excuse because you're a stupid tourists, okay, so figure that out. If you have to date your ticket and you didn't date your ticket, you physically have to find the conductor before he finds you, and say, "I'm sorry, I didn't date this, can you date it for me," okay. But, realize, "ka-chunk" before you get on the train. A great new innovation in Europe are these little quick information booths you'll find next to the platforms. I don't like to wait in a long information line where you have to grab a number and wait in the lobby, you know, I like a quick answer to a quick question right on the tracks. In all of Europe these days, you'll find that. Confirm your plans, find out what the schedule is, you know, go to that little information booth, you'll do great. Europe has wonderful synchronicity in all of its trains. In this Norwegian port on some fjord way in the middle of nowhere, four trains a day come down, and four boats a day take off. Each boat is coordinated with the arrival of the train, it's just logical. All over Europe, except in Italy, where the train comes in just in time to see the boat pulling out, you will find trains, departures, and boats, and buses, connected. And I'll remind you, a lot of the people using those trains are commuters, and every day they take the train, and they catch on the boat, so if you stop and get a coffee, or go to the bathroom, there's a good chance you're gonna miss that coordinated connection, and have to wait for the next train to come in, before the next connection takes you out of there. Beautiful, scenic rides all over Europe, enjoy the view. Remember also when you're traveling, Europe has first and second class cars. Second class is four seats across with more crowds, first class is three seats across with less crowds. There is a formula, you pay 50% more to go first class. A $100 second-class ride would be $150 in first class. Almost all trains have first and second class cars, each going precisely the same speed, and the new second class is more comfortable than the old first class, so I would say if you're on a budget, second class is the best value. Having said that, when you're an American getting a Eurail pass or any kind of a train pass, it's often first class only. Of course, you can use it in second class, but it comes first class and that's forced luxury, and I gotta say I like it. If I'm working hard, and I got a choice between at $30 ticket and a $45 ticket for three hours in Italy, I'll spend the extra to have that convenience, and the peace and quiet to do my work in first class. So you do have that option as you're traveling around Europe. A lot of people are little nervous about their baggage. What are they gonna do with their bags? Well, you just carry it on and throw it in the rack up above, I mean, the only limit of how much you can carry onto the train is, "how long is the train stopped, and how quickly can you throw everything through the window?" I've been seeing people actually moving from Turkey to Germany on the train, and they fill the compartment with all their stuff. So you just stick it in the overhead locker or overhead rack, and then of course you got to be concerned about theft as you're traveling, but it's a very convenient thing from a luggage on the train point-of-view. In Europe, you can sleep on the trains when there's a seven or eight hour journey. The problem in recent times, is trains are so fast that there's fewer convenient overnight train rides, what used to be an eight hour ride is now a four hour ride, but there still are a lot of potential overnight train rides, and I love to sleep on the train because every time I sleep on the train, I save a whole day in my itinerary, and it just makes sense. I'm in Munich, I'm having a great time at the beer hall, I had checked my bag at the train station, at midnight I stumble over to the station, find my bag get on the train, and by eight o'clock in the morning I'm navigating the canals of Venice. It's pretty good. You won't sleep very well on the train, but you'll sleep really good the next night. You can sit up all night in the train, or for the cost of a cheap hotel room, you can get two bed in a couchette, and then you can sleep with a regular bed, and that's a great deal, and our guidebooks talk more about that. The rail passes used to be the way to go, and they're still a good way to go for a lot of people, but they're not quite as widespread in their use. Because, as I mentioned, trains are more expensive, cars are relatively less expensive, and train passes have sort of sold out by being not all trains, but now if there's fancy trains they're not included, and you gotta get reservations for certain expresses, and so on. Nevertheless, you can save a lot of money if your gonna do a lot of traveling, by knowledgeably picking the right train pass for you. This happens to be a German rail pass covering all the trains in Germany. You can get individual country passes, you can get all 17 countries passes, you can get collections of passes, you know, France and Italy together, and so on. Rather than 21 days in a row, a lot of people these days opt for what is called a Flexi pass. A Flexi Pass gives you, in this case, any ten days within one month so you buy your Flexi Pass, and it has 10 dates to fill in, and you choose them, and you write, in ink, every day you get on a train. You wouldn't want to spend a whole day by just taking the little train out to the castle, 'cause you'd rather pay five bucks for that, you use this for real days of travel, and you bought it with those days in mind. This is a beautiful convenience when you're traveling around Europe, if you knowledgeably get the right train pass for you. You can also buy tickets as you go, point-to-point tickets. You can buy them at travel agencies, you can buy them at the ticket window, or from machines, and you can buy them online. One way or another, take full advantage of the train system in Europe. I wanna remind you that bus transportation is a good alternative. In a lot of countries, there's a hub, and the rail lines all go in and out of that hub. And if you're going across the, grain you don't want to go by train, you'll have to go into the big city and out again, but buses will go across the grain. Also in a lot of countries, buses are just cheaper, and more prevalent, and easier, you know, you can go from Madrid to Toledo effortlessly by bus, and they're leaving every 20 minutes. In Germany I've noticed there are new, very inexpensive, buses directly competing with trains, actually using train stations as their own curbs to park on. Here we have a bus that goes from Rostock to Dresden in Germany, and if you do the arithmetic it's four hours, two hundred and fifty miles, $20. Pretty good deal, and you're on the Autobahn, very comfortable ride. I was just in England, and I was in Oxford, I was in Cambridge heading for Oxford, and I just assumed I'd have to take the train into London and go back out to Oxford, and then I realized there's a direct cross-country bus. And it was about half the price of the train, it took an hour or so longer, but very relaxing, and I thoroughly enjoyed catching the bus, which I'm not inclined, to do instead of the train. So remember, you've got a good bus option when you're train traveling. When it comes to driving in Europe, you can rent a car remarkably afford ably, and a cool thing about renting a car is you go open jaws just like flying, you can pick up and drop the car at a hundred different Hertz or Avis offices anywhere in Italy, or France, or Britain. Take full advantage of that. Think cleverly about not paying to have your car in London, and Bath, and York, and Edinburgh, if you're going to England you don't want a car in those cities. For the case of England, here's a smart trip. Land at Heathrow, take the bus or the train out to Bath, spend a couple of days in Bath, without a car, getting over