Rick Steves' Smart Travel Tips to Europe

Note: This post is just a preview, full article is here.

Yes, another post about travel tips, but this time specifically to Europe. At the same NY Times travel show, I caught best-selling guidebook author Rick Steves (of "Europe through the Back Door") fame as he expounded on his travel philosophy and gave advice on smart travel in Europe. Below are ten of his tips to make your next trip to Europe more fun, authentic and affordable.

Smart Travel Tip #1: Get off the beaten path. Salzburg attracts thousands of tourists mainly because they have been successful in marketing themselves as Mozart's birthplace. Also, they have capitalized on people's nostalgia by conducting bus tours which visit places supposedly used in the filming of "The Sound of Music". If you like crowds, then by all means go there.

Smart Travel Tip #2: Go late in the day when all the tourists have left. Charming towns like Toledo and Bruges are inundated with day trippers who arrive in their motorcoaches before lunchtime, and leave town to go back to their suburban hotels by sundown. A better idea would be to arrive later in the afternoon and spend the night in town. More often than not, a town's character changes dramatically once most of the tourists have left.

Conversely, for a city like Venice - in the early morning it is the quiet, romantic place that most travellers imagine it to be. That is the perfect time to explore the streets and plazas - by mid-morning Venice becomes a certified tourist trap.

Smart Travel Tip #3: Find places with no promotional budget. Mr. Steves describes these places as those "who missed the modern boat" and can survive on their own merits, instead of relying on lavish advertisements and promotional materials. He cites as an example the Cinque Terre, five small Italian mountainside villages overlooking the Mediterranean - these towns have resisted development and have no modern buildings and no comfortable chain hotels. The charm lies in walking the trails which connect each village to its neighbors, tasting the local specialty dishes, and drinking the locally made wine.

Read the full article here.