Steves - Rick steves europe through the back door 2015: the Travel Skills Handbook

This guidebook, based on lessons learned from more than 30 years of exploring Europe, is your handbook for traveling smart. With the tips and advice Ive assembled here, you can plan, create, and enjoy a trip that will live up to your dreams.

My first five trips to Europe were purely for kicks. I made my share of blundersI missed train connections, wasted money on dreary hotels and bad restaurants, and showed up at sights after they had closed. But each new trip became smoother than the last. It was clear: I was learning from my mistakes.

While traveling, I saw others making the same costly and time-consuming errors that Id once made. It occurred to me that by sharing the lessons Id learned, I could help people enjoy better, easier trips. And Id have a good excuse to go back to Europe every summer to update my material.

Throughout the late 1970s I taught my European Travel Cheap class in Seattle during the school year, and traveled to Europe every summer. I developed a good sense of the fears and apprehensions troubling people before their trips, and I was gathering lots of great Back Door discoveries and experiences throughout Europe.

So, in 1980, with all that material, writing the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door was easy. I rented an IBM Selectric typewriter, sweet-talked my girlfriend into typing the manuscript, and cajoled my roommate into sketching the illustrations. I gingerly delivered that precious first pile of pages to a printer, and, on my 25th birthday, picked up 2,500 copies.

I sold all those first editions of Europe Through the Back Door through my travel classes. With the second edition, in 1981, I got a bit more professional, taking out my personal poems and lists of the most dangerous airlines. I found a distributor who got the book into stores throughout the Pacific Northwest. The third edition, even though typeset, still looked so simple and amateurish that reviewers repeatedly mistook it for a pre-publication edition.

All this time I was supporting myself as a piano teacher. But my recital hall was gradually becoming a travel lecture classroom, and I needed to choose what I would teach: Europe or music. I chose Europe, let my piano students go, and began building my travel business. At the same time, an actual publisher agreed to bring out the fourth edition of Europe Through the Back Door. Happily, I could now focus on researching and writing rather than publishing.

Since then Ive kept to the same teaching missionthough now this mission is amplified by 90 workmates at my company in Edmonds, Washington, and by technology I never could have dreamed of back when I started. Working together, weve developed a wide-ranging program of travel materialdozens of guidebooks, guided bus tours, a public television series, a weekly public-radio program, information-packed smartphone apps, personally designed gear, a generous website, and more. Everything we do is designed to inform and inspire American tourists to turn their travel dreams into smooth and affordable realityand this book is the foundation of our work.

The favorite part of my job remains my on-the-ground research. I spend four months every year in Europe: April and May in the Mediterranean, July and August north of the Alps. I use some of that time to film my TV series, but for the majority of it, Im alone, eyes and ears open: exploring new places, revisiting old favorites, tracking down leads, collecting experiences, and updating my guidebooks. When I get home, I cant wait to splice the lessons Ive learned from my most recent travels into the book youre about to read.

I still make mistakes with gustoand take careful notes. Working up a big thirst after a long day of sightseeing in Naples, I come back to the hotel, order a margarita...and get a pizza. Sometimes I pretend to screw up, just to see whatll happen. When I get ripped off, I celebratethe scammer doesnt know who he just ripped off. Ill learn that scam, and pack that lessonwith all the othersinto this book.

You can be your own top-notch tour guidesimply equip yourself with the best information. Expect to travel smart...and you will.

Happy travels!

In Europe, lifes very goodeven if youre on a budget.

Why do I find Europe so endlessly fun and entertaining? Because I know where to look. And I know how to experience more by spending less.

Europe is my beat. For more than three decades, its been my second home. Sure, I love the biggies...from the Eiffel Tower to Mad King Ludwigs castles to Michelangelos David. But even more than the must-see sights, I value the Back Door experiences that Europe has to offer: meeting pilgrims at Santiago, sampling stinky cheese in a Czech town, pondering an ancient stone circle in Dartmoor, and cheering for a high-school soccer team with new friends in Turkey. Looking back on my European travels, having spent much of my adult life living out of a carry-on-sized bag, Im thankful that, for me, Europe never gets old. When I first started traveling, I wanted to feel the fjords and caress the castles...and I still do. My curiosity will always take me back to that wonderful continent.

But many American travelers miss the real Europe because they enter through its grand front door. This Europe greets you with cash registers cocked, $8 cups of coffee, high-rise hotels, and service with a purchased smile. Instead, you can give your trip an extra, more real dimension by coming with me through the back door, where a warm, relaxed, personable Europe welcomes us as friends. Rather than being just part of the economy, we become part of the party.