jet lag, pick up your car in Bath, drive and do your country side stuff, the Cotswolds, North Wales, Cumbrian Lake District, Hadrian's Wall, places you'll want a car. Drop the car when you get to Edinburgh, 'cause you don't want a car in Edinburgh, three days there, and then you go to York by train, two days there, and in an hour you're in London, and you got four days in London where you don't want a car anyway. Just see the advantage of that, you're using a car where you should use the car, and you're not paying to rent a car, to pay to park it, in a city where you wouldn't want to use the car anyway. Very, very important, and it's easy to do when you remember you can rent your car in that open jaws fashion, picking up here and dropping it there. Europe's road system is really good. In the old days, there weren't a lot of freeways. Now as Europe is united, they've got this huge investment in their infrastructure, it's like an internal martial plan, and they're taking the poor countries, most of eastern Europe, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and so on, investing in them, and you got beautiful German style freeways everywhere. And that comes with a lot of tunnels, and a lot of bridges, and just a lot of fun driving. Look at this tunnel here in little Norway. 4 or 5 million people are drilling the longest tunnels in the world. Every tunnel in Europe has a sign outside that is the name of the tunnel and how long it is, which I find fun when I'm driving. Normally they're just in meters,a meter is the same as a yard essentially, in this particular title it is 24 1/2 kilometers, so figure 24 kilometers, cut in half, 12, add two, that's a 14 or 15 mile-long tunnel. That's a long tunnel. And those are kind of commonplace in Europe these days, you'll find a lot of tunnels saving a lot of time. You gotta decide, are you going to get insurance with your car or not, and it is a headache to have a car in Europe, knowing it's very expensive to bring it back with a ding in it. Now I like the peace of mind of having zero deductible insurance, and one way or another I get it. Sometimes it's covered with your credit card, sometimes it's covered in your leasing or your rental fee, and sometimes you gotta pay extra. Sort through that, but understand there's a huge, huge advantage to knowing you can bring your car back in unrecognizable shambles and just say, "sorry, I'm new in this country." And I think, psychologically, you will travel safer when you know you can drive aggressively on the road. So pay for their zero deductible collision damage waiver. There's a lot of police in Europe, a lot of carabinieri in Italy, and there's a lot of American travelers getting tickets in the mail, or just build on their credit card. If you're coming into Bergen, and you don't read the sign that says, "if you drive into town without this special local pass, you're going to have a fee," you're gonna be billed, you know. If you drive into Bologna, or Florence and you pass this one camera stop, you're gonna get a pretty stiff penalty because you didn't read the sign. There's a lot of pitfalls, and the car rental company has your credit card, and when you break the law you will pay the price. Remember, in Europe you don't need the international driver's license. Some people will say you do, the international driver's license, technically it's required in a couple of countries, but I've never used it, and the international driver's license service has a formal translation of your American license, so when you get pulled over the cop could read it okay. I find if you want to get it, it's sold easily at AAA, it's not very expensive, and it is a legitimate piece of disposable photo ID, which a lot of people find handy, but you can rent a car without the international license, from my experience. Look at those signs, a lot of cameras monitoring things, a lot of those red circles, remember the red circle says no go. So in the bottom left-- bottom right-hand side here says, "zona traffico limitato." Must mean limited traffic zone, but then you look at the little caveat below, you see crossed hammers. Crossed hammers on the signs in Europe means work days that could be Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday, as opposed to a cross, which means Sundays and holidays. And you see, on weekdays from 7:30 to 9:30, this is a limited traffic zone. You come in eight o'clock at night you can drive right through. On the left you see the free the speed limits all over the country. 50 kilometers an hour in the cities, 90 kilometers an hour outside of the cities, 110 on highways, and 130 on the freeway. All that's very straightforward. Be engaged, travel smartly, take advantage of that. Remember, your issue when it comes to filling the tank is diesel or unleaded, and that’s color-coded at the pump. Generally the pump won't even fit in your car if you've got the wrong stuff, but know if you're diesel to be sure you're not getting the wrong kind of gas. A lot of American travelers are all stressed out about the high cost of gas in Europe. It's expensive here, and It's twice as expensive in Europe. Don't worry about it. Cars get great mileage, distances are short, and I'm always impressed how much driving you can do for a very inexpensive price when it comes to the gas. That's a small part of the equation. I travel for a week in England and I end up spending $60 on my gas, it's not a big deal. So, you know, you wanna be careful with your needless driving, but you'll get around fine and affordable. I'm kind of old fashioned when it comes to navigating. I like a map. I just bought an atlas when I was in England, very nice to have that sitting on the driver's seat. On the other hand, it's pretty, pretty slick these days, the GPS that may or may not be with your car, and a lot of people find their Google Maps and their apps on their smart phone works even better than the GPS. I dropped a lot of pins on my last trip, and it works really great. If you like that, it'll bail you out of all sorts of problems, and these mapping apps, and so on, they know all the one way roads, and they know all the traffic jams and it just works really marvelously. When it comes to parking your car, just be big minded about it, don't look for a free place to park your car, just have a-- I just hoard coins in my, you know, my coffee dish there, and I just pay to park. Pay and display. I get as close as I can, I'll pay and display, use the machine, display the ticket, and then you've saved time, and you've got a safer place to leave your car. Also remember, most car rental cars come with the cardboard clock that any European has. If they don't have it you can get it at a gas station or convenient, and this cardboard clock, you can see it here on the sign, this is parking, and it's free if you have the clock. The parking clock. You set the time you arrive on your cardboard clock, you put it on your dashboard, and then the parking attendant knows that you arrived at 12:00, and this is good for 180 minutes on weekdays between eight and six, and you're good until three o'clock, because you've got your clock on the dashboard. Make sense? That'll save you a lot of headaches, but you need to use that clock. It's hiding in your glove compartment. No parking on Thursday. You gotta know the days of the week to drive smartly, and that would be Thursday. I don't know what "dispare" means, but it sounds like a bad word. Thursday you can't do it, and then you look at that, but it says from zero to six. Zero would be midnight. Six would be just when they start getting traffic. What's the deal here, on Thursday what do they do? They sweep the street, we do it here too. So you're gonna get towed if you're parking there on Thursdays from midnight till' six, and on the bottom, you can just guess that last line says, "on every place on this street," that's what that would say. So have your phrasebook, make your educated guesses, common sense, but you don't want to get towed. When it comes to flying, I rely on my travel agent, period, in Europe. It's complicated, I have complicated trips, I just use a travel agent. I think it's a great value, I don't even talk about it much in my classes, I don't mess with frequent flyer miles, I just wanna fly efficiently over there, and I think it's a great value. To get to Europe and back, for whatever it costs, in nine hours, is a beautiful thing. As far as getting in and out to airports in Europe, there are wonderful shuttle services. Here in Barcelona, it costs five dollars, every 15 minutes a bus takes you right to the main square. If you get in a taxi, you just blew $30. Plenty of good ways to get downtown, in many airports in Europe you just follow the crowd downstairs, and there's a bullet train that takes you, at a government subsidized price, right into the town center. A big deal in Europe these days is the deregulated airline industry. When I was a kid traveling in Europe, nobody paid for a one-way flight in Europe if they were spending their own money, it was ridiculously expensive. Nowadays, it's deregulated, and you can go round trip for 50 bucks almost anywhere in Europe, if you know how to go to these discount airlines. Travel agents don't know about them, a lot of search engines don't find them, they got their own websites, and you got your Ryanair, you got your-- even a company called Wizzair, can be a very good value, okay. Know the ins and outs, because sometimes they're cheap in the beginning but if you don't know how to use it properly, you end up paying a lot of extra fees, and you didn't save much money. They also end up using secondary airports a lot which, I find a real drag, frankly, I've got $100 for a ride in Europe and I just go for the Lufthansa or the British Air one way ticket that I get through my travel agent when I buy my big round trip ticket. I just tell her all the little one way flights I want and they average $100 a flight, and then I'm flying exactly when I want to go, on a reliable airline, with all this service and I'm using the major airports. So, to me, I don't mess with the discount airlines 'cause I just want to get where I want to go, when I want to go, and the savings is not that dramatic. But, this opens up a lot of fun travel to a lot of people that really know how to save money that way. Commit yourself to public transportation public transportation. Public transportation is part of being in Europe. When I'm in London and I fly to Heathrow, I will buy the one-week public transit pass covering all the subways and all the buses, and I get to my hotel from the airport, and I get the whole week of travel covered for what I would spend if I just bought a taxi from the airport to my hotel, do you follow me there. I just feel good when I'm traveling that way. Public transportation, if you use the local passes especially, empowers you. A lot of Europeans never get around to owning a car and learning how to drive. They don't have any environmental or political agenda, it just makes no sense to drive because they got wonderful public transportation. Figure out how that works, then you will do better. A nice thing about public transportation is, if it's a subway, it's below the traffic jams. There's a lot of traffic jams in Europe these days. Subways cover that beautifully. Wonderful subway systems. I want to remind you that there's a lot of crowds in the subway system, so you're likely to be pick pocketed in a jam. On a crowded bus, on the tourists line, you got the pick pockets, so be aware of that. Know the rudiments of using the public transportation, the subways, and so on. If you have-- if you use them in your hometown here in the United States that's great, if you don't, you got color-coded lines. This is Prague, four different color coded lines, each with a letter, you navigate by cross points, and by end stations, and by what line, is it. So, you gotta know what is the end station, where you go on, and where do you connect, and it's pretty straightforward. Places like London and Paris have much more complicated train systems underground, but they work really well, and you'll find you can get within a five-minute walk of almost anywhere in town, when you empower yourself with the local public transportation. Now, you can get within a five-minute walk if you use the correct exit. if you are mindless about that, you can walk an extra 10 minutes, literally. So just get in the habit of-- when you get off of the subway, be heads up about your exit. Here we have in Paris, "sortie," that's one of the key words you know when using the Paris subway system, and you got three different exits there, and there's three different exits elsewhere, you want to know where you're going. Here we have the exit in London on the Tube, and you can see exit one takes me to Westminster pier, exit two takes me to Victoria Embankment, and exit 3 takes me to the Houses of Parliament. Again, you'll save yourself a lot lot of sweat and extra steps by using those signs. In the subway system, on the bus system, like the train system, you generally need to date your ticket. And remember, the ticket is oftentimes good for an hour, or two hours, or 24 hours, with unlimited changes, and so on. You got lots of options, but you do have to date that thing. Something very popular in Europe these days, as in the United State's with public transit systems, is these swipe cards. In England it's called-- in London it's called the Oyster card, and it seems little complicated but it's not. you just pay $5, and you get your card, and then you top it up for as much travel as you need, and by having the swipe card, you get to travel half-price. It's the only way to travel economically on the system, and when you're done, you can generally sell your card back for the deposit you paid for it. Buses complement the tube system quite nicely, a lot of travelers are disinclined to use the buses. Get your brain around the bus system, get local help, it can really empower you as well.There are apps, your Google Maps, and individual cities have apps that help you know where the nearest bus, or tram, or subway is, how long it'll take, and how much walking is involved. You can refer to that before you decide if you're gonna take a taxi or not if it's really awkward, you could just hop in a taxi, if it's really slick, you just go down the stairs and you hop on the train. So use those apps if you're using public transportation. I'll remind you, taxis can be a good budget trick a lot of people think, "oh taxis is, like, for wealthy people," or a splurge, no, your time is really important. If there's three or four of you especially, you should routinely consider flagging down taxes, 'cause you save time, you save stress, it's just a relaxing fun way to see the town. Unless there's traffic concerns, you can be embroiled in traffic and then you wish you went underground and used the subway. Taxis, it's either an issue of hailing it down, having the hotel or restaurant telephone it for you, or finding a taxi stand. And in some cases. hailing it down doesn't work, and you got to get to the taxi stand. In other cities, it's just you hail taxis, it's great. I find taxis generally very honest. it's hard to rip people off these days, the meters are all fixed really well so they can tamper with them, and unless you meet a rip-off cabbie that's parked in front of a tourist attraction just waiting to take a green naive tourists for a ride, I think you can generally do pretty well on taxis. I think a great thing, rather than stopping or getting a taxi who's parked outside of a tourist location, they're looking for tourists, I like to hail one on the road that driving by. He's not camped out, he hasn't spent a lot of time wasting, waiting for you, an easy victim, and you'll find they're safer that way. Understand the meter system. Understand what tariff, be careful about common scams, but generally taxis are a great great service. Europeans love their bikes. Europeans bike to work, they bike with their families, a lot of times they don't use helmets. America's are just appalled at Europeans that'll bike without helmets. They don't have any guns, you know, we lose a thousand people a year with guns, but we have helmets on our bikes so that's nice. Different societies get upset about different safety issues I guess, but you got rental bikes that are quite nice, and when it's good for tourists to use a bike, you got plenty of opportunities to rent a bike. Look at Nice here. This used to be all traffic, now this is the new layout in Europe. You've got two lanes now for cars, a beautiful bike lane, and a broad pedestrian boulevard along the waterfront. That's the new European people friendly waterfront. All over the continent you can bake along riverbanks, and you can bike though the countryside. There's a lot of fun ways that you can add to the joy of your travel by knowing your options, and using transportation to empower you when you enjoy your trip to Europe. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, right now I want to talk about eating your way through Europe, and one of the joys of European travel is food, right, how many of you are looking forward to eating in Europe? Nice. Well I certainly am, and you don't need to be wealthy to eat while in Europe, and you want to just eat with the culture, you want to eat with the seasons, and you want to know how to find a good value. The main thing is, you don't want to be attracted to the big sign in English on the most expensive square in town, that says no frozen food. That's a tourist trap, just like that. They're paying way too much rent, they're just trying to snare naive, green, rich tourists. And you see here, four different languages, a printed menu offering every menu item you could imagine. Everything about it is wrong. You want to find the local mom and pop place that is serving local specialties, with the season. They say in much of Europe, eaters can identify the region and the month by what's on the menu, and I think that worth thinking about, because a good traveler will eat what's good with the region, and what is good with the season. In this little restaurant here, you can see it's a small, humble mom-and-pop place, it's got paper tablecloth, you can see a couple of tourists joining the local crowd and they're eating very simply. They've got a bowl of pasta, a bottle of water, and a carafe of house wine. That's not gonna break the bank, that's going to be a great experience. Even though for Italians that would just be a start, for us, that's the meal. That's a big bowl of pasta, and a great scene. All over Europe you got trendy new restaurants, fun food, great food, innovative food, that is affordable. You don't need any pretense, you don't need any Michelin stars, you don't need any, you know, big crowd-sourcing website to tell you what's hot, you don't need to wait in a long line. You can just be tuned into where the locals are eating, and order in a smart place. I like to go to a fancy restaurant, and I like to have the fancy clientele, and the beautifully presented food, but I don't like to have to dress up and $100 for a meal. You don't need to do that. You can find plenty of classy restaurants, with classy clientele, and I always say-- I would say eat in these kind of restaurants, but when you do, if you're on a budget, order sparingly. Order each person a first course, split the main course, split the dessert, and have a carafe of house wine instead of a bottle of fine wine. They're glad you're there. And then, you're gonna walk out of that place, not feeling like you just ate a horse, like a lot of Americans seem to brag about, but that you ate smartly. You're not stuffed, and you were surrounded by local elegance. I would rather pay $25 for a pasta, sitting with local politicians and big shots and having all that elegance, than $15 for that same bowl of pasta down the street. If I'm in the mood for a fancy restaurant, the key is you don't need to go broke if you order low on the menu, and you share. Ask for the dessert, but ask for four spoons with it. That used to be bad, but I'll tell you, these days they're just glad you're there, they really are. Even better than that, you'll find lots of sort of funky more mom-and-pop kind of places that are really ramping it up with quality. "Gastropubs," pubs, serving gastronomic food. Gastronomic tapas bars, "enoteca," in Italy, serving fine wine by the glass and beautifully paired food, that's what I like. And that's what I recommended in my books. This would be in an Enoteca, or in a gastronomic pub anywhere in Europe. Now, you want a memorable experience, and if you're going to go to a popular place, I'm telling you, in Europe you gotta make reservations. It's really important to make reservations. For years I just thought, "no as a tourist that's not really appropriate." You're just the same as a local person when you get on the phone and say, "table for four people, we're coming at eight o'clock, thank you, my name? Ricardo," okay. You do that, and you'll have a table waiting for you. Otherwise, you're gonna be roaming around, and every place is gonna be full and it's going to be very frustrating. Super popular restaurant sometimes have two settings. In this place, everybody goes there when they're in this little town in Tuscany, there's a seven o'clock seating. and there's a nine o'clock seating. When you do go out and about, remember, at the early seating it's going to be more tourists, and at the late seating. it's going to be more locals. In my research, I've learned if I go to a place at 7:30, it's going to seem like a tourist trap. If I come back at 10, it's gonna seem like a local favorite. One's not better than the other, just remember, you eat early you're eating with tourists, you eat late you're eating with locals. This particular steakhouse, wow. This man comes around with big hunks of steak, he asks you do you want this one or that one, tells you the cost, you say yes, he takes it back and cooks it, and every few minutes you hear a "whack," and there's like a quarter of a cow sitting on a gurney, and there goes another slice of him. It's into the oven at seven minutes on this side, seven minutes on that side, 15 minutes later it's on your table. This is not a good place if you're a vegetarian. This traveler is not a vegetarian, and she had a lifelong memory. So, there are wonderful experiences waiting for you, there are wonderful ways to eat outdoors. Here in this setting, this is Madrid, there used to be nothing but traffic and parking on this street, but now its underground, it's kept out, its in tunnels, and they've turned their parking lots into beautiful spaces. Lots of delightful places to eat out. One of my favorite chores in my research, and I'm in Europe researching for-- I'm in Europe for 120 days a year, 40 days is filming my TV shows, and 80 days is on my own, just researching my guidebooks, and I just love it, and I'm just working all day long, and all evening, checking things. This is one of my nights, and I don't know where I was there, but you can see I have my long list of things I need to do. On the back of the restaurant cards I've written all my details, and I go home, into the hotel and pump all that new information into the next edition of the book. One of the keys for, me as I mentioned, is to find those local places in low-rent spots a few blocks off the famous squares where you have a small menu, in one language, handwritten. Small, because they're just going to cook up what they can sell out and and do profitably for the day. One language because they're targeting local return customers, rather than tourists, they'd love you to be there, but their priority is local people. And, handwritten because it shaped by whatever's fresh in the market this morning. It's really important to eat with the season. If you're in Paris, hell bent on having french onion soup in the summer, only a tourist trap is going to serve that to you. Another restaurant wouldn't serve french onion soup, 'cause that's a winter thing. If you really want your porcini mushrooms and you're traveling in May, you're there in the wrong time of year. You better tune into the white asparagus, and come back in the fall. Go with the seasonal specials, that's what the daily specials are all about, that's what locals order, that's what they're happier if you order, and you'll get a better value and taste to your food. That handwritten menu indicates a good local favorite. Understand just the basic language. You've got your "plat du jour," you've got, in this case you've got your choice of veal with "riz pilaf," or you've got your Menu Express, which is a choice of ham or chicken with a green salad and french fries. Certainly no prize winning meal there, but it's ten or twelve dollars, and you can eat in restaurants with the local people for ten or twelve dollars, if you like. The phrase book, very important, because then you know what the options are. There are a lot of good phrasebooks, we work very hard on our phrasebooks to cover all your options, so you can order smartly. One thing I like to do, is eat where local office workers eat. At lunch time, I don't want an earth-shaking meal. I've got lots to do, I know it's cheaper at lunch than at dinner, but I just want to have an expedient lunch. And I ask for local-- I lineup where the local office workers lineup. They eat out every day, and they know where the good values are. All over Europe you can find government-subsidized cafeterias. Here's the cafeteria in Oslo at the City Hall, it's called a "Mensa," where you can eat with the local workers at a no profit price. And remember, you got your quick businessman's lunch and your pre-theater dinners, where you get two courses for ten or fifteen dollars, and that's a great value. Here's a meal for under $15, where you got a plate, and a salad, and bread, and a drink, in Stockholm, a notoriously expensive city. You can find very fine and affordable lunches anywhere in Europe. A nice salad and a glass of wine in France, A beautiful salad, this is the go-to salad in Greece, the Greek salad. All over Europe I like a "salad nicoise." This is in Nice particularly right here, but you'll find a "salad nicoise" is a good, healthy, inexpensive, go-to plate, anywhere in Europe. Eat with the local cultures, in Italy you've got an "antipasto spread," its like a salad bar, but all this "antipasto" stuff. In Spain, you've got the wonderful "tapas." One of the challenges for us we go to Spain, is local people really late. Unless you want lunch at three and dinner at ten, you're gonna have to roll with the punches there, and if you sit down at a restaurant at noon or seven, you're gonna be eating with the staff-- in Europe that's-- you're just not very welcome. What you wanna do is go to a bar. And they've got good food in their tapas bars all day long in Spain, and that's part of the cuisine scene. As I mentioned, people are sharing. Here are Germans sharing a "wurst" and "sauerkraut," even sharing their beer. That would never have happened in earlier days, but now they've had their economic challenges, and again, they're just happy that you're there. I love cultures where they have family style eating, and anywhere in Europe I opt for the family style of eating, and remember, a lot of Americans think it's kind of bad style to be sharing their plates, and so on. But you're curious, you're beginners, you step on the learning curve, and a chef loves it, even if it's not sophisticated, if you make a habit to order different things and then sample them around. You just want to eat your way through the menu, it's, fun it's part of the culture. In Greece you have the "meze," and you get to order these little plates. In Spain, of course, you've got the "tapas," in Venice you've got the "cicchetti," all over Europe. In Italy, I find the "antipasto," or the appetizer spread, is really the most interesting thing on the menu. If you have dietary concerns, and a lot of people do, whether they're gluten-free, or vegan, or you have a very bad reaction to nuts, or whatever you, need to write it down on a piece of paper, and then have a local person translate it, so you can show that to the waiter and not have any risk of getting what you don't want. You have to be very explicit, because a lot of waiters just go, "yeah, yeah, yeah," and then they ignore you. so be careful about that. A lot of people wonder about the tipping, and the service, and so on, I want to remind you, service and taxes are included. So if you look at a $30 meal in Europe that says service and tax included, that's like a $22 meal here, where we'd add on tax and add on service. It's there already, so discount the price in your mind when you're wondering, "what is the value here." People ask about service, and in Europe, waiters and waitresses are paid a living wage. You don't have this very strong 10, or 15, or 20 percent tipping thing that we do in the United States over there. Locals just leave the coins on the table, rounded up, or often don't tip at all. I would say ask in each country, "what are the tipping norms?" Don't ask a waiter, ask somebody else, and just find out what you're comfortable with, but don't lose sleep over walking out of a restaurant in Europe without tipping. Because, they're paid a living wage, and it's not expected like it is here. And if you tip American-style in Europe, you're just raising the bar and messing up the local balance, and it's bad style. A lot of Americans complain about slow service. In America, time is money, bam, bam, bam, in and out, turning the table. European restauranteurs don't want to turn the table, I mean, if they get popular in an American guidebook they have an early setting, because Americans prefer to eat early, and then the Americans are gone by the time the regular clientele come, but they're not really designed about turning tables in Europe. You're there all evening. Respectful, quality good service is slow. Now if you want fast service, you can get it. Europeans sometimes want fast service, it's just a matter of effectively communicating and say, "excuse me, I have a play to go to, I need to be finished by nine o'clock." If you can communicate that, you'll get fast service, but that is the exception, not the rule. I like music when I'm eating. I like to enjoy a cultural experience when I'm eating, and all over Europe, you can choose your restaurant with fun music along with it. Also remember, in Europe, you get fast food on every corner. You got American chains on every corner these days. That's a real loss if you go all the way to Europe and eat a lot of fast American food chain food. I would recommend, if you want fast food, find the delis that have the counters and the stools, where the local businesspeople go. Here we have a grocery store, an elegant grocery store that has a deli counter, and if you see in the back there on the left, a bunch of local business people, sitting on stools, eating great food at great prices, in a fancy grocery store. Also remember, all over Europe, there are immigrants doing the hard work that local people don't want to do, for peasant wages. And these immigrants have very tasty food traditions, they have very small budgets, and they like to go out and eat. I think immigrant restaurants are a godsend for tourists, especially up in Scandinavia, where the food tends to be really expensive and really boring, alright. you want some spicy Pakistani food, or Lebanese food, or whatever when you're in Scandinavia. All over Europe, a "doner kebab" is a great go-to meal for something fast and cheap. Pizza is another good standby, you can find pizza anywhere for a great price. Street food, lots of fun. Know the street food, have a sense of adventure, and enjoy that dimension of the culture. Know what the unique specialties are. This is barnacles. Barnacles, in Portugal, very expensive but really, really good, they are the best seafood I've ever eaten. It goes with beer, it's and something we wouldn't know about if we didn't try it. Truffles, in season, a beautiful thing. Again, know what is in season and eat with the season. Venture out, try the stinky cheese. if you want to learn more about the food, remember, a great new thing is food tours. All over Europe you'll find food stores, you can Google it, you can look on TripAdvisor, in my guidebook, I recommend the food tours that I've particularly enjoyed. They're not cheap, it'll cost you 80 or $90, but you get four hours, you go to eight places, you get a big meal out of it, and it's a tour and an education through a very interesting, characteristic neighborhood at the same time. I really enjoy those food tours. That one was in Rome, this one is in southern France, in Avignon. Another popular experience is to go to a cooking school. These are very trendy these days, just last year I met one of our groups in Florence and I joined them for the experience. It took a little time, but it was really fun, we prepared the food, we cooked the food, and of course, when you're done cooking it, you got to eat it. And when we sat down, this is one of our tour groups, and we ate at meal, it was clear to us, this was as good as what you might have got at a restaurant, and we had the proud chef beaming over us and, and we were all right there, making everything from the salad, and the pasta, to the tiramisu. You can do that, if you want to look into a cooking school. Picnicking is a European way to go, and you can create a very atmospheric, inexpensive, and healthy meal, if you choose a good spot to picnic, and it causes you to go into the market places. I love the marketplaces of Europe, to me they're as important as the museums. This is the grand, industrial age, marketplace in Budapest, you find them all over Europe. This is the big market stall courtyard in Nice, and here in the Dordogne of France, in Sarlat, you've got, not a daily market, but a once-a-week market. Know when the markets are, and make it a point to be there. When you go into the market stalls, you feel the energy, you'll enjoy the local push-and-shove, you get to test things, and you put together a wonderful picnic with produce that is probably tastier than produce that you've ever had here. When you go to a market, you'll find a lot of good eateries near the market, so you don't necessarily have to picnic in conjunction with your market visit. Remember, shoppers and workers know there's fresh produce and very competitive prices, and very characteristic seasonal food in the little eateries that surround those markets. The best new place to have lunch in Florence is the "Mercato Centrale." Industrial age marketplace's have had a big struggle in the last generation, as people are going out of town to the supermarkets, and so on. What they've done to revitalize them, is keep the farmers market dimension, but spice it up, by letting it be outlets for fancy restaurants, and outlets for creative foodies to serve right there. And in Florence, you've got a food court of fun options in that marketplace ambiance, and I really love the "Mercato Centrale" when you're in Florence. Of course, you've got just modern grocery stores as well, all over Europe, one way or another, you can put together a beautiful picnic, and you can eat very, very cheap and healthy if you want to. Whether it's on a train ride, just a very, very simple meal on a train, but it just costs a couple bucks in the most expensive corner of Europe. Or, after a long day of sightseeing, maybe you just want to take off your shoes, stretch out, and have a simple, cheap meal, while catching up on your YouTube, or your TV watching, or whatever in the hotel room. You've got that option, and I like to make a pantry in my hotel. I don't want an earth-shaking dinner every night, every second or third night I just like to have a picnic in my hotel room. It's relaxing to me, it's healthy, and it is certainly cheap. In each country in Europe, you've got the local taste treats. Do your reading, make a point, make room in your budget. When you're in Belgium if you don't try some beautiful gourmet chocolate, you don't know what you're missing. And, of course, you've got the gelato scene. I love to not go with the guidebook, and not go at the crowd-sourcing, but go with local recommendation. "What is the most popular gelateria in town?" And go there and you'll feel the energy, as all the kids are there enjoying great gelato. Same with coffee. Wonderful coffee scene. I like to pay too much to enjoy a cup of coffee the most expensive piece of real estate in that town, and watch the scene go by. Remember, when you have a cup of coffee and you sit outside, you pay a little more, but you're not paying for the coffee, you're paying to be part of the scene, and that is integral to a quality European experience. Related to that are the the happy hour drinks. I'm not a cocktail, happy hour, kinda guy here, but when I'm in Europe I like to spend half an hour or 45 minutes just enjoying a hard drink and some munchies on the square as everybody's out making the scene. This is the "aperitivo." It's a big deal in Italy. Here we are in the main square in Siena enjoying spending $7 for your drink, and it comes with little sandwiches, and pickles, and and chips, and so on. And again, you're renting a spot to enjoy the show, that's what that's all about. Make the scene. In the morning, it's a market, in the middle of the day it's just a work-a-day scene, and at night the little bars spring out and all the students, and all of the fun-loving people are on the square having their spritz. If you go to that square and buy a spritz, strike up a conversation, you're gonna have plenty of friends. That's your challenge, the ball's in your court. They're not gonna come to you, but you're more than welcome to make that scene, but it's easier to do with the appropriate drink in hand, at the right time a day. You know, here at home I never feel like a nice glass of "ouzo," but when I'm in Greece, every night I feel like watching the sunset with a glass of "ouzo." When I'm in England, I feel like a spot of tea. I don't drink tea here, I drink tea in England, I'm a cultural chameleon. When I'm in the Czech Republic, it's a good Pilsner. When I'm in Tuscany, it's good red wine, and so on. Make sure that you are a cultural chameleon when it comes to the drinks and the food in your travels, and then you will have a better experience. The food really makes a huge difference, and if you know how to connect with the culture, you'll find that just as important as the museums and galleries, is experiencing and enjoying the culture, through the hearth, through the dining room table, and through the kitchen. Thank you. When you travel in Europe, every night you gotta find a hotel. And the challenge for you is, "how do I find the right hotel for the right budget?" You don't need to stay in a slum, alright, there are lousy hotels in Europe, where for $20 you get a bed and a kitten tossed in for no extra, and I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is an alternative to this, this is the high-rise Intercontinental Hotel, and frankly, that's not what we're traveling for. When I go around the United States, I'm happy to stay in the Intercontinental, but when I'm halfway around the world, I want to know where I am. And an Intercontinental is designed for-- think about the name-- is designed for people who, deep down inside, wish they were not traveling. People who need a paper strap over the toilet promising that, "nobody has sat here yet." You can get that kind of American niceties, but you're gonna pay American prices plus shipping for them, and when I travel, I want to stay in a funky little hotel. Walter's hotel. It's been a fire trap for a hundred years, I'll risk it one more night. I know I'm in Switzerland here, that peasants have been cutting hay up on the field, and they're downstairs in the bar playing the spoon, yodeling, and drinking beer. I'm part of the scene. The less you spend, in so many cases, the more experienced when it comes to accommodations, and I find accommodations an integral part of your travel experience. I want a two star hotel on a pedestrian-only street in Paris, on a village-- it's sort of village Paris, there's a market outside in the morning, it's just seven blocks from the Eiffel Tower. $150 for my double, so French when I step outside the morning I feel like I must've been a poodle in a previous life. This is a good hotel. It's not a fancy hotel, it's got an elevator, it's got a private toilet and shower. It's perfectly good for me, and it should be good for the people who are planning to go to Europe with my guidebooks. One of the joys for me is connecting with the people who run these hotels. I'm so passionate about getting people to people. These hotels are family-run. I've been doing this long enough where now I'm in the second generation. Mom and dad have retired, and this is Nico, who runs one of my favorite hotels in Venice. I drop by and see Nico every time I'm in town, and we have a tradition where we hold up the latest book, and we hold up the picture from our last visit, and every time I visit we do this, we hold up the next picture, and you can see the previous visit, and then in the photograph a previous visit, and it goes way back. The point is, we've got a long experience with these hoteliers, and they really appreciate the people with our guidebooks. Its extended family. If you use the Rick Steves guidebook to any of these destinations in Europe, you will have a lot of friends, running a lot of great hotels, that would love to host you. They can be fancy hotels like this, with the Koch family, in a resort town in Austria. They can be elegant places with beautiful, characteristic rooms. That’s really nice to have, but most of them are going to be rather simple rooms, like this. A lot of times you get a twin-- two twin beds, and they can be made up as twins, or made up as a double, and that would be your situation. A lot of times a double room would have a small double bed and a little kinda single bed, and you can have two or three people in the room. I want to remind you, the more people you pack into the room, the cheaper it gets per person, and the fewer people, the more expensive, it is. A single is genuinely, or generally, a single occupancy of a double room, and it costs nearly as much as the double room for two people. The exception would be if you have a tiny single that physically does not fit a double bed. To find a cheap, single room it by definition is going to be cramped, because it can't fit a double bed. If there's two of you in a double room, much more economic. Rather than stay in the high-rise, international class, five star hotel outside of town, I like to spend about the same money, but stay right downtown in an elegant local style hotel. So this is not a purely budget thing, I got plenty of money to stay in a nice hotel if I want to, and I do choose to spend that splurge level, but when I do it, I don't want to be surrounded by American, noisy, international business people, and so on, it's just bad for my traveling soul. I wanna be right there, immersed in the local culture, with people who know a good value, in a beautiful hotel that has a long heritage heritage of serving guests. A place that has the same people working at the desk year after year, who really are part of the family. A lot of times when you get a characteristic hotel, it's right downtown and it physically cannot fit an elevator in that thing. That's okay. I like a few stairs, you know, and in fact, when you choose a room, I'd rather be a few stairs up. Europe is noisy, a lot of Europeans prefer to be down low and on the street. I don't want to have a street view, I want to be up three floors and with a view out the back, 'cause I want it quiet tonight, there's a lot of night noise. A lot of people insist on an elevator, they're all upset if there's no elevator, they'd rather travel all the way outside of town to get an elevator, than stay right downtown and climb a few steps. And it's kind of silly, because they do a lot more steps to get to their elevator, than if they were right downtown. There's something great about being in an old building that can't have an elevator, you're right where the action is. Do concern yourself with night noise, very important. The night noise, you can minimize that, but you can't always avoid it, and if you're choosing a hotel on a train track, above a disco, you know, right downtown, a lot of times you gonna have night noise. That goes with European travel, and that something you want to be aware of. Hotels provide WiFi these days. Big, stoney walls oftentimes don't let the WiFi go through, so much as you want WiFi in your room, it'll advertise WiFi, but you'll find all the tourists are down in the lobby getting online every night. They'll have WiFi, but you have to scramble to get added a lot of times. I love this photograph, because it shows the old-fashioned reservation sheet with pencil and eraser, and that's Tuesday on the 14th, you want two double rooms, okay, and they write you down. Look at that, you don't know how they keep track of it. It's a reminder to me to remind you, that many people's trips are filled with fiascoes, everybody is screwing them up. If everybody's screwing you up, you're at fault. Nobody screws me up because I don’t give them the opportunity to screw me up. I call a day before to reconfirm. As a good tour guide for your own family, you need to be reconfirming, double-checking, "what could go wrong," head it off at the pass so you don't show up and say, "hey, I emailed you a week ago." Don't let that be a problem, because it's complicated for them. Another development in the hotel world is what's called dynamic pricing, and this is very frustrating to me, because I built my whole program, in my guidebooks, on being able to rely on a price from a hotel for a room, and now they have these computer programs that let them charge more or less, depending on what the market will bear, and they predict that a year in advance. It's very tough for me to say what the price is gonna be at a hotel. The result of that is, as consumers, they're gonna perfect price discriminate against us. We need to just defend ourselves. We need to send an email to five different hotels that looked like a good value, and find out who's charging what on any particular day, and then go with the best value. It's unfortunate, but I think that's how we have to handle that. There are a lot of booking services. Booking services are brutal on hotels. They take a 20% commission, and they require that hotels bump up their price and not discount and offer a net price to people that go around the booking service. I find a lot of hoteliers are just really extorted by booking companies but there's no way around it. You are invisible if you're not on booking.com, or whatever, so it's just a new way of doing business. You can go direct, and when you go direct you'll be a preferred customer, because the hotel then is keeping all the money, instead of losing twenty percent of it, and exactly how it all shakes out is up to you, but I like to go direct, and I prefer having my hotels make all the money, instead of having that needless middleman in the way. TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is crowd-sourcing. TripAdvisor is, for me the main problem with TripAdvisor is you don't know the veracity, or the honesty of the information. There are companies in India that make their living writing up nice reviews for people in TripAdvisor, and other crowd-sourcing sites. There are hotels, that I know, in Edinburgh that give you a free breakfast if you will write a report to TripAdvisor. And there are a lot of people who are angry with another company, a competing company, that will send dishonest misinformation through TripAdvisor to scare people away from that hotel, and one disgruntled customer feels like they're very powerful by extorting a hotel with the threat of a bad thing on Tripadvisor. So, you just gotta-- TripAdvisor has valuable information, but as consumers, you need to understand, it needs to be sorted through. It is uncurated, and that presents us with a challenge. The hotels in Europe are a good source of information. we need to take advantage of that friendly person at the desk who really knows what play is the most popular, "what are the pitfalls of getting out to the airport," and "where do I rent a bicycle." They are really a good source of information that way. I make a point, when I get to hotel, of making that room my own. I take a few minutes, especially if I'm there for three or four days, I stock the pantry, I go to the market and get a pantry so I've get healthy food to eat, I get rid of all the little advertisement, I set things up comfortably, I make sure I got the right pillow. In a lot of traditional French hotels you got this Lincoln Log pillow. Americans don't like it generally, hey, there's an American-style pillow in the closet, or you can get one if you ask, You're not a problem, you're not an ugly American if you expect the hotel to fit your needs. You just gotta politely let them know what your needs are. There are hotels in Europe that have rubber mats on the mattresses to protect people from, you know, peeing on the mattress. I don’t wanna sweat all night because they're worried about their mattresses, I'll physically take that rubber mat off of the thing, in order to have a comfortable night's sleep. The point is, exercise your own proactive concerns to make that room fit your needs. It can be done, and it makes a huge difference. The more people you pack into a room, the cheaper it gets per person. If you're traveling with a family, rent a triple and figure out a clever way to add that fourth person to the room. It's a lot cheaper, and hoteliers will work with you. When you have a hotel these days, you don't have the toilet and shower down the hall any longer, it is retrofitted into the room. It's a tight, little, pre-fab, yacht kinda toilet and shower unit, and a lot of times it's not a lot of surface. I like to be able to hang my toiletries kit there. It's kind of nice because a lot of times there's strange hairs and stuff in the sink, and I know when I've got my toiletries there, those are my hairs, that's all my stuff. So it's a little cleaner that way, and it's just a reality. With climate change, you'll find air conditioning wherever you need it these days. In Europe Northern, countries often don't have air conditioning and now they're realizing they need it. I would suffer through the odd times when it's too hot in the north, but in the south I would insist on air conditioning, and know how to use it. As far as smoking goes, smoking is no longer allowed in hotels. You will not have any problem with smoky rooms, and that's great news. Usually included in your hotel, is a big breakfast. And it's a buffet breakfast, it's usually a healthy breakfast, and I just love the breakfasts in Europe these days, they used to be just a croissant breakfast, but now they are quite sizable. In Britain, and in Scandinavia, and Ireland, you've got a lot of bed and breakfasts. I like a bed and breakfast. You're staying in somebody's home, they've got a few extra rooms they're renting out. Traditionally, you'd find a street with a lot of B&Bs hanging out their shingle. These days you go with, you know, web searches, and booking agencies, and so on, to get your B&Bs, we list a lot of them in our hotels. In the classic sense, a bed-and-breakfast comes with a big hearty breakfast, enough for a farmer to go out and work all the way until dinnertime. A lot of Americans call this a heart attack on a plate, You will have that traditional fry up when you are in Britain, but you always have a healthy alternative to that as well. The key for B&Bs is just to know the local word for bed and breakfast. "Hus rum" is Norwegian for "zimmer," which is German for "chambre d'hôte," which is French for "bed and breakfast." You're a guest of this woman's. Here we are, Casa Rabatti, Mama Rabatti, it's four blocks from David in downtown Florence, and its $100 for the double and it's a beautiful experience. This is Kathleen Farrell, an example, on the west coast of Ireland, of how beautiful B&B is. A great thing to think about when you're affording your bed and breakfast, is to remember that, included in the price, is your own temporary local mother. And I love that, I love it when Kathleen runs out after me, "hey, where's your umbrella, here take mine, and be back by eight o'clock 'cause Sean and the band are playing Irish folk music in the pub tonight." Plenty of opportunities to be part of the scene when you're staying at a B&B. I will remind you, the big, giant, efficient cookie-cutter, kind of Motel six sort of places in Europe are providing very difficult competition for the cute little bit and breakfasts and guest houses. You will get rooms for the same price in a big hotel like this, but if you want the charm, you can remember the B&Bs. Remember, in the old days, the ladies used to sit on the curb and wave their signs when you drove into town, now people generally go with Airbnb. Airbnb is a powerful tool, and people love it. There's couch surfing which is cheaper, but Airbnb is everywhere. This would be an Airbnb apartment. My son actually rents Airbnb apartments where he lives in Prague, in the Czech Republic. This is one of his apartments. That's the kind of accommodations you can have, for half the price of a hotel when you use that service. All over Europe, you can stay in farmhouses. In Italy it's called agriturismo, and I find, when I do my research, these agriturismos are just a wonderful opportunity to have that salt of the earth experience. And I want to remind you, Europe as thousands of youth hostels.Youth hostels in traditional kinds of ways, and youth hostels all that are more modern and institutional. High-rise hostels offering $25 beds in downtown Copenhagen, industrial strength rooms, and a member's kitchen where you can cook for the price of groceries, that's the spirit of youth hosteling. If you've got a family, if you're on a tight budget, remembering youth hostel is a great way to go. They've actually taken the word "youth" out of the system, so now if you're over 55 you get a discount on the membership card. In other words, if you're alive, you are young enough to youth hostel. There are informal hostels, there are mountain huts, there are plenty of creative ways where you can have simple, characteristic accommodations. And, all over Europe now, you've got artistic designer hostels that compete to be the best hostel in the world. I love mountain huts, you can hike across the Alps and every night sleep in a hut like this. And I want to remind you, where you need to go in Europe you've got plenty of options, some of them are gonna be expensive, some of them are gonna be cheap, some of them are gonna be filled with tourists, and some of them are gonna be filled with locals. The key for you in your travels, is to have good information and to remember, when you can connect with the culture and with the people, your accommodations become a beautiful part of the trip itself, okay. Thank you very much, and remember we got a lot more information. Happy travels, thank you, happy travels